Anglo-French relations have further to sink
The latest row between the UK and France is more of a sprat than a spat. As any trawlerman confined to a Normandy fishing port could tell you, the sprat is also known as “bristling”, which is what Emmanuel Macron and Boris Johnson are doing. It’s also a member of the herring family and the fishing row is a red herring. Its basis is not about the technicalities of granting several dozen licenses to French vessels, nor is it about next year’s French election. Underpinning the dispute is a difference of world views which stretches back to the post Second World War settlement.
France created the myth that as a nation it had resisted the Nazis and then liberated itself. It then set about re-establishing itself as one of the world’s great autonomous powers. Hence the development of the “Force de Frappe” nuclear deterrent, withdrawing from NATO’s military command, and clinging on to what influence it had in Francophone Africa and elsewhere. The UK also built a nuclear deterrent and fought to keep some of its colonies, but it quickly learned to have a clear-eyed acceptance of American power and of its own status as a junior partner in their relationship.
Fast forward to Brexit and the recent AUKUS deal and we see Churchill’s famous retort to De Gaulle in 1944 linking to the new architecture being constructed for 21st century geopolitics. Churchill said “If Britain must choose between Europe and the open sea, she must always choose the open sea”. Later, during the same heated discussion he said “Every time I have to choose between you and Roosevelt, I will always choose Roosevelt”.
The current Prime Minister has chosen the open sea (he hopes this includes the Pacific) and prefers the current American President to the French version. In the same continuity of history, the French President has chosen autonomy, or as Macron puts it “strategic autonomy”. His version of this is autonomy for the EU to create its own military capable of operating in or out of the NATO structure but making its own decisions. It’s clear he means a French-led EU, especially now that Frau Merkel is out of the way.
A French led EU army of course requires an EU and having had one major power leave the Union Macron cannot allow another – that would be careless. Hence the letter Prime Minister Jean Castex wrote to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen stating: “It is indispensable that we show clearly to the European public that respecting previous commitments is non-negotiable and that it is more damaging to leave the Union than to remain in it.”
If you wish to keep the EU together there’s a clear logic to that statement. It is akin, if less brutal and tragic, to the shootings of deserters to “encourager les autres”. It’s also logical to spin it into a public rebuke as Prime Minister Johnson dutifully did. The UK government must encourage its electorate to see the EU, notably France, as seeking to prevent “Global Britain” being successful. Sticking it to France goes down well in some quarters.
Macron appears to think Johnson is an untrustworthy loose cannon and the Prime Minister’s recent use of “Franglais” will have reinforced that, but the President is not above petty and loose remarks. His comments disparaging the AstraZeneca vaccine were beyond unhelpful and strayed into dangerous territory – dangerous as in potentially helping to cause loss of life – but that too was connected to the wider picture of France, the EU, post-Brexit Britain and the global power blocs. Last week he called Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison a liar in the aftermath of the AUKUS submarine deal. His Europe Minister, Clement Beaune, was unleashed to taunt that under Johnson the UK had returned to being subservient to the US. Returned?
Nothing has enraged Macron so much as AUKUS. He knows it locks the UK into the American led strategy to contain China and makes France at best a junior associated partner. It makes Britain’s diplomatic path towards closer defence relations with India easier and puts it on track, with Japanese support, to become a member of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. In other words, it helps the possibility of “Global Britain” become a reality.
There’s nothing France can do about AUKUS. But it can and will do all it can to keep the EU together, and that requires demonstrating that leaving it is a bad idea. Hence the row over fish, which in reality is a load of scallops. It’s the sort of dispute which could easily be resolved but has been kept going because it suits both sides and because fish, national waters, and our romantic ideas about horny handed sons of the sea make for good news stories.
The next, and probably much bigger, row will probably be about Northern Ireland. This will not be a sprat. It is a far bigger issue for both sides and potentially a matter of life and death for people living there. The EU cannot allow the UK to be seen to wriggle out of its Brexit commitments but that looks to be Johnson’s intention and Macron will lead the opposition to him.
Recently there have been historically illiterate media headlines that a new low has been reached in Anglo-French relations. That’s nonsense, but whatever level they are currently at, they risk going lower. At a military level the two countries continue to cooperate, and relations are respectful, even warm. But diplomatically the rift is real. When the next dispute arrives, keep in mind the old Clausewitz maxim about the value of the objective determining the “sacrifices made for it in magnitude and also in duration”.