For the n°75 of his review Rules of the Game, Bernard-Henri Lévy confessed nearly 200 personalities about their reading habits, including several protagonists of the presidential campaign (Macron, Pécresse, Hidalgo …), proof of a French exception. “I knew Barack Obama. I have just had a debate with Bill Clinton. Neither of them would think of venting about their literary tastes. been, for them, a literary destiny”, laughs the philosopher. At L’Express, we have decided to question this incurable internationalist on foreign policy, the absence of which he deplores in current French debates. Interview.
L’Express: Is international politics the major absentee from this presidential campaign?
Bernard-Henri Levy: Have you heard of it? Apart from Emmanuel Macron – but who is not officially a candidate – I do not see much seriousness in these problems. And not much either among the great professional commentators and questioners. That’s a shame. Because geopolitics is destiny. It is also philosophy in action. And it’s the best way for a politician to really say who he is and what he wants.
Do you think Putin said a “war” on Europe. Is the threat serious?
Sure. If only, because when you watch the operation of this huge war machine that is the new Russian army, you realize that the hardest – and, in any case, the most expensive – is done. Transporting 110,000 men, tanks, heavy weapons, Bouk missile launchers to the Ukrainian border is an enormous, immensely heavy operation, which cannot be decided and, conversely, cannot be canceled with the snap of a fingers.
In every sense of the word, Putin will find it difficult to backtrack. This prospect, moreover, terrifies me. I know the area. I went up, for your colleagues from Match, the entire 450 kilometers of what would become, in the event of an invasion, the first line of confrontation. And I think that would be a bloodbath.
And the American response?
In line with what was done in Afghanistan. Incomprehensible. Hopeless. And the door opened, not only to a humanitarian and human disaster, but to an incalculable new world disorder. If Putin invades Ukraine, I don’t see what will stop Xi Jinping from invading Taiwan. And Erdogan to push other pawns in what was the space of the Ottoman Empire. He will be there, the next world. There, the big shift. Much more than with climate change or life with the Covid.
“The divide between Poutinians and anti-Putinians is much greater than the right/left divide”
How do you judge the benevolence towards Poutine displayed by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, as by Eric Zemmour or Marine Le Pen?
Minimally irresponsible. And, in truth, infamous. The old collaborator tradition of which it is verified, once again, that it recruits at all the racks. We are talking about the right/left divide. Or that between progressives and populists. This cleavage, between Putinians and anti-Putinians, between collaborators and resisters to the Russian order in the process of being set up, is much more important. In geopolitical terms, but also in economic, financial and civilizational terms.
Why ?
In financial terms, because if the United States goes through with the announced sanctions and excludes, for example, Russia from the Swift banking system, the consequences will be much heavier than if they had reinforced, in the old fashioned way, the defenses Ukrainian military. An event that has been in the making for a few years will come true. Namely, around Russia and especially the powerful China, a whole series of countries will begin to implement an alternative to the use of the dollar as currency of exchange and universal reference. It will be a real earthquake. And we will regret the good times when all that was needed was a reinforced military presence to ensure the quality and solidity of a balance of power.
You also say civilizational shift…
Yes. Because Putin is not just a brute haunted by Stalin and by Nicholas I, the Decembrist massacrer, his model. He has a project of civilization. A certain idea of Europe. He defends a model, eurasism, which fights term by term the liberal and democratic order on which the European Union was founded.
I debated a few years ago with Alexandre Dugin, one of the main thinkers of this movement and, therefore, one of the organic ideologues of Putinism. It is obvious, when one listens to Dugin, that one is in the presence of a postmodern version, rather elaborate but very offensive, of fascism.
According to Eric Zemmour, France’s foreign policy consists in defending French interests, and not “in moralizing the whole world”. Aren’t you the embodiment of this “moraline”?
He is, in any case, one of the incarnations of the abandonment of French values and, therefore, of its interests. Because everything fits. If we lose our values, we lose our moral credit. And if we lose our moral credit, we lose our credit altogether and, therefore, our markets, our economic role, etc. A humiliated France would be a weakened France. A France that bowed to Putin would be a less respected, less attractive, less interesting France. But do we still need to talk about Zemmour? I was one of the very first, when he entered the campaign, to state “what he was doing in the Jewish name”. Today his exit on the handicapped completes to give him this face of cruelty that I had a presentiment of. The circle is complete. He lost.
“Europe or barbarism. It’s the only solution”
The diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Olympics is debated. What attitude to adopt in the face of a Chinese regime that is getting tougher?
The boycott. As for the Moscow Olympics in the early 1980s. And for the same reasons. No regime is invulnerable. None are indifferent to opprobrium, to banishment. Who can say what underground consequences the boycott movements had in 1980? And who can measure the part they took in the slow movement of decomposition of the USSR?
The Uyghur question dominates, and will dominate, the decade. And I am moreover flabbergasted that we do not hear more from the Muslim world on the question. Afraid of China? Tacit agreement with Iran? Turkey ? Qatar? It was already my thesis, in 2018. It is verified.
In The Empire and the Five Kings, you presented a “new pre-Columbian world” marked by the withdrawal of America. Did Joe Biden reinforce this trend, after Barack Obama and Donald Trump?
Yes. He offered Afghanistan to the Taliban on a plate. Now Ukraine to Putin. I do not see, once again, how, under these conditions, he will be able to hold on to Taiwan tomorrow. The order of the world has become, alas, what I announced. American democracy is in decline. Her “Virgilian” vocation, her idea that she, America, had no meaning except on the condition of remaking Europe better, is being shattered. And, in the vacuum thus created, you have five old empires which one believed fallen but which are shaken and raise the head. The world is heading towards great disorder. Perhaps clashes of a radicalism and violence that we thought belonged to the world of yesterday. It’s scary. And I cannot fail to think, in the face of the convulsions that are coming, that the Cold War was good.
Truly ?
Yes. I know the word gets bad press. But he says what he means. Namely the avoidance of hot war which is the worst solution. We would almost regret, faced with the current improvisation and spinelessness, the Kissingers and other real realpoliticians who, at least, had a strategy.
You continue to defend the “counter-empire of Europe”. When we see for example the controversy over the European flag under the Arc de Triomphe, is this still a viable option?
Sure. It will pass or it will break. Some of our partners will back down and stay on the sidelines, but others will follow and that is, I believe, the only option. Europe or barbarism. Make Europe or disappear. Oppose resurrected empires with equal strength, or yield to them. I’m sorry but I don’t see, again, a better way out. This is also why the controversy you are talking about was, in my opinion, a good controversy. The President of the Republic was right to want the flag of Europe to fly that day. At least things were said.
Who is the most credible candidate in your eyes in terms of foreign policy?
I told you. For the moment, and insofar as Anne Hidalgo, despite her bravery, is struggling, alas, to get her campaign started, I can only see him, Emmanuel Macron. A president who writes the Quirinal treaty after having read Kojève and who receives Putin with, in mind, the writings of the Marquis de Custine is, for me, more than “credible”. I would add that, on key issues such as non-participation in the new Durban conference, support for the Kurds of Rojava and Iraq, resistance to Erdogan’s neo-Ottoman ambitions, without forgetting the fight against a anti-Semitism, the new form of which is anti-Zionism, it has frankly not been unworthy. For me, these questions are essential. It is on them that I will decide.
“The Rules of the Game. How do you read? (Grasset, 450 pages, €20).