It was to be “weight bearing”. As revealed by the Express, Jean-Pierre Chevènement must announce on Sunday February 27 his rallying to Emmanuel Macron in the JDD. But, after the invasion of Ukraine, the “special representative of France in Russia” could well take on the appearance of a cannonball for the candidacy of the outgoing president.
Sum published in 2016, A challenge of civilization sums up the geopolitical positions of this icon of leftist sovereignism. We are then two years after the outbreak of the Donbass war and the annexation of Crimea, one year after Russia’s intervention in Syria in order to maintain Bashar el-Assad’s regime. The “Che” devotes many pages to criticize the harmful influence of the United States, NATO or Germany. We learn that the United States would have maintained “low fire of the Ukrainian crisis” to “draw up one against the other Europe and Russia, and thus to tighten their protectorate on the first”. Faced with American imperialism or the new “Holy Roman Empire” (sic), the native of Belfort pleads for a “European security treaty including Russia”, and castigates “Russophobia more or less camouflaged as Poutinophobia”
The sovereigntist current likes to pride itself on realism, in the face of internationalist adversaries who would be, at best, only idealistic dreamers, at worst, henchmen of the United States. Of the real intentions as of the true nature of Vladimir Putin, Jean-Pierre Chevènement does not seem to have perceived anything. Anti-democratic excesses? “This vision is, in my opinion, outrageous, when it is not caricatural”. Russian expansionism? “Putin does not dream of restoring the USSR, but he certainly intends to build a strong Russia” or even: “I do not think that Russia has aggressive intentions vis-à-vis the countries of the European Union “. As for Ukraine, it would be according to him only “a patchwork which painfully tries to build a national identity”.
In A challenge of civilization, Jean-Pierre Chevènement quotes Sergueï Karaganov in particular at length. Consider Putin’s close adviser, a political scientist who theorized many ideas that led to the invasion of Ukraine. Deploring that Russia’s neighboring countries are much more attracted to the West culturally and economically, Karaganov explained in particular that the use of military force is the only recourse to ensure their submission… The former French Minister of Defense saw nothing but fire: “To focus everything on the ‘Russian threat’ so as not to upset Polish and Baltic fantasies, we end up forgetting that the main risks of destabilization come from the South” he wrote in 2016. Alongside Hubert Védrine, Jean-Pierre Chevènement was, behind the scenes, the great promoter with Emmanuel Macron of a rapprochement with Putin, with the success that we know . In 2017, the Russian President decorated him with his own hands with the Order of Friendship.
Russia to guarantee the “security” of Europe
Create an alliance or a strategic partnership with Putin’s Russia in security as well as in trade, so as not to be at the mercy of American imperialism or “mercantilist Germany”? This position, Jean-Pierre Chevènement was by far not the only one to claim it in his intellectual family. In 2016, twenty sovereignist personalities published a column in Le Figaro calling for the renegotiation of the European treaties following the Brexit referendum. Among the signatories, in addition to Chevènement, were the philosopher Michel Onfray, the journalists Natacha Polony and Eric Conan, the economist Jacques Sapir and the geographer Christophe Guilluy. In order to give Europe its “strategic independence”, these intellectuals called for “renewing a dialogue with Russia, a European country essential for establishing the security that all our nations need and defining ambitious and coherent policies of co-development vis-à-vis Africa and the Middle East”. “Ambitious and coherent co-development policies in the Middle East”? That year, it should be remembered, the Russian military support given to Bashar al-Assad transformed Aleppo into a field of ruins.
As political science professor Olivier Schmitt has shown in his book “Why is Putin our ally?” Anatomy of a French passion (2016), the pro-Putin current in France has largely transcended left-right divides, from Jean-Luc Mélenchon to Marine Le Pen. But what brings all these figures together is first and foremost an anti-liberal vision of the world. Our sovereignists are particularly seduced by the speech of the Russian president on “the strong state”. Another common point: a visceral anti-Americanism, even if it means doing everything to minimize Putin’s territorial ambitions, presented as a simple response to the expansion of US imperialism through NATO. Right-wing sovereigntists can, moreover, be enthusiastic about Putin’s defense of “traditional values”. The master of the Kremlin likes to present himself for ten years as the guardian of conservatism in the face of a supposed moral decline in the West.
“Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals”
“America wants Europe to be the fifty-first star of the American flag. For that, it must keep the Europeans subservient to NATO. Vladimir Putin is the perfect pretext, the ideal devil. Let’s not forget the causes of the Ukrainian system. First a coup d’etat fomented by NATO. Then a fault of the Ukrainian government, the banning of the Russian language. Finally, the American claim of Ukraine’s entry into the “Nato. How could one imagine that the Russians would agree to see NATO on their doorstep? Vladimir Putin does not want the dismemberment of Ukraine. He simply wants the recognition of the mother tongue in the Russian-speaking regions, a status for these regions, and finally a neutrality of Ukraine in relation to NATO” ensured in 2015 Philippe de Villiers, fervent admirer of Putin and cantor, faced with “the artificial Europe of Maastricht”, of a “great strategic and cultural partnership with Russia, Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals”. Candidate for the presidential election of Debout la France, Nicolas Dupont-Aignan presents himself as a “Gaullist” who “always wanted the independence of France against the great powers”. Having never hidden his admiration for Putin either, he declared again, January 25 on Cnews “We need a great alliance with Russia, we are complementary, we must fight against the challenges of the future, and the real challenges are Africa, which is falling into jihadism, and it is much more important than the Donbass, forgive me!”.
In 2014, in a column entitled “Sovereignists, you have no reason to support Russian imperialism” published in The world, Paul Thibaud had however denounced the “indulgence” of his political family vis-à-vis Vladimir Putin, following the Maidan revolution and then the annexation of Crimea and the Donbass war. “Those who want a Europe of nations should less than anyone neglect Ukraine’s right to be a full-fledged nation” pleaded the former director of the magazine Spirit. A fascination for Putin’s Russia that Quebec sovereigntist Mathieu Bock-Côté is trying to minimize today in Le Figaro : “Schematically, as we know, ‘the sovereignists’ sought to take into account the Russian vision of the world in their reflection on European civilization. strong power supposed to embody the exact opposite of the supposed Western decadence. But most of them had above all the conviction that geography condemns peoples sharing the same continent to take into account their mutual interests”.
“Simplistic schemes and sheepish commentators”
“Pavlovian anti-Americanism”, however, seems to have a bright future ahead of it. After gnawing at its borders, Russia has come, in a spectacular way, to violate the sovereignty of an independent state since 1991, and moreover a democratic one. In theory, this should outrage sovereignists. But many of them prefer to continue to point their criticisms at the United States or NATO, which would be the real culprits in this conflict. On February 16, in an editorial entitled “Know who wants war”, Natacha Polony invites us to “extricate ourselves for a few moments from the simplistic schemes of sheepish commentators for whom the world is divided into two categories: the evil populist pro-Russians – fascinated, of course, by the Kremlin autocrat – and the reasonable people who remain welded to the “Western camp”. Challenging US reports of an imminent invasion, the editorial director of Marianne is intended to be reassuring, while recalling that the Maidan revolution in 2014 “was largely supported by the CIA and sponsored by the Soros Foundation”. A week later, the editorialist must note that Vladimir Putin “has just torpedoed the last hopes for peace”. But rather than developing on the “Russian hardline”, Natacha Polony once again prefers to dwell at length on the responsibilities of NATO and the United States, which would have “done everything, for thirty years, to get there”.
Coming from the left before campaigning for a union of extreme left sovereignists in the National Front, the economist Jacques Sapir is now an economic columnist on Russia Today, a channel considered a propaganda tool for the Russian regime. In review Popular FrontSapir certainly describes as “inadmissible” what he calls Russian “military operations” on “Ukrainian territory”.
But if he distances himself somewhat from the term “denazification” used by Putin, Sapir joins Russian propaganda in his description of a “puppet state”: “The presence of nationalist, neo-Nazi movements in Ukraine is a known and documented reality. But these movements remain a minority within the population and the government. The reality of Ukraine is more of an oligarchic regime, highly corrupt, largely penetrated by foreign private interests and partly from the States States, than a neo-Nazi regime”. Jacques Sapir goes so far as to demand proof of appeasement from… NATO and the United States: “Whether they like it or not, it will be good for NATO countries and the United States to do here the first step and to provide the demonstration that their desire to achieve stability on the European continent is sincere”. We would almost end up doubting who invaded Ukraine and threatens peace in Europe.