PARIS — It is tempting to say that the relationship between President Emmanuel Macron of France and President Trump is the unlikeliest of friendships, but that would be to miss the point.
Sure, they agree on very little. Not on Iran. Not on trade. Not on the European Union. Not on climate. Not on whether to criticize Vladimir Putin. Not on the importance of dignity, or truth, or the Enlightenment.
Still, I hear that they speak all the time. Trump follows Macron’s labor-market reforms and calls to congratulate him. The first state visit of his administration will be Macron’s to Washington next month, a special honor for “a great guy.” The French president is Trump’s best friend in Europe, and possibly beyond. Things fizzled with Theresa May, the British prime minister. They never went anywhere with Germany’s Angela Merkel. Trump-Macron is the only trans-Atlantic hinge not creaking.
This is not really surprising. Both men came from nowhere, mavericks hoisted to the highest offices of their lands by a wave of disgust at politics-as-usual. They are, in their way, accidents of history, thrust to power at the passing of an era. Longing for disruption produced these two disrupters.
Both laid waste to the political establishment, either smashing or co-opting mainstream parties. Both understood the fact that voters were bored as well as angry, mistrustful of the liberal consensus, angry at globalization’s predations, restive for grandeur, thirsty for the outspoken rather than the dutiful warnings of experts.
Macron, who at 40 could be Trump’s son, has honed a grandiose theater of the center, thereby giving centrist politics new vigor at a time of extremist temptation. He’s tough on immigration because he knows his survival depends on it. Trump’s is the theater of the zigzagging bully, nonstop noise often drowning out meaning. For both men, movement and action are essential.
Gaullist pomp, shunned by Macron’s predecessor, is back. If that’s what it takes to defeat the racist National Front, bring it on. Macron celebrated his victory last year with an address to the French people at the Louvre, greeted Putin at Versailles, and returned to the Sun King’s palace this year for a “Choose France” summit meeting of global C.E.O.s to trumpet some $3 billion in foreign investment.
“It’s not ‘Make France Great Again’ — except that it is, sort of,” a French friend observed.
Macron’s Bastille Day celebration — complete with guards on horseback, troops, tanks and fighter jets — so impressed his special guest, Trump, that Trump now wants his own version with a heavy air component (but sans tanks) on Veterans Day.
Ridiculous? I think this friendship is so important as Trump surrounds himself with hawks that I’m prepared to swallow hard.
Or rather, it’s potentially so important. We have yet to see what Macron can leverage from this relationship. We don’t know if it’s a nice thing or a beneficial thing. It did not stop Trump from leaving the climate accord or recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. The jury is still out.
Trump did exempt the European Union from steel and aluminum tariffs, an issue on which the French had pressed hard. “If we are viewed like China, that would be a big problem,” one senior official told me before Trump’s decision.
Next up: Iran. If Macron cannot avert the worst on Iran — a decision by Trump on May 12 to torpedo the nuclear deal by no longer waiving sanctions — then all bets are off. The accord, which reversed the program that had made Iran a threshold nuclear power, is working. The French are determined to preserve it.
If it collapses, the Shia-Sunni Middle Eastern confrontation will worsen, Iran may race for a bomb, and Saudi Arabia will not be far behind. The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty could fray to the point of meaninglessness.
The signs are not good. Mike Pompeo, nominated by Trump as the next secretary of state, is an Iran hawk. John Bolton, the new national security adviser who will replace Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, wants to abrogate the nuclear deal and bring down the Iranian regime — and that’s just for starters. Devastation looms. Macron’s — and Europe’s — challenge in blocking Iran folly has just grown tougher.
As Trump’s behavior becomes more erratic, a trend the Russia investigation will only accentuate in the coming months, the Macron friendship is some insurance against the worst. Unlike Trump, the French president knows what he wants and is capable of pursuing a coherent strategy.
He’s also a bulwark against all the destructiveness Trump has embraced: ethno-nationalist bigotry, the growing authoritarianism of Putin and Xi Jinping, the erosion of the rule of law, trade wars, the militarization of foreign policy and the undercutting of the European Union.
Macron’s vision of restored greatness is consistent with French ideals. Trump’s involves the betrayal of America’s. There’s the difference. A lot hinges on this being a friendship that delivers.
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