How Emmanuel Macron Positioned Himself as Star of the G7 Show


How Emmanuel Macron Positioned Himself as Star of the G7 Show

PARIS — President Emmanuel Macron of France seemed to be everywhere at once during the Group of 7 summit. For the space of a weekend, at least, the West appeared to have one person running the show, and it was not the American president.

One day, Mr. Macron was wooing President Trump over a long, private lunch. The next he was flying in the Iranian foreign minister for unannounced talks. He seized the role as chief defender of the global climate, telling Brazilians to get themselves a new president. He prompted a surprise diplomatic opening on Iran from Mr. Trump, even if both initiatives hit early headwinds on Tuesday.

Mr. Macron missed no opportunity to wring every advantage from his role as host of the summit in the southern resort city of Biarritz. It gave him the perfect stage to pursue his ambition, both grandiose and self-serving, to position France, and himself, as candidates to fill the vacancy left by Mr. Trump’s retreat from traditional Western values.

With Mr. Trump deepening American isolation on major global issues, and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany on a glide path out of power, Mr. Macron has become the leading champion of European unity and multilateralism.

Mr. Macron clearly wanted to use the Group of 7 forum to show the world that neither are dead letters. He also wanted to show off himself.

But Mr. Macron’s objective appeared to be not so much showing up his American counterpart as reasserting the efficacy of the European approach to global problems.

He said as much last week, telling journalists that the summit was a way to demonstrate that the “European civilization project” was an “answer” in a world searching for “global stability.”

“If we can’t redefine the terms of our sovereignty, we can’t defend our project,” Mr. Macron said to reporters before leaving for Biarritz. “Man is at the heart of the project,” he said, adding that the “relationship to the dignity of man, to humanism” was “the foundation of European civilization.”

Mr. Macron “seemed dynamic,’” but relatively alone, said Nicolas Tenzer, who teaches at Sciences Po, a leading university for political science in Paris.

Mr. Tenzer said that Mr. Macron had “a better grasp of the issues” than Mr. Trump or Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain, but added that, with the German chancellor nearing the end of her tenure, “he’s the only one.”

“It’s a great advantage, and also a source of solitude.”

On the Iranian question in particular, Mr. Macron appeared to be nudging Mr. Trump in a new direction.

On the economic front, Mr. Macron said a major issue for him was “Can we pacify international commerce?”

It was “an error in reasoning” to engage in “commercial war and isolationism,” Mr. Macron said. And again, he got Mr. Trump to sound notes on the trade war that were far more conciliatory toward China than over preceding days.

It was in his handling of Mr. Trump, the declared enemy of multilateralism and unabashed wrecker of summits, that Mr. Macron showed his greatest agility.

Nor did Mr. Macron launch into the numbing detail on secondary issues with which he battered French journalists at a later news conference. And he went out of his way to praise a leader who has been openly mocked by a number of his counterparts.

“We’ve worked very closely, with lots of energy, with President Trump these last days,” Mr. Macron said at the news conference. “And we’re going to continue to work together in the coming months. We’ll be side by side in all of these fights.”

That one-on-one lunch he organized for Mr. Trump — aides only joined at the end — that evidently went far to mollify the American president. Mr. Trump spoke effusively about the meeting afterward.

“We had a lunch that lasted for quite a while, just the two of us,” Mr. Trump said. “It was the best period of time we’ve ever had. We weren’t trying to impress anybody, just each other.”


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