Between reflections and anecdoctes, the former president analyzes in his latest work the geopolitical mutations which have, over the last decade, contributed to weakening democratic systems.
by
Book. War in Ukraine, global warming, rise in power of sovereignism, weakening of democracies … In upheavals, François Hollande returns to the last ten years that have reshuffled the maps of the great world balances. The former head of state mainly feeds this work of 100 pages of anecdotes from his mandate. We meet there, through his personal gaze, Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Joe Biden, Recep Tayyip Erdogan or Mohammed Ben Salman.
His reflections on the Russian president shed light on a cruel day. On the 1 June 2012, in his office of the Elysée, the former national secretary of the Socialist Party discovers a man obsessed with NATO and the United States, “eager to go back in time, Eager (…) to do battle “. “Convinced enemy of democracy”, Vladimir Putin practices “a very elaborate art of lie”. It is therefore illusory to hope for anything, decides the former French president, who thus criticizes the posture of Emmanuel Macron. It was not necessary to try to seduce Vladimir Putin by praising him a Europe going “from Lisbon to Vladivostok”, as did the current tenant of the Elysée, in 2019, by inviting him to Brégançon (Var). And it is just as illusory to hope to resolve the Ukrainian crisis through dialogue.
To the imperialist madness of the Russian president are added the wishes of the Chinese president to “take revenge on past humiliation” and to “make room for American influence”. In ten years, global geopolitics has thus reorganized around two major powers, China and the United States, “each with its supplement, Russia for one, Europe for the other”. Expansion desires have won other places on the planet, such as Iran, Saudi Arabia or Turkey. François Hollande tells, for example, the various faces of Erdogan, which was a favorable time at the entrance of Turkey into the European Union, before switching into anti-Western hatred. Apparently “warm and welcoming”, the Turkish Head of State can become “brittle and angry”, like his “false enemy Vladimir Putin”.
“Defensive patriotism”
Another trend, the emergence of the “sovereignist wave”, hitherto confined to the margins of democracies, and to which Brexit has given a propulsion force. In 2015, the president tried, with Angela Merkel, to dissuade David Cameron from conducting a hazardous referendum on the belonging of the United Kingdom to the European Union. In vain. The election of Donald Trump then completed the arrival of “a cautious nationalism” and “a defensive patriotism”, which nourish European extremist parties.
You have 20.41% of this article to read. The continuation is reserved for subscribers.