Why Lula’s Visit to Beijing Matters More Than Macron’s

Authored by foreignpolicy.com and submitted by SunburnFM
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When French President Emmanuel Macron visited China early this month and made comments that flattered the world view of his Chinese host, Xi Jinping, struck a willfully diffident posture toward the United States, and spoke of a possible great power conflict over Taiwan as something of limited concern to France and thereby to Europe, he unleashed a concert of disapproving and sometimes even scornful reactions on his own continent and in the United States.

A few days later when Brazilian President Luiz Ignácio Lula da Silva undertook a parallel journey to Beijing and made a range of comments that similarly supported longstanding Chinese positions and publicly established Brasília’s political distance from Washington, the world press took notice but made much less of it.

Taken alone, neither of these presidential voyages is likely to be seen as marking a dramatic break with the past, but if either is remembered even five or 10 years from now, it is likely to be the South American leader’s diplomacy and not that of his much younger French counterpart.

That Macron’s visit received more attention this month reflects the international media’s persistent North Atlantic bias more than it does fresh and sober thinking about how the world is changing. Seen at a glance, each of these countries’ diplomacy has a ready argument for being given more consideration than the other. With a GDP of nearly $3 trillion, the French economy is the second largest in the European Union, after that of Germany, and is roughly twice that of Brazil.

Meanwhile, Brazil, with a population of 214 million, has more than three times as many people as France, and by itself constitutes roughly one-third of the population of South America. Even if population is not everything, it is here that arguments in Brazil’s favor in terms of possibly tilting the future begin. Before we consider them further, though, it is worth further exploring reasons for skepticism about Macron’s and France’s seemingly perennial bid for more weight in the world, and distance from the United States.

As the use of “perennial” should suggest, there is little truly original about Macron’s diplomacy toward the world’s leading powers. As the late historian Tony Judt wrote, France was jettisoned from that club in the spring of 1940, when its armies collapsed in the face of the German Panzer divisions that poured across the river Meuse, and it has never recovered that status since. However, this has not prevented the country from conducting a foreign policy based on nostalgia and chagrin over the loss of this status.

World War II’s psychological shock to France was immense. Its traditionally deep influence in Eastern Europe largely disappeared. Its language would no longer be a default choice for diplomacy. It could not persuade the victorious Allies to go so far in punishing Germany as to dismantle the country. And it was dependent on the support and forbearance of a “race” that it reflexively distrusted if not loathed—the Anglo Saxons of the United States and Britain—in a great many things, from its economic survival and defense to its seat at the top table of global diplomacy, the United Nations Security Council.

In hope of recovering its once exalted status, French leaders of all political persuasions have stuck with two very old-fashioned approaches to the world. The first has been to hold on to the vestiges of empire as long as possible. This led Paris into successive colonial disasters in Algeria and Indochina before it would accept that a new age had come, when Western nations ruling over imperial subjects would no longer be acceptable. Even since, in Africa, France has had trouble relinquishing a set of neocolonial relations, despite every few years declaring that old patterns of domination and interference through military engagement and deep economic penetration are things of the past. Here, a stark irony arises, as when Macron following his trip to China defiantly announced that his country will not be a “vassal” of the United States.

The other traditional French tactic has been a commitment to a style of realpolitik that once dominated the “Old Continent.” This means constantly balancing in tension with, if not completely against, the dominant power of the day. What makes the French approach here most distinctive is that in the postwar era, the leading power it has played this game with is its nominal ally, the United States. From Charles de Gaulle to François Mitterrand and now to Macron, and including most of the men who led France in between these figures, Paris—as if obeying a fixed reflex—has sought to reach its own separate understandings or rapprochements with Washington’s biggest rivals. Over time, these have included the Soviet Union, Chairman Mao Zedong’s China, and now the very different China of President Xi, an economic and increasingly military superpower.

It would be wrong to begrudge France a desire for autonomy and independence in the conduct of its affairs. But Paris has seldom had the means necessary to make its gestures count lastingly, leaving it to appear mostly as an ineffectual spoiler, and sometimes as simply conceited or even cynical.

In playing up to China, Macron predictably netted a number of commercial deals, including securing Beijing’s approval to move forward with a huge order of Airbus jets, but what else did he really accomplish? Asking Xi to consider how Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has threatened Europe’s desire for peace and security, Macron came across as willing to throw Taiwan under the bus at a time of strongly rising tensions over the possibility of Beijing using arms to enforce its claims to that island. This drew rebukes from many quarters in Europe, where there is not only concern about the rising risk of war over Taiwan, but also growing worry about China as a systemic threat to the democratic world. Embarrassingly, not a month had gone by when China’s ambassador to France made comments last week that seemed to question the sovereignty of the Baltic states, EU members that had once been absorbed by the Soviet Union.

What should one make, furthermore, of Macron’s renewed clamoring for European security independence from the United States? This, too, is a fine sounding idea, but few doubt that Ukraine would have managed to hold out against Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion without the leadership role that Washington played in providing military and diplomatic support for Kyiv.

As desirable as it may be for Europe to be able to defend itself, there is little realistic prospect of that continent making the kinds of investments this would require anytime in the foreseeable future. Western Europe is not even able to sustain Ukraine’s need for ordinary artillery rounds, never mind more sophisticated weaponry. This leaves one to wonder if Macron should be taken seriously as the conscience of Europe on matters of defense and self-determination, or whether his voice is just the latest expression of French neediness and nostalgia for lost relevance.

Seen against this backdrop, Brazil’s recent diplomacy deserves to be given more consideration. It is true that the South American country has also long sought to preserve real room for maneuver independent from U.S. foreign policy. Lula’s initiatives—criticizing the persistence of the U.S. dollar as the international reserve currency, seeking to forge a currency union with Argentina, and even criticizing the West over the war in Ukraine—must not be seen as merely the whims of an iconoclastic progressive, but as a reflection of the desires of a rising global south from one of its most important states.

It is on this pedestal, above all, that Brazil’s relevance resides. As scattered and inchoate as it sometimes seems, the global south is where a great deal of the world’s economic dynamism is shifting. This can be seen in the dismal demographics of most of the world’s rich countries (as well as China) and in the shifting patterns of global economic output, with countries like India, Indonesia, Brazil, and Mexico set to rise strongly in world GDP rankings and the traditional Western leaders, including the United States and Britain, set to gently decline between now and 2050.

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People would be wrong to view Lula’s statements as worrisome, much less threatening, to the West. To reprise Macron’s word, Brasília does not seek to become China’s vassal. Much of Brazil’s potential, in fact, is bound up in charting its own course, but this is an area where a tremendous amount of work remains to be done. De Gaulle supposedly once quipped about Brazil that it is the country of the future and will always be so. But as a large, multiracial society with a diverse economy and an abundance of soft power—yet without a history of extraterritorial conquest and no known ambitions for dominance over others—the country’s era may finally be arriving.

Brazil is not feared by its neighbors, as its thickening economic relations with Argentina attest. But it is Africa that may hold the key to its future as a leader of the global south. The African continent, which is the scene of the greatest demographic growth in the world today, has witnessed pockets of strong economic growth in recent years but craves new partnerships that can help generate the jobs and build the infrastructure needed by its bulging youth cohorts. China has surged into the position of the leading alternative to the West in Africa, surpassing Western nations that have traditionally dominated trade and investment with the continent.

As I have written elsewhere, during Lula’s first turn in office, Brazil began to invest in upgrading its economic and diplomatic partnerships across the South Atlantic. Brazil and Africa are deeply bound by the tragic history of transatlantic slave trade. By taking the lead in forging new and strong South-South relations, together, Brazil and Africa may open a door to a better future for both.

its1968okwar on April 26th, 2023 at 08:18 UTC »

And the usual mix of wishful thinking and anthropomorphizing countries is delivered by yey another geopolitical "expert".

hofdichter_og on April 26th, 2023 at 04:20 UTC »

I don’t think people realize that France is still a global power from a military standpoint, despite their image and reputation otherwise. Do you know that its longest land order is actually with Brazil?

SunburnFM on April 26th, 2023 at 00:33 UTC »

The article is a reminder that Europe relies on the role of the US in world affairs because it cannot act on its own -- even being unable to supply munitions to Ukraine. With France's lack of conceit, Macron parades as if the country matters. The writer claims that France doesn't matter, which is why it attacks the US because it knows that France still relies on the US without wanting to admit it. That's why Brazil, who does not rely as directly on the US as France, has a more important role in global affairs when it comes to China, than France.