Macron, the ‘Russian threat’ and the French left

On 5 March, Emmanuel Macron addressed millions of television viewers to solemnly warn them: “Beyond Ukraine, the Russian threat is here and it affects the countries of Europe, it affects us.” 

[Originally published in French at marxiste.org]

The Head of State painted a frightening picture: Russia “has already turned the Ukrainian conflict into a global conflict”. It “manipulates elections in Romania and Moldova, organises cyberattacks against our hospitals to block their operations”. He continued: “In this context, who can believe that today's Russia will stop at Ukraine? As I speak to you, Russia has become a threat to France and to Europe for years to come.”

Already familiar with this refrain for several years, the press and the bourgeois media have unanimously taken up Macron's cry of alarm. On television sets and in newspaper columns, the same theme keeps coming up: ‘Russia threatens us. We must prepare ourselves.’

The ‘Russian threat’

However, as soon as we examine it even slightly, the laundry list with which Macron overwhelms us to illustrate the Russian threat loses all substance.

Are the Russians responsible for the cyber attacks against French hospitals? The ineffable Jean-Michel Blanquer already pulled the same trick on us in 2020. According to him, if the Ministry of Education's software failed during the lockdown, it was because of Russian hackers! These ‘Russian hackers’ are a good excuse when it comes to justifying the IT failures of our public services, which have been strangled by decades of austerity.

What about the elections in Romania? They were cancelled by the Romanian government itself because a right-wing demagogue, hostile to the EU and NATO, came out on top in the first round. To justify this flagrant violation of a basic principle of bourgeois democracy, the Romanian government claimed that Russia had distorted the result of the election through a massive disinformation campaign on... TikTok. Since then, it has been unable to provide any serious evidence, but that has not prevented it from arresting the candidate in question, to the sustained applause of most EU leaders. There has, therefore, been a breach of the fundamental rules of formal democracy. But it is the work of the Romanian government and the European Commission, not Russia.

The war in Ukraine does indeed have a ‘global’ character, as Macron says. But that is because it has been a proxy war from the start, waged by NATO and the western imperialists against their rival, Russian imperialism. After pushing the Ukrainian government to increase provocations against Russia, the West supplied large quantities of weapons to Ukrainian troops to prolong the war as long as possible and try to weaken Moscow.

Russian imperialism has emerged stronger, both militarily and diplomatically / Image: Vitaly V. Kuzmin, Wikimedia Commons

Their plan has failed. Russian imperialism has emerged stronger, both militarily and diplomatically. It is Europe that has been weakened, and Washington is now negotiating directly with Moscow to end the war.

After defeating the Ukrainian army, will Russia, as Macron claims, attack the Baltic countries, or even Germany or France, all of which are NATO members? Will Russian tanks roll across the plains of Poland? Should we fear seeing paratroopers hoist the Russian flag over the Eiffel Tower?

Russia is victorious in Ukraine, and it is clear that its army is now the most experienced and battle-hardened on the planet. But that does not mean that it will engage in direct confrontation with NATO armies, which, it should be remembered, have nuclear weapons.

Whether they are Russian, American or European, capitalists do not wage war on principle or for pleasure, but to defend their imperialist interests. From this point of view, the conquest of the Baltic countries would be extremely risky and of little interest to Russian imperialism, which already has access to the Baltic Sea via St Petersburg and the exclave of Kaliningrad.

It would be much more profitable for Russia to push its advantage and develop its influence, particularly by relying on its very cheap gas, which will be more effective in penetrating Europe than armoured divisions. Hungary and Slovakia have already moved closer to Russia. Other European countries will undoubtedly follow suit. The global economic crisis is opening up new avenues for Russian – but also American and Chinese – influence in Europe, much to the chagrin of the French and German imperialists who today dominate the European economy and make huge profits from it. This is what Paris and Berlin want to defend in Europe, not ‘democracy’.

The rearmament of French imperialism

This does not mean that the coming decades will be ‘peaceful’. On the contrary. The crisis of capitalism is setting the imperialist powers against each other. China has its eye on Taiwan and is positioning itself in the Pacific. The United States has announced its intention to annex Greenland and the Panama Canal Zone. Proxy wars – like those currently taking place in Ukraine, Libya, and the Congo – will multiply.

In Africa and the Pacific, declining French imperialism is facing competition from China and Russia. In New Caledonia, the Kanak uprising last year raised the spectre of losing this strategic colony. The return to power of Donald Trump means that France can no longer rely on American aid to defend its backyard. More than the ‘Russian threat to Europe’, it is this fear of losing its spheres of influence that explains the patriotic and militaristic drumming of the French bourgeoisie.

To defend the profits of the CAC 40 giants, French imperialism therefore needs new ships, new planes, etc. As Macron said, this implies “new budgetary choices and additional investments [...] which require the mobilisation of private funding, but also public funding”. In plain language, this means a new wave of austerity policies and a new avalanche of public money offered to employers in the armaments sector.

François Ruffin's ‘conditions’

Workers and young people have nothing good to expect from this new surge of militaristic fever apart from new sacrifices, whether in terms of their standard of living or their very lives, when it comes to defending, by force of arms, the profits of TotalEnergies or the Bouygues group.

Faced with this, how do the official leaders of the labour movement and the French left react? Subject to pressure from the ruling class, they either capitulate or sink into utter confusion.

Take the case of François Ruffin, a ‘left’ member of the National Assembly. Interviewed on RTL on 6 March, the day after the head of state’s martial address, Ruffin said that he “agreed with the President of the Republic when he said that we need to increase our defence budget”. But he was keen to add that “wars require the unity of the Nation, which is achieved through justice”. So “Mr Martin's friends” – the president of Medef, the largest French employers federation – “will have to pay the price of tax”. In essence, François Ruffin is telling us: ‘yes to imperialist wars, but on condition that the big bosses pay taxes’.

Unfortunately for Ruffin and for the ‘unity of the Nation’, the French bourgeoisie has no intention whatsoever of making ‘social’ concessions / Image: public domain

To make sure we understood him properly, during the same interview on RTL, Ruffin, the director of Merci Patron!, even made a historical analogy, stating: “The First World War was the birth of income tax in France”. The soldiers who were killed by poison gas or who drowned in the mud of the trenches can rejoice from the depths of their graves: they were not sacrificed so that French imperialism could keep its colonies. No, they died so that income tax could be born! Should we conclude from this that François Ruffin would approve of a Third (nuclear) World War if Macron promised, for example, to restore the ISF wealth tax?

We will not have the opportunity to find out because – unfortunately for Ruffin and for the ‘unity of the Nation’ – the French bourgeoisie has no intention whatsoever of making ‘social’ concessions. On the contrary, the media hype surrounding the ‘Russian threat’ serves to justify new austerity policies! 

On 14 March, former Prime Minister Edouard Philippe said it quite explicitly when talking about the ‘conclave’ on pensions: “the truth is that, given the threats, we would do well to bring together the social and political forces, not to ask them whether we should go back on a reform that has already been voted through, but to ask ourselves how we can adapt to a considerable, almost existential, effort to come.” It goes without saying that the “considerable effort” will weigh not on “Mr Martin’s friends”, but on the workers, the poor, the unemployed and the pensioners.

While setting ‘conditions’ that they know will never be met, Ruffin and his ilk agree with the thrust of Macron's speech on the Russian threat and the sacrifices it would necessitate. In the struggle between French imperialism and its rivals, they are siding with their own ruling class and helping it to justify its austerity policies. They will therefore bear responsibility for its future criminal manoeuvres in Africa, the Pacific or elsewhere.

Pacifist impotence and confusion

For its part, the leadership of La France Insoumise (FI) condemns the increase in military spending and the austerity policies that will accompany it. But it has nothing serious to propose to combat the militaristic escalation in which the great imperialist powers, including France, are engaging. In a note published on his website, Jean-Luc Mélenchon recently provided a striking illustration of the impotence and confusion of his pacifist position.

The leader of the FI stated: “Without the presence of Ukraine, there can be no peace discussed or decided. That is to say, without its legitimate representatives negotiating and signing the commitments that will result from the discussion. [...] And insofar as the stakes of the war have been territories and their populations, no arrangement on this subject should be accepted without consultation by vote of these populations concerned. This should be done under the aegis of the UN and with international control.”

It is difficult to imagine a more abstract position. For more than a decade, Ukraine and its ‘populations’ have been nothing more than pawns in the hands of western imperialists. Now that defeat is obvious, the Americans are negotiating directly with the Russians. Just like the imperialist war that preceded it, imperialist peace will inevitably be at the expense of the workers – and first and foremost, the Ukrainian workers.

The UN will not be able to change anything. Like the entire institutional scaffolding of so-called ‘international law’, the UN has never been anything other than a forum in which the great imperialist powers negotiate to divide up the world and defend their common interests. It was the UN that provided the imperialists with the ‘legal’ pretext for the destruction of Iraq in 1991 and the invasion of Haiti in 2004. These are just two examples: the list of crimes committed by this institution – so dear to Mélenchon's heart – is too long for this article.

This is not the first time that the abstract and impotent pacifism of the FI leadership has led them, at the end of the day, to advocate the strengthening of French militarism / Image: Pierre Selim, Flickr

Today, the economic crisis is pitting the imperialist powers against each other. In the absence of common interests on which the imperialists can agree, the UN is paralysed. The statements of its Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, have had no more impact on the war in Ukraine than those of Pope Francis.

The same goes for the “OSCE-sponsored border conference” that Mélenchon envisages to “take account of existing conflicts and resolve those that are festering”. When the imperialists are ready to risk a war to defend their interests, no conference, even one organised by the OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe), will make them back down.

Moreover, while he condemns Macron's statements on the ‘Russian threat’, Mélenchon nevertheless asserts that new military spending is necessary: “The French must give themselves all the means to guarantee the security of all their many borders around the world. On the Oyapock and the Maroni, in the Indian Ocean and the Caribbean, in the Antarctic as in the Pacific, is France in control of its situation? I don't think so. It is already not in control of its points of vulnerability in France, such as the targets that are its nuclear power stations, particularly in the country's vital regions… And it is no more in control of its supply lines. Here too, we need a review of sovereignty.”

This is not the first time that the abstract and impotent pacifism of the FI leadership has led them, at the end of the day, to advocate the strengthening of French militarism. In the spring of 2023, while the Borne government was presenting a record-breaking €413 billion military planning law, the FI presented a ‘counter-project’ that called for even greater spending!

As we wrote at the time, “the completely erroneous position of the FI leadership [...] is an extension of their reformist policy”. Incapable of challenging French capitalism, the reformist leaders are forced to accept its foreign policy as well, whether in an openly nationalist way, like Ruffin, or in the abstract and extremely confused manner of Mélenchon.

For class internationalism

It should be emphasised that there is one exception to this chorus of capitulations and confusions. The left wing of the CGT, Unité CGT, has adopted a position which, in its clarity and accuracy, contrasts sharply with that of the rest of the left and the labour movement.

In an analysis and outlook document published on their website, the comrades of Unité CGT correctly define the war in Ukraine as “an imperialist war by proxy”. They add: “The eagerness of the United States, then of France and the EU to grab Ukrainian land and subsoil as well as the juicy reconstruction market shares has finally revealed the reality of the ‘disinterested’ support of the Western powers for the war in Ukraine.”

Then, after denouncing the plans for “massive and colossal rearmament [...] promised to the entire European continent”, they write: “In this context, the ‘left’ and the trade unions, including our CGT, cannot afford to be ambiguous on the subject of war. It is not enough to say that the defence and military effort should not be a pretext for unravelling social policies. We need a social, trade union, political and associative bloc against the war. [...] To speak, as Sophie Binet [the general secretary of the CGT] does, of a ‘reactionary international’ from Moscow to Washington [...] against which it would, in fact, be ‘legitimate’ to arm ourselves seems to us to be entering into a logic of imperialist bloc against imperialist bloc whereas the only camp we should defend is that of the workers, of France as well as of the world. Moreover, this discourse also ignores the imperialist nature of the French state, and this is perhaps the most serious aspect.”

We completely agree. We have only one thing to add: ultimately, wars and militarism are consequences of capitalism. The only way to put a definitive end to them is, therefore, to overthrow this exhausted economic system. This means building a Revolutionary Communist International on a global scale and, in France, a Revolutionary Communist Party!