One might be forgiven for thinking these days that that the President of France, Emmanuel Macron, is moonlighting as President of Lebanon.
Unlike the sovereign of the United Kingdom, French presidents are only heads of state over French territories, except as co-princes of Andorra (with the Spanish Bishop of Urgell). And yet only the day before yesterday, Macron was in Beirut to announce that a new Lebanese government would be formed in two weeks. This was his second visit in a month, having flown to the Lebanese capital on 6 August, immediately following the massive chemical explosion that caused 188 deaths and 6,500 wounded and billions of dollars damage, to “launch a new political initiative” for the country and to warn publicly Lebanon’s faction-ridden politicians that he would expect commitments from them to rebuild and reform their country when he returned on 1 September. The Lebanese President Michel Aoun seemed all but absent.
Macron is playing for greater stakes than Lebanon alone.
No one doubts that Lebanon needs international assistance. But it is breath-taking to see a western politician muscle in to a fully independent state and dictate publicly how and when a government should be formed and doubtless what its programme should be.
What lies behind this bravado?
By remarkable coincidence, 1 September was the centenary of the declaration awarding Lebanon to France as a League of Nations’ protectorate. The League’s rationale was that following the Ottoman Empire’s defeat in the Great War those of its peoples not ripe for independence should be protected by a powerful League member, preferably with connections to the region. France was given Lebanon and Syria, while Britain had mandates for Iraq and Palestine. It should be mentioned that during the War, France and Britain had secretly stitched up this arrangement in the notorious 1916 Sykes-Picot agreements.
For centuries France had gained influence in the Lebanon (and Syria) through French Catholic missionaries setting up schools, hospitals and the prestigious Jesuit University of Saint Joseph. Trade followed and the cultural, religious and linguistic links deepened so that today affiliation to France among Lebanon’s 8 million population is widely felt, especially the 41% Christian minority with French a semi-official language.
But Macron’s intervention could be seen as unwanted interference.
Independence from France came in 1943. As a reflection of the multi-faith Shia, Sunni, Christian and Druze communities a parliamentary confessionalist republic was established with power sharing governments. Descent from a prosperous state built on commerce and banking in the 1950s and 1960s – “the Switzerland of the East” – came with the terrible civil war between the sectarian factions from 1975 to 1990, followed by partial occupation from Syria, then Israel. Even before the recent devastating explosion the Lebanese economy was in peril. Few Lebanese had faith in the power-sharing which was in reality based on heads of often armed clans retaining their privileges. But it is the present Middle East international context that has brought France back in. Macron is playing for greater stakes than Lebanon alone.
With the United States at arms length from the Middle East, the fear is that Lebanon again slips into civil war and brings in the powerful regional powers of Iran (Shia), Saudi Arabia (Sunni), Turkey, Israel, with Russia and China in the wings. Macron believes France can act as a stabilising force to keep Lebanon from imploding and with it the region, with devastating consequences for all, not least the prospect of massive migration to Europe. But Macron’s intervention could be seen as unwanted interference from Muslim groups, such as Hezbollah which had two cabinet ministers in the previous government.
To his credit, Macron intervened in Lebanese politics successfully in December 2017 when he ensured that the Lebanese prime minister was reinstated after pressure to resign from Saudi Arabia. But he has also encountered failure, backing the wrong horse in Libya or in his initiatives over the Iranian nuclear deal and in wishing to restore European relations with Russia. He is at present at logger-heads with the Turkish President Erdogan after sending a French naval detachment to support Greece in the Aegean against aggressive Turkish undersea exploration. France already has over 5000 troops fighting with little success against Islamic terrorists in sub-Saharan Africa. Is he over-stretching himself?
Macron is a great fan of “disruptive policy and innovation”, though it has not always gone down well back home, as the gilets jaunes would testify. Acting so forcefully in cajoling the Lebanese political elites to produce a government in a mere 15 days, when the average over the last few years is between five and eleven months, may be too disruptive.
Professor John Keiger is a professor of French history and former research director of the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Cambridge.
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