Before Russia declares war on Ukraine, the French president will have worked to avoid such an outcome. At the time of the assessment of the five-year term of Emmanuel Macron in terms of foreign policy, the sequence which remains undeniably in mind is his offensive in Lebanon.
In The French downgrading – Elysée, Quai d’Orsay, DGSE: the secrets of a war of strategic influence, (Michel Lafon editions), Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot notably autopsy the broken dream of the French president to restore Lebanon. But they analyze more generally the reasons for France’s loss of influence in the Maghreb and the Middle East. The two journalists, great reporters and specialists in the Middle East, also decipher the springs of Emmanuel Macron’s diplomacy in the Gulf, during the war in Libya, or on the Iranian nuclear front.
Christian Chesnot, journalist with the international service of Radio France, talks with Sylvie Noël.