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Which authoritarian is “best of the worst”? Gideon Rachman's favorite strongman
Gideon Rachman, chief foreign affairs columnist at the Financial Times, has just published a new book about autocrats, so Ian Bremmer puts him on the spot on GZERO World.
Which one appeals to you the most?
"That is difficult. I wouldn't say ... I'm running desperately through my head," says Rachman, before settling on one autocrat he's not a fan of but concedes is at least "an interesting figure."
Clues: He leads a very populous country, comes from humble beginnings, and Rachman believes he's not personally corrupt like other strongmen.
Watch the GZERO World episode: The politics of resentment & how authoritarian strongmen gain power.
French President Emmanuel Macron gestures as he arrives to deliver a speech after being re-elected as president.
Can Macron unite a divided France?
Reflecting on Emmanuel Macron’s victory in France's presidential runoff, Tom McTague, writing for The Atlantic, referred to British PM Winston Churchill’s disdain for another French leader: Charles de Gaulle. Churchill was asked if de Gaulle was a great man. “He is selfish, he is arrogant, he believes he is the center of the world,” Churchill replied. “You are quite right. He is a great man.”
“Something similar might be true of Emmanuel Macron,” wrote McTague.
Macron can afford to be smug about some of his achievements. After all, he is the first French president to win a second term in some 20 years – the French are famous for rejecting incumbents. The 44-year-old centrist, a former banker, has only run for elected office twice – for the presidency in 2017 and 2022 – and he clinched the top job both times.
Still, Macron embarks on another five-year term while facing a host of domestic challenges, chief among them being collective public loathing. So what will be the main impediments for Macron during his second term at the Élysée?
French society is deeply divided. This speaks to the main challenge plaguing the Macron presidency: many French simply don’t like him. In the first round of voting on April 10, some 52% of voters opted for three anti-establishment candidates, while Macron reaped 27% of the vote.
Public disillusionment with the incumbent was also reflected in the fact that over a quarter of eligible voters opted to stay home this past Sunday rather than cast a vote for Macron or for Marine Le Pen, his provocative far-right rival. And when all is done and dusted, with abstentions and spoiled ballots taken into account, Macron will have triumphed with just 38.5% of the vote.
Macron knows that bitter divisions make it very hard to govern. In 2018, a year after the political novice came to power, he was forced to scrap a fuel tax – a key part of his ambitious climate agenda – after the widespread Yellow Vest protests against economic injustice brought Paris to a standstill.
Macron’s recent victory is notable for having kept France’s anti-establishment tide at bay. But the ideological chameleon still has the daunting task of convincing large swaths of the French population that he’s not a bad guy.
President of France … or Europe?
Macron has long been viewed by the French as aloof, arrogant, and detached from the plight of ordinary people. This has been reinforced by his unabashed attempt to assert himself as an international statesman and Europe’s distinguished leader, a brand he’s tried to further burnish since Angela Merkel left office and Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine.
But with cost of living pressures intensifying, French voters have made it clear they want a president who puts their distinct interests first. That’s why Le Pen’s bread-and-butter message resonated with voters, particularly in the French rust belt, where incomes have dried up along with the once-lucrative coal basins.
These voters are neither impressed by Macron posing as the leader of a unified Europe nor by his claims that the uber-regulated European Union is the solution to their problems. Macron’s government says its pro-EU advocacy is helping put France at the center of Europe’s “industrial transformation” by rehabilitating France’s ailing industry. But it’s unclear whether voters outside of major cities are buying it.
Avoiding “cohabitation.” Macron’s La République en Marche Party is vying to win a parliamentary majority in June’s legislative elections. Things look good for the president, according to early polls. But if he and his allies fail to win an absolute majority – he needs 289 seats to avoid “cohabitation" (meaning avoiding having to appoint an opposition member as prime minister) – Macron’s legislative powers will be significantly diluted.
That’s exactly what Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the far-left candidate who reaped 22% of the first-round vote, wants to ensure. He’s trying to unify France’s fractured left-wing and is lobbying hard to be voted in as prime minister, which would make him the head of government and allow him to largely steer France’s legislative agenda. Le Pen, meanwhile, also wants to garner enough votes for her party to help form a strong parliamentary opposition to Macron.
Macron’s gift. Most French voters backed candidates who vowed to upend the status quo. Macron says the system can – and should – solve ordinary people’s problems. He still has a lot of people to convince, and that’s a mammoth task at a difficult time for the country and for the continent. But if anyone can pull off the near unthinkable in French politics, it’s Emmanuel Macron.Macron celebrates his victory during a rally at the Champ de Mars in Paris.
Macron beats Le Pen, encore
Sometimes the polls aren’t wrong. On Sunday, centrist French President Emmanuel Macron defeated far-right hopeful Marine Le Pen in a rerun of their 2017 presidential runoff.
Macron is the first incumbent re-elected in France since 2002, when Jacques Chirac routed Le Pen’s father, Jean-Marie Le Pen. The president is projected to capture 58.8% of the vote once all the ballots are counted, compared to 41.2% for Le Pen, according to polling agency Ipsos. That’s slightly more than the polls predicted but a much narrower margin than in 2017.
In the end, most French voters picked Macron’s promise of an open France, a strong EU, and more responsible public spending over Le Pen’s vision of getting tough on immigration, weakening the bloc, and having a France-first welfare state.
Still, the fact that more than 40% of the electorate was on board with Le Pen's policies, which would have been at odds with both Brussels and the French constitution, cannot be ignored. Her political ideas are not going away, regardless of whether she decides to run for the top office again in 2027.
Macron’s victory avoids a political earthquake in Europe while war is being waged on its eastern flank. One world leader who was hoping for an upset was Vladimir Putin, whom Le Pen embraced in the past but has notably tried to distance herself from as part of her rebrand to court moderate voters. Now, the Russian president knows that Europe will remain united in their stand against Russia’s war in Ukraine — the lone exception being Viktor Orbán, Putin’s recently re-elected buddy in Budapest.
What comes next for the French president? “This is a great triumph for Emmanuel Macron,” tweeted Mujtaba Rahman, Eurasia Group's top Europe analyst. Rahman believes the incumbent’s better-than-expected result over Le Pen gives him momentum for his La République en Marche party to win a majority in June’s parliamentary election.Emmanuel Macron et Marine Le Pen
What We're Watching: Le Pen-Macron debate, round two in Ukraine, China's big Pacific move, Israel-Hamas flare-up
France’s moment of truth: Le Pen and Macron go head-to-head
Ahead of the second round of voting in France’s presidential elections on April 24, President Emmanuel Macron and his rival Marine Le Pen will go head-to-head in a live TV debate on Wednesday. Le Pen, head of the far-right National Rally, won 23% percent of the first-round vote on April 10, just five points behind the incumbent. (Macron’s lead in the polls is now believed to be as much as 12 points.) Indeed, the debate will be a crucial moment in the tighter-than-expected race for the Élysée. Le Pen is vying for a comeback: last time the two candidates debated in the 2017 runoff, she was accused of being light on policy and heavy on insults. Le Pen will want to emphasize her populist, anti-establishment credentials that have proven popular with the electorate – particularly young voters – while playing down claims that she is chummy with alleged war criminal Vladimir Putin. Macron, on the other hand, will try to play up his progressive bonafides to appeal to younger voters who cast their first-round vote for far-left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon – who reaped 22% of the vote – but are inclined to stay home on Sunday.War in Ukraine: Round Two
Russia and Ukraine agree the war has now entered round two. But what did they learn from round one? Having downscaled its ambitions to an aggressive assault on the Donbas region in Ukraine’s east, the Russian army has massed tens of thousands of troops along a 300-mile-long semicircle and launched a fresh assault. Experts say Russians can grind their way toward gains by training more firepower on a smaller range of targets. But Ukrainian soldiers know the terrain. They’ve been dug into these same positions since Russian-backed separatists began their fight with Kyiv in 2014. Even if they can’t win, they might inflict enough damage to force Vladimir Putin to rethink his broader ambitions in Ukraine. According to a report published on Monday by the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, Russian weaknesses exposed in round one may continue in round two, including low Russian morale and logistical challenges that “indicate the effective combat power of Russian units in eastern Ukraine is a fraction of their on-paper strength.” In fact, a US official estimated on Tuesday that Russia has lost 25% of its combat troops since the war began.
China makes a big Pacific move
Hours after US officials rushed to the South Pacific to stop the Solomon Islands from inking a landmark security pact with China on Tuesday, Beijing suddenly announced that the deal had been signed. The Americans don't like a clause in the draft agreement that would allow the Chinese to deploy their armed forces in the country, which has experienced political and social unrest in recent months. China, for its part, insists that it'll only do so at the request of the government. The Solomon Islands are now firmly in China's camp after un-recognizing Taiwan in 2019, although the government denies it'll let China establish a military base there. Still, the US and its allies Australia and New Zealand worry that the deal creates a dangerous precedent that'll enable China to gain a military foothold in a region that's become the latest and a rather unexpected flashpoint for US-China competition in the wider Indo-Pacific.
Israeli-Palestinian clashes risk flare-up
Israel struck a Hamas weapons facility in the Gaza Strip early Tuesday after Palestinian militants fired a rocket into southern Israel, the first launched from the Hamas-run enclave in four months. While no group has officially claimed responsibility, Islamic Jihad, a militant group based in Gaza, is believed to have been behind the attack. This could suggest that Hamas, which has long restrained its junior partner to avoid devastating escalations like the one in May 2021, might be loosening its reins or even condoning a flare-up. This follows recent clashes between Muslim worshippers and Israeli police at the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, which left dozens injured. Amid the violence, Hamas has been trying to position itself as the “protector” of Jerusalem and the West Bank to undermine its rival, the Palestinian Authority. Meanwhile, tensions are also high in the West Bank, where the Israeli military has conducted a series of raids after a recent spate of Palestinian terror attacks in several Israeli cities left 14 people dead. Neither side appears to want a serious escalation, but that’s no guarantee it won’t happen.
Campaign posters of President Emmanuel Macron and presidential candidate Marine Le Pen.
What if Le Pen leads France?
The results are in from the first round of France’s nail-biter of a presidential election. Marine Le Pen, head of the far-right National Rally, has come in four points behind the incumbent, President Emmanuel Macron, reaping 23.3% percent of the vote, according to Ifop, a pollster.
Meanwhile, France’s far-left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon came in third with 20% of the vote, while center-right candidate Valerie Pécresse, the first woman to head the party of Charles de Gaulle, flailed.
The world is now anxiously waiting to see what happens in two weeks’ time, when the French return to the polls for the second and final round of voting to decide whether Macron or Le Pen should be sent to the Élysée.
Le Pen, a veteran politician, has run for the presidency twice before, but her political career, it seems, has all been leading up to this moment. Indeed, she trails Macron by a few points, but the momentum is very much on the side of the 53-year old, whose “France first” message has resonated not only with tear-it-down populists, but with ordinary families angry about the soaring cost of living.
What would a Le Pen victory actually mean for France, Europe – and the world?
Le Pen: not great for French unity. Le Pen has worked hard to moderate her far-right sensibilities. She’s talked less about Muslims and banning headscarves in recent months, focusing more on the increasing price of milk and eggs.
Still, her domestic political priorities remain unchanged. Mujtaba Rahman, head of Eurasia Group’s Europe desk, says Le Pen "is no more moderate or reasonable today than she has been historically. She remains an extreme right force in French politics.”
The immediate stakes are extremely high for the European Union, which has experienced a renewed sense of purpose since the UK left the bloc in 2020 and especially in response to Russia’s bombardment of Ukraine.
Le Pen, a long-time euroskeptic, has tried to moderate her views to appeal to a Russian-weary French electorate that overwhelmingly supports EU efforts to aid Ukraine. Still, Le Pen is no fan of Brussels and maintains that the bloc’s central power should be diluted.
While she seems to have abandoned her previous call for France to leave the EU – dubbed Frexit – some believe Le Pen may be gunning for a more digestible overhaul of the relationship. Ben Judah, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, says Le Pen may pursue something similar to what the Poles have been doing. “What Poland is doing is attempting to renegotiate its relationship with the EU by insisting that national law is supreme over EU law,” he says.
What’s more, the stakes for the European single market are mammoth. The prospect of a Le Pen victory is a big blow for EU champions who have been buoyed by the EU’s renewed financial cohesion amid the pandemic, having overcome longtime sticking points to approve a robust economic recovery fund.
However, European heavyweights, like Germany, might reject sharing meaningful common debt with a France run by Le Pen, whose economic policy Judah describes as “gibberish.” If Le Pen gets in and implements her economic plan – which includes renegotiating a slate of free trade deals – this would mean that “making the euro a really strong, efficient currency is just going to be off the table” he says.
More broadly, a Le Pen victory in France, the world’s sixth-largest economy, would send a worrying message to the world about the country’s commitment to liberal values.
Le Pen comes from a xenophobic tradition established by her father Jean-Marie, a prominent racist and antisemite. Many members of her party are racist, and she has been accused of harboring anti-Muslim sentiments. Even though Le Pen has tried to detoxify her image, many older voters – and global observers – aren’t buying the rebrand.
A Le Pen presidency would have a big impact on how France “is seen by American liberals, by Arab and non-white countries, and across the Muslim world,” Judah says. This, he adds, could destroy the credibility built up by Macron, who has tried to position himself as Angela Merkel’s successor as the leader of Europe in recent months.
The Ukraine factor. Macron has long been a proponent of greater European strategic autonomy and in recent months has called for a united Europe to engage with Russia separately from the broader US-NATO dialogue. His shuttle diplomacy with Vladimir Putin has boosted his image as an international statesman.
Le Pen, on the other hand, is avowedly anti-NATO and says she wants to pull French troops and planning personnel away from the alliance.
This potential shakeup in the EU’s second-wealthiest country also comes as Washington and Brussels are trying to intensify the sanction campaign against Russia. Macron, for his part, has called for fresh sanctions targeting Russian oil and gas imports. But would a President Le Pen, a long-time Putin sycophant, refuse to implement these sanctions? Would she try to undo existing sanctions? Will she cease France's military aid to Ukraine?
Given Le Pen’s insistence that France must resume its alliance with Moscow, it’s fair to assume that the answer to at least some of these questions is “yes.”
France's presidential election tightening as first round begins
Carl Bildt, former Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Sweden, shares his perspective from Delphi, Greece:
What's happening with the sanctions and help to Ukraine?
Well, it's moving forward quite heavily, both with now deliveries of more substantial weapons systems, and the key thing, of course, is going to be what happens with the imports of gas if that is stopped. Coal, oil, that's less important, but gas, that's the key thing. And I think we are moving in that direction.
What about the French presidential elections?
Well, we got the first round coming up on Sunday. I think Macron is going to win, but it looks like it's going to be tight. And the drama is going to be more substantial prior to the second decisive round on 25th of April. It's still likely to be Macron, but less money on that than was the case a month ago.
Is this Marine Le Pen’s moment?
French President Emmanuel Macron thought he’d have his reelection in the bag by now.
But days out from the first round of voting, far-right firebrand Marine Le Pen is giving the incumbent a run for his money. Macron is still ahead – with a current poll putting him at 27%, just three and half points ahead of Le Pen. Still, the forecast is not what Macron – an ideological chameleon who has tried very hard to establish himself as Europe’s diplomat in chief – had been expecting.
Why is Marine Le Pen, who once tied her political fortunes to her father Jean-Marie – founder of the National Front Party who’s faced charges for antisemitic and racist rhetoric – doing so well?
Rebrand and refocus. For years, Le Pen has tried to distance herself from her toxic family brand. After riding his coattails into politics, she broke ranks with her dad, pushing him out of the leadership role in 2015. Then, in 2018, she changed the party’s name to the National Rally, a xenophobia-lite offshoot of her father’s brainchild. Like him, she’s long espoused anti-EU sentiment, rallied against immigration, and trafficked in anti-Muslim prejudice.
But seeking to balance her hardline credentials, Le Pen has also leaned into the view that all politics is personal, playing up her background as a single mother with increased frequency. For several years, she’s also sought to position herself as a warm and fuzzy cat enthusiast with breeding aspirations.
More recently, Le Pen has placed her hardline anti-immigrant message on the back burner, focusing instead on bread-and-butter issues like inflation and soaring food and fuel prices. This has proven a prudent strategy with French voters, who are now overwhelmingly concerned with reduced purchasing power.
Le Pen also recently did something unusual: she has supported welcoming Ukrainian refugees to France, eschewing the message that’s long been at the center of her political platform. Perhaps that’s because 85% of French voters say they support helping Ukrainians who’ve fled the conflict.
So has Le Pen really changed?
Not according to Mujtaba Rahman, head of Eurasia Group’s Europe desk, who says she’s simply a savvy politician: “Le Pen is no more moderate or reasonable today than she has been historically. She remains an extreme right force in French politics.”
Le Pen has also benefited, significantly, from the mishaps of her opponents.
Macron saw a war-related bump last month as he conducted shuttle diplomacy with Vladimir Putin. But the president has failed to capitalize on the boost, in large part because he hasn’t done much (or any) campaigning, relying instead on his image as a globe-trotting statesman to do the heavy lifting. This is an extremely risky move in France, where the electorate is notoriously averse to their leaders, and has not re-elected an incumbent in two decades.
While Macron was setting the internet on fire visiting the Kremlin, Le Pen was hitting the pavement, visiting small towns, taking selfies, and shaking hands with common folk.
What’s more, Le Pen has been able to distinguish herself as a palatable figure on the far right compared to her main rival, Éric Zemmour, an outspoken TV personality and provocateur. Le Pen, a longtime Putin backer, read the room: she saw there’s little love for Putin in France right now and has downplayed her previous support for him. (Still, she insists that France needs to maintain relations with Russia, even with Putin calling the shots.)
Le Pen’s pragmatism has allowed her to steal voters from Zemmour, who has rallied against sanctioning Russia and is avowedly anti-NATO. She “has benefited from the existence of even more extreme candidates on the campaign field,” Rahman says. “This has created the impression of moderation where none really exists.”
Consider this: when Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, the far-right rivals were just three percentage points apart in the polls. Today, Le Pen is ahead by at least 12, and Zemmour is barely relevant.
Marine Le Pen has long been a formidable player in French politics. So what’s the difference now? Well, the idea of a President Le Pen is no longer so scary to French voters. It’s not likely, but she could still pull this off.
Zelensky addresses the UN Security Council in a video message
What We’re Watching: Zelensky at the UN, French race tightens, Sri Lankan crisis worsens
Zelensky wants justice over Russian war crimes
In his first address to the UN Security Council, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky on Tuesday said Russians accused of war crimes in Ukraine must be brought to justice, noting that the atrocities in Bucha and elsewhere are the worst Europe has seen since World War II. Prior to Zelensky’s speech, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said the alliance is working with the UN-backed International Criminal Court to investigate the alleged war crimes. The International Court of Justice has already ordered Russia to cease and desist but has no authority to enforce its ruling. But some argue that pursuing indictments during ongoing conflicts can frustrate efforts toward peace agreements, thereby raising the risk of further atrocities. Meanwhile, the mounting allegations are putting more pressure on Western powers to slap harsher sanctions on Moscow — perhaps even targeting Russian oil and coal by the EU.
French presidential race tightens
Don’t look now, but a growing number of French voters aren’t ready to give Emmanuel Macron a second term as Président de la République. Ahead of first-round presidential voting on Sunday, new polls are giving the campaign of right-wing populist and political veteran Marine Le Pen a jolt of electricity. For a potential second-round matchup, one poll has Macron with just a six-point lead over Le Pen. Another poll published Monday put Macron’s lead in a potential runoff at just three points. (In 2017, he bested her in the second round by 32 points.) The war in Ukraine has given Macron an opportunity to play the global statesman and to avoid the rough and tumble of a campaign. He even skipped a televised debate. But some voters may want to see him work a bit harder. If Le Pen has a strong showing in Sunday’s first round, expect rising anxiety about what a victory for Le Pen, who has expressed past admiration for Vladimir Putin, might mean for the war. Though she has called Russia’s invasion a violation of international law, she says it has only “partly changed” her view of Putin.