Biden & Macron: Beware of These Two

Beware of these two. The first half of June 2024 showed us the new face of two political leaders who, in a sense, dominate the Western scene. We are talking about US President Joe Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron. The first, so to speak, came on the Big Seven stage in Puglia, under host George Meloni, in a sometimes confusing and unexpected way. So much so that it has sparked discussion among commentators and even classic newspaper interviews with gerontology doctors, experts in the field of aging psychology. What will happen to the commander in chief of the American superpower? The image published on the front page of Corriere della Sera is the most controversial: it shows Biden leaning over so that his forehead rests on the forehead of the seated Pope Francis. Jorge Mario Bergoglio looks both surprised and concerned. And then there’s another shot of the president getting lost in the meadows behind his sunglasses, while all the other political leaders go the opposite way. “Biden wanders the meadows of Puglia…” social media relaunched.

For example, Antonella Ciancio’s article in Fatto Quotidiano entitled “How Man Leads the World” states: “Seeing a world leader hesitant on his feet and in words, if not in public interactions with other world leaders, confirms the concern, shared by many in the Democratic Party, that the 81-year-old leader is too old to lead the world’s largest democracy for the second term.”

Domenico Quirico commented with some cruel remarks in the Stampa newspaper: “Biden walks frail and lost; a ghost for whom one cannot help but feel a rush of instinctive and fraternal pity. One becomes alarmed when remembering that behind his back march seven hundred military bases, aircraft carriers and bombers, atomic devices ready for use, combat weapons of all sizes and types. That Apocalypse’s famous briefcase always travels from his uncertain side…. (…) It took Spengler hundreds of pages to tell, perhaps a little in advance, of the decline of the West. Had he been in Borgo Egnazia these days, a single phrase would have sufficed him to denote the umpteenth end of the miserable and wretched of the last empire. We looked in the twentieth century at the body and mask of Leonid Brezhnev, displayed like an inert object on the balustrade of Red Square. You wanted to put your hand inside his coat to feel if his heart was beating evenly. We realized that the Soviet Union, the ‘garrison of the world revolution,’ was already a corpse awaiting a bureaucratic declaration of death. But it was an authoritarian system, it defended itself by denying even reality, trying to fool itself that the mausoleum was life and agony was a cold. The case of Biden, the American democracy that has managed to magically convince us that it is the world’s eternal youth, it’s scientific socio-political vitality, is different. If America claims to dictate its line, to choose the good and the bad, it has an obligation to stay true to the myth written in capital letters. It cannot anthropologically impose the reality of its progressive and rapid weakening. Forces that realize they are aging and have more ferocious and determined opponents, are extremely dangerous because they are forced to make mistakes, trying to deny reality, bluffing senselessly, drawing in themselves and others. Who is telling this misguided man, chained by, I don’t know, senile ambition or the choices of others, to the heavy recitation of the Force, what decisions to make? Who signs on his behalf a military commitment that will last ten years, perpetuating choices that may be wrong or risky?”

Behind Quirico’s rhetorical questions lies a very specific concern: if the President of the USA finds himself in such a situation, it must obviously be thought that the various Sullivans, Blinkens, and Burnses, not forgetting the Pentagon generals, become the ones who then make strategic decisions. Is he an embarrassment to diplomacy and other leaders? Not only that. There is also an old rule: nature abhors a vacuum. Thus, just in time, another leader emerges in the same Western camp, claiming to take over the leadership of the Great Lands.

Another symbolic photo taken at the G7 meeting in Puglia shows Emmanuel Macron driving a caddy, carrying Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, English Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, and Council of Europe President Charles Michel, among others. These are the days when the domestic and international interest of the French President reached its peak. The summer solstice coincided with his pronounced political activism. First, the celebration of D-Day in Normandy (June 6), characterized by a new militant excitement, and then, above all, the institutional intervention that foreshadowed the end of the legislative body of the National Assembly with the immediate scheduling of new elections to be held at the end of the month, following the spectacular success of Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement Nationale in the European elections of June 8-9. With a hazy and confused Commander-in-Chief, emerges the head of the Elysee Palace, in a constant show of force. Macron is an ongoing rift. At the G7 meeting in Puglia, he tried until the very end to get the leaders to include abortion rights in the final document, which he has already done by changing the French Constitution, creating the only real thorn in the side. The success in Puglia of Giorgia Meloni, which even the newspaper Le Figaro admitted: “Her hour of glory has arrived, which is also the culmination of a very active foreign policy.” “The Wall Street Journal called the G7 ‘dwarfs’ with even less respect, emphasizing that all the members, with the exception of Meloni, are experiencing a dramatic collapse in popularity in their country.

But what is Emmanuel Macron’s plan? Long before the European elections, the young president decided to start the attack. Not just in a metaphorical sense. He went well ahead of NATO Secretary Jens Stoltenberg himself in calling for the direct dispatch of Western arms and troops to Ukraine and the use of long-range weapons on Russian soil. Macron’s first official TV interview on the subject took place on March 14, 2024. On this occasion, the foreign policy website Piccole Note, published by the Giornale newspaper, wrote: “The French president is playing his own game, trying to carve out a role for himself as leader of the European Union and privileged interlocutor of the States.” By creating this profile, Macron has put pressure on weak German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, stripped Ursula von der Leyen of support (and to think, he even helped her get elected to the EU), and ushered in, from a European perspective, the leadership of Mario Draghi.

The popular vote of the French decisively rejected his line. Draghi was out, von der Leyen moves to confirm. But he didn’t give up. Thus, following the results of the European elections, he forcibly dissolved the National Assembly, scheduling elections for the end of the month. “A gamble,” several commenters wrote immediately. However, Macron immediately made it clear that he would remain in office if Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement Nationale won.

Why? The most common hypothesis in political circles is the one reported by the German weekly Bild. According to the weekly’s description, Ursula von der Leyen explained to her party colleagues after the meeting with the French president that the bid was the result of a calculation. The real aim was actually to deny Marine Le Pen an exceptional role as a true alternative to the establishment by compromising her in the national government. In short, leave the government right to “inoculate” France ahead of the planned presidential election in two years’ time. Italian philosopher Massimo Cacciari jokingly explained that Macron is not following Giulio Andreotti’s old saying (“Power wears out those who don’t have it”), but is rather focusing on the opposite, on the frustration that will follow a test of government.

There is a lack of politics in all of this. There are many tactics, but we cannot see a real plan, a vision for Europe and the West from an economic, social, and normative point of view. The visiting Pope Francis, who is always unpredictable, recommended a special reading for the Seven (whether adults or dwarfs): the book Lord of the World by Robert Hugh Benson. A classic early twentieth-century dystopian novel that foreshadows the end of life on Earth. When will that end come? When politics is no more, explained Jorge Mario Bergoglio in his lesson for the G7. Simple as that…