Macron steps into West Asia role as US retreats

Macron intervened in November to stabilise Lebanon when the country's prime minister resigned and many believed Saudi Arabia was behind it

A year ago, no one would have envisioned President Emmanuel Macron of France as the public face of Western diplomacy in West Asia. But that is not the case anymore.

President Trump’s decision this past week to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, his anti-Muslim tweets and his State Department staffing cuts have signalled to many a retreat of American diplomacy.

That has made room for those who want to expand their presence on the world stage, Macron among them. He has quickly embraced a more visible role in West Asia, especially as Britain and Germany have become more deeply preoccupied with domestic politics.

Macron called Trump two days ahead of the American president’s recognition of Jerusalem to tell him that France was “troubled” by the move. He personally intervened in November to stabilise Lebanon when the country’s prime minister resigned and many believed Saudi Arabia was behind it. He weighed in with a plan to halt sub-Saharan migrants before they could reach Libya. Now, Macron is positioning France to help shape the post-war policy in Syria. By contrast, the US has seemed reluctant to engage in policymaking in any detail in Syria, leaving the field open for Russia to play the largest part.

“If this was five years ago, there would already have been American diplomatic involvement” to extricate the Lebanese prime minister, Saad Hariri, from the grip of the Saudis, said Gilles Kepel, an expert on Islam and a professor at Sciences Po in France, who travelled with Macron on his recent trip to Abu Dhabi and Riyadh, the Saudi capital. Kepel added that “the Trump administration is unreadable because the president tweets something in the morning and he does the contrary in the afternoon.”

Former diplomats see much the same pattern.

“Clearly, in the past the US did play a major role in Lebanon, but presumably the Saudis did this thing with Hariri without a word to us, which is saying something,” said Ryan Crocker, a retired diplomat with decades of experience in West Asia under Republican and Democratic presidents. “Since this is more of a Saudi issue than a Lebanese one, under normal conditions we would have been very much involved.” 

One measure of the depth of the American withdrawal is that even in countries that Trump views as friendly, like Saudi Arabia, there is no ambassador in place. The same is true for six other countries in the region.

Secretary of State Rex W Tillerson denied this past week that unfilled senior diplomatic positions had affected the department’s engagement. Speaking at the Hotel Bristol in Vienna, he said: “I want to say this because a lot of stuff gets written out there in the media about the hollowed-out State Department and the empty hallways that I’m walking in, where all I can hear are the echoes of my footsteps. And it’s not true. And I tell people everywhere it’s not true. We have great, competent, capable career people that have stepped up in leadership positions while we’re working to fill those roles, and we haven’t missed a beat. Not one.”

However, Trump’s primary point of reference in West Asia appears to be Israel, the only state in the region that is not predominantly Muslim. And while he has expressed support for Sunni Arab leaders, it is harder for the United States to wield its influence without ambassadors to reinforce his message, especially in a part of the world that values protocol. Moreover, in the Muslim world, Trump has focused on demolishing the Islamic State and isolating Iran, but he has avoided delving into the region’s fraught politics.

By contrast, the French government has not shied from tackling political problems in the region. France has “capital to spend” in the region, said Emile Hokayem, a senior fellow for West Asia security at the International Institute of Strategic Studies in London.

France could not supplant the United States — it’s a smaller country and does not have the ability to guarantee its agreements in the same way, several diplomats said.