How Morrison was torn apart by Macron’s Napoleonic zeal

Malcolm Turnbull’s bromance with Emmanuel Macron bloomed in 2017, after the G20 in Germany. When the summit ended the French President gave Malcolm and Lucy Turnbull a lift from Hamburg to Paris in his Falcon jet. That night they dined together at the Elysée Palace.

No doubt much of the evening was spent discussing the then $50 billion dollar contract the French had won to build 12 submarines for Australia. But the conversation wandered widely, and, at one point, Turnbull noted that Macron looked a lot like a young Napoleon.

To buttress this observation Turnbull grabbed his ever-present smartphone and showed Macron a portrait of a youthful Bonaparte. Macron looked at it and remarked, “don’t tell Theresa [May] and Angela [Merkel]”.

We know the President is a fan of the emperor because, in a speech to commemorate 200 years since Napoleon’s death, Macron eulogised: “pronouncing his name continues to vibrate a thousand strings of our imagination everywhere”.

It has been a brutal lesson in international politics for Morrison.

One wonders if Macron saw himself walking in the great man’s footsteps when he said: “Napoleon’s life is above all an ode to political will. To those who believe that destinies are already established … the path of the son of Ajaccio, who became master of Europe, clearly shows that a man can change the course of history.”

So, it would have surprised neither the then British prime minister nor the German chancellor to hear that the young Frenchman had large ambitions.

One very close to his heart is to forge a European army. The other, to leverage his nation’s colonial footprint in New Caledonia and French Polynesia to deal France into the great game of the 21st century; the strategic struggle for the Indo-Pacific.

So, to appreciate the intensity of Macron’s fury at the depth charge dropped on the submarine contract this must be understood; it is a blow to his pride and his Napoleonic ambitions. Add to that the conviction that French military secrets have been gifted to Australia and US weapons contractors, and this is a humiliation he won’t get over, ever.

But it is also an opportunity. Macron seized the embarrassment of Joe Biden to leverage the American President’s support for his pet project.

Macron wants European strategic autonomy which, he believes, demands a “true European army”. The US has resisted this push because it doesn’t want to create a parallel structure to NATO, as much as it might complain that the Europeans don’t pull their weight in the alliance.

France has a long, cold relationship with NATO. It only re-joined the integrated military force in 2009, after a 43-year absence. In another fit of nationalistic pique that other warrior king, Charles de Gaulle, withdrew his country from the integrated military force in 1966 and decreed all foreign forces leave France.

Given the history, it’s not surprising that some in the American administration suspect a French-led Europe – less dependent on the United States military – might drift from its orbit and into that of its new strategic rival, China. Macron’s plan may well be to try and cut a middle path and that won’t suit America either.