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Activists protest at Nigerian Embassy against Ecowas' military intervention in Niger
France to leave Niger
Macron said that he still regards Mohamed Bazoum, the democratically elected leader now held prisoner by the junta, as the country's "sole legitimate authority."
The move leaves France’s counter terrorism strategy in the Sahel region in tatters, after Paris was forced to withdraw its troops from neighboring Mali and Burkina Faso in recent years following military coups. France’s exit from resource-rich Niger will leave a power vacuum that both Russia’s Wagner Group and Islamic extremists will seek to fill.
Climate crisis can't be hijacked by global competitions: Justin Vaisse
The war in Ukraine has so fundamentally redirected the course of world affairs that UN Secretary-General António Guterres says little else can be resolved globally before the fighting stops.
That doesn’t stop self-described “eternal optimist” Justin Vaisse from giving it his best shot. The historian took on a mandate from French President Emmanuel Macron in 2017 to organize the Paris Peace Forum, a venue to mend the strained and broken aspects of the multilateral system.
GZERO’s Tony Maciulis caught up with him on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, where they discussed his plans for the upcoming forum in November, plus his views on Ukraine and bridging ties with the Global South.
Watch more interviews from the UN General Assembly from Global Stage.
Niger's junta supporters take part in a demonstration in front of a French army base in Niamey, Niger, on Aug. 11, 2023.
Talk, not troops, in Niger
West African nations continue to dither on using force in Niger, even after last week’s resolution by the Economic Community of West African States to send in troops to restore the government of ousted President Mohamed Bazoum.
Instead, Nigerian President and ECOWAS Chairman Bola Tinubu is pursuing diplomatic efforts to resolve the crisis, including green-lighting a mission to Niger by a delegation of Islamic scholars, who met with coup leader General Abdourahamane Tchiani for several hours on Saturday.
Tchiani is playing up the historic relationship between the neighboring nations, claiming that the coup was “well intended” to avert an imminent threat to both Niger and Nigeria (presumably from jihadists) and that the two countries “were not only neighbors but brothers and sisters who should resolve issues amicably.”
Meanwhile, the Nigeria Labour Congress issued a statement on Sunday warning ECOWAS against the use of military force, claiming that it would cause instability and loss of life in the entire region and endanger the lives of Bazoum and his family.
Bazoum remains under house arrest with his wife and 20-year-old son, reportedly in dire conditions in an unlit basement. The ousted leader said they had gone without electricity for a week, had no access to medication, and that his family was subsisting on dry rice and pasta. While the junta allowed a doctor to visit Saturday and bring some food, Bazoum’s supporters fear the plan is to “starve him to death” and are pleading for Western nations to intervene.
But any such intervention is proving tricky. While France talked tough at the beginning of the coup, on Sunday the French defense minister said his country would support the latest diplomatic efforts by ECOWAS. Rising anti-French and pro-Russian sentiment in Niger is complicating efforts to resolve the crisis, now in its third week with no clear end in sight.
For more on what the US and Russia want for Niger, click here.
Fallout from riots in France
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi, everybody, and a happy Fourth to you. Just a couple of days in Nantucket. Very enjoyable. And wanted to talk a little bit about a place that is a little less enjoyable right now, which is France.
You've seen massive riots across the country over almost a week, the worst in nearly 20 years in France, which is really saying something for that country. Social protest is basically taken as sport and riots are frequent. But even in that context, this has been notable and exceptional. What what sparked it off has nothing to do with extending pensions from 62 to 64. Those were major demonstrations across the country, but basically just shut down the economy for a period of time. Not so much violent protests. No, these violent riots and lootings and the like were set off by the French police gunning down a 17 year old French boy about Algerian descent. He was trying to get away from the police. They were trying to stop him. The police immediately said that he was killed in self-defense, that he was trying to run the police over. That turned out very quickly to be a lie because there was video capturing the French gunning at him as he was trying to get away and that it's kind of a George Floyd type situation in France. The response is deeply political. In other words, what you believe about who is responsible depends very little on the facts of the case and overwhelmingly on where you happen to stand politically. On the one hand, you've got Muslims that are seen by the right in France as taking over French identity, as not really being French. Big structural problems in France, in the suburbs outside of the wealthier French cities where most of the Muslim population lives. A lot of drug trafficking there, a lot of violent crime, a lot of poverty. If you ask the average French citizen what percentage of the population is Muslim, on average, they respond by saying a third, which is insane. It's actually some 10%. But that sensibility gives you a sense of how this is played on the right politically in France.
On the left, you're blaming the police, which treats Muslims considerably worse than than non-Muslims in France. One recent study in France showed that Muslims were 20 times more likely to be asked to shown their papers by police than others in routine traffic stops. 17 drivers, almost all Muslims, have been shot dead by the French police in the last year and a half. Now, if you're an American, you you see that and you say, hey, only 17, that's not actually that bad. That sounds like a bad weekend in Chicago, right on the south side. But but this is like in the United States, an issue that has not been dealt with, an issue that is being swept under the rug. Macron needs the police on his side so he doesn't push them very hard. But he has come out and immediately said this was unacceptable behavior and has detained the French police officer. And the hard right is pushing down on Macron really, really strongly as a consequence. Meanwhile, these are not peaceful protests. I want to be very clear. This is widespread looting. This is arson. It's violence, and well over 500 police injured as a consequence of all of it. So it is it is a pretty big deal. The far left in France is condemning the police. They have taken the side clearly of not just the protesters, but many actively even supporting the rioters and the looters, the far right defending the police and specifically the detained police officer and some even talking about these areas of of Muslims in France being called foreign enclaves, even though a majority of those living there are French citizens.
And the danger here is that while Macron is a creature of the center in politically and trying to balance both sides, the reality is that both the far left and the far right are going to get more popular across France on the back of this episode. And so, I mean, democracy and democratic institutions in France are getting weaker. The present trajectory for democracy in France is in trouble, frankly, just much as it is in the United States, much as it is in Brazil, where I just was last week. I am happy to say that after six days of of violence and rioting and looting, today life in France is a lot more calm. Politically, this looks bad for Macron on the international stage. King Charles had to cancel a visit. Macron had to cancel a state visit that was quite important to go to Germany over the weekend. He's got a respite for the time being, but you wouldn't say it's because he's managed it well. You'd say this is a structural problem that is only going to get worse in France going forward, and we'll be watching it very closely.
So that's the news for Monday, and I hope everyone has a happy Fourth tomorrow if you're in the United States, for those that celebrate, as they say, and for all the rest of us, let's keep on keep it on. Talk to you soon.
French riots highlight policing problem
Carl Bildt, co-chair of the European Council on Foreign Relations and former prime minister of Sweden, shares his perspective on European politics.
Does France have a policing problem?
Well, I mean, primarily they got a riot problem. This is a third major wave of severe riots that President Macron is facing. The first was the "yellow vests," as they were called. The second was the protest over pension reforms, which was more overtly political. And this has been triggered by the police killing a young guy in a Paris suburb a couple of days ago. It's a severe issue. They do have a police problem, although substantially less than we find in the United States. Let's see what happens. President Macron has been forced to cancel his important visit to Berlin in order to focus on these issues. Let's see what happens. It's a rather French phenomenon.
What's been the fallout of the coup or the mutiny attempt in Moscow?
Well, the answer to that is that we simply don't know. We don't know exactly what happened during the day of the mutiny of the rebellion. We know even less perhaps of the fallout that is going to play out over quite some time. When these things happened, they fundamentally shake a regime, and this regime has been shaken. Putin is now trying to regain strength in different ways. To some extent, he might succeed. To some extent, it's highly unlikely that he will succeed. So, the development of Russia has entered a new phase. Whether this will have an effect on the battlefield. We haven't seen that as of yet. But there's a lot on this that we haven't seen as of yet.
French police stand in position as fireworks go off during clashes with youth in Nanterre, a Paris suburb.
Violent protests in France keep Macron at home
French President Emmanuel Macron was forced to cancel a state visit to Germany on Sunday – which would have been the first such event in 23 years – as riots continued across France. The now out-of-control situation was sparked by the June 27 killing of a young Arab man by a cop at a traffic stop in a Parisian suburb.
Several nights of riots and looting have led to thousands of arrests. But on Saturday night, just after the slain youth’s funeral, the violence intensified. The home of a suburban mayor south of Paris was targeted, and the mayor’s wife and children suffered injuries as they attempted to flee. Nationwide, tens of thousands of cops have been deployed to violent hotspots.
Macron is no stranger to mass protests, having faced the Yellow Vest protests over fuel taxes that paralyzed the country in 2018 and 2019. But there are several reasons why this latest explosion of public anger over racial injustice poses a deeper challenge for the president. First, it comes just months after nationwide demonstrations over a very unpopular pension reform that tanked Macron’s popularity.
What’s more, this current unrest – at the nexus of race, immigration, and law enforcement – provides the perfect fodder for the far-right, most notably Marine Le Pen of the National Rally (the second most popular party in the country), to cast the government as idle in the face of lawlessness and unchecked migration, two issues that really rile up the French electorate. Meanwhile, on the other side of the aisle, the far-left – led by Jean-Luc Melenchon – has railed hard against what they say is endemic racist policing.
We’ve said it before, but this unraveling again highlights the inherent difficulty of Macron’s attempt to intensely cling to the political center, bringing into renewed focus the adage that if you try to please everyone, you end up pleasing … nobody.
Backlash from Macron's China visit
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Happy Monday. It's Ian Bremmer here and a Quick Take to kick off our week. And I want to talk a little bit about French President Emmanuel Macron, who is in the news again this week and not for demonstrations at home. Not for trying to change the pension age from 62 to 64, I mean that and the backlash has been dominating international coverage of the French president for weeks now. But this time around, it's what he's saying on the international stage.
Specifically, Macron has just completed a trip to China with Ursula von der Leyen and brought a whole bunch of business leaders with him. Nothing shocking about that. Olaf Scholz did the same a few months ago when he went to Beijing. Was talking about Xi Jinping playing more of a role on the Russia, Ukraine crisis. There, that is a bit different than what we've seen from other leaders. It was in the G-20 in Bali when Macron went off-piste and basically said, "Hey, we'd love to have Xi Jinping engaged directly in leading diplomacy, responding to the Russian invasion." The Americans were skeptical, a number of other Western leaders a little concerned that Macron had made those statements without talking to them about it but didn't really go anywhere.
This time around, it's both a call for Europe to be less dependent on the United States, at the same time that France is in Beijing trying to increase their dependence on China, saying that the EU should not be involved in conflicts where it is not a direct party and mentioning Taiwan specifically. While of course the United States is leading military support on Ukraine, much more important to the Europeans than it is to the US. And also pushing for much more bilateral China, French engagement of Russia, Ukraine, which isn't going anywhere, at least not right now.
The response to all of that has been a level of mistrust. I mean frankly this was, until Macron started talking about the trip, was going very well. He was treated extremely well by the Chinese Government. He was welcomed. It was very much a red carpet treatment. He had lots of Chinese students that were cheering for him, displaying a lot of enthusiasm. Some of which was ginned up by the Chinese Government, but some of which might well have just been spontaneous. And the coverage, the press coverage, the social media coverage was very positive.
Macron then decided that he was going to push a lot of criticism of the United States, and of course that, especially in China itself, given the nature of the US, China relationship was not responded well to at all. It is probably the worst bilateral relationship in the G-7. It's the one leader that Biden doesn't particularly trust. It is quite probably mutual. There's lots of reasons for it. I mean in part, of course, the French Government has always had a more independent view of its own leadership role, and concerns about US exceptionalism, US hypocrisy, and France wanting an out sized role given their permanent seat, for example, at the Security Council, as well as given their historical imperial roles internationally.
Also, at the beginning of the Biden administration, the AUKUS debacle where the French were displaced by the US and the UK for multi-billion-dollar submarine deals, and the French found out about it on CNN, and you may remember the French withdrew their ambassador at that point. This is the kind of flap that just really shouldn't have happened, and in part because France wasn't really trusted and because Kurt Campbell, who was sort of the Asia czar in the White House, in the National Security Council, didn't see fit to talk to the French about it, basically thought that they were irrelevant to the Asian theater. And Anthony Blinken, the secretary of state, who speaks French fluently and has a quite good relationship with his French interlocutors, wasn't really driving Asia policy and didn't assert himself as much as he probably should have. So an embarrassment for the US, France relationship. Biden apologized about it. Hoping that all of this was fixed, but not really.
Now, the fact that French President Macron had said that NATO was brain dead back before the Russian invasion in his talk of strategic autonomy, well, that of course is something that does stick in everyone's popular consciousness. But after the Russian invasion, of course NATO became much more relevant. And indeed, Macron said it was like an electroshock for NATO at the time. And so there was a hope that that level of coordination, the defense coordination, the economic coordination, remember the EU unanimously voted to allow Ukraine membership process, unanimously has supported 10 rounds of sanctions, soon to be 11, France playing a leadership role just like everyone else. So there really was a hope that Macron's personal aspirations and ambitions for broader leadership, as well as his irritation and peak at the United States was something that had been largely assuaged. What we're seeing right now is that really is not the case and is not the case in particular as US, China relations are getting a lot worse.
One other point that I would raise here is the fact that while there is and remains very strong alignment between the United States and pretty much all of its allies on Russia, on a full decoupling of Russia economically, and strong punishment of Russia on the international stage, not something that Global South agrees with at all. That when it comes to China, the United States increasingly sees China as a hostile national security threat that should extend to significant strategic economic interactions. On critical minerals for example, on semiconductors, for example, other places. That is not met with anywhere near the same level of agreement among US allies. Almost all US allies want strong security relations with the US, but also want strong economic relations with China. Especially as China's about to become the largest economy in the world. And in that regard, the Germans, the French, and others are closer to the US private sector orientation towards China, most of them, than they are to the US Government, Democrats or Republicans.
But despite that tension, it hasn't been put on public display the way we've seen from Macron over the last 48 hours. That's unfortunate and will surely lead to backlash. Whether it leads to a broader rift in the transatlantic relationship is an open question. Let's see how the Germans, how the Italians in particular respond to Macron on this issue.
That's it for me, I'll talk to you all real soon.
French protests strengthen the far right & far left
Carl Bildt, former prime minister of Sweden, shares his perspective from Venice, Italy, on the French protests and Boris Johnson's Partygate fallout.
What's really happening in France?
It's a very difficult situation. Protests all over the place. The political landscape is fractured. What's going to happen in the National Assembly is everyone's guess. And it is, for the moment, strengthen both the far right and the far left, with the center of French politics imploding. Difficult situation for Macron. Let's hope that he gets through it.
Have we now seen the end of the political career of Boris Johnson in the UK?
That remains to be seen. I don't think there's ever an end to that, more or less. But what has been happening is that Prime Minister Sunak has been able to get control of the Conservative Party. He got through the agreement with the European Union on Northern Ireland, and it was only Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, and a couple of the hard liners that voted against. So I think he is now in better control of the party and Boris Johnson is more isolated than he's been for a long time. Good news.