In the 19th century France built a new French colonial empire second to the British Empire. It was humiliated in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-1871, which marked the rise of Germany to dominance in Europe. France was on the winning side of the First World War, but fared poorly in the Second World War. It fought losing wars in Indochina (ending in 1954) and Algeria (ending in 1962). The Fourth Republic collapsed and the Fifth Republic began in 1958 to the present.
During the post 20 years, the French influence and status in the international politics has been challenged on several levels; at the national level, France was weakened by years of low level economic growth, high level of unemployment, increasing social frictions, as a result of an increasing polarised society and a number of serious terrorist attacks. At the European level, France has gradually also lost its traditional leading position, this is partly due to its weak national economy but also reinforced by the enlargement of the EU, and the relative strengthening position of Germany in Europe. But also at the global level, France has seen his status being challenged, first as a direct consequence of its weakened position in Europe but also generally by global power shift and emerging powers.
For France, this weakened role has led to a collective national depression. It has been hard for the French to accept this decline and the reason for that is the fact that it is part of their national identity to be a great power or to play a global role. French people see their role as something exceptional, something unique and this exceptionalism is rooted in the role France has played in history and in particular in developing universal principles and norms. So having at the back of their minds the idea of ‘’grandeur’’ which means ‘’greatness’’ is something deeply French. General De Gaulle, a French historical leader has been most explicit in highlighting the notion of ‘’grandeur’’. He argued, in 1954 that ‘’ La France ne peut pas etre la France sans la Grandeur’’ which means ‘’France cannot be France without Greatness’’. For non-French, this can be dismissed as a cliché or something of the past, but this is actually deeply rooted in France way beyond De Gaulle, and it is not difficult to find similar quotes from all French Presidents since De Gaulle, In 2015, the French President, Francois Hollande advanced that: ’’We’re the guardians of this great idea of progress, or I could say this great idea of France for the world.’’. In 2017, Emmanuel Macron asserted that ‘’Political action has meaning only if it is accomplished in the name of a certain idea of man, of his destiny, of his unsurpassable value and of his greatness. This idea, France has long held. Nothing else must count in our eyes.’’
The concept of ‘’status seeking’’ is a powerful tool to understand the French Foreign Policy; but also it has taken different forms in different periods since the end of the Second World War. For instance, after WW2, France was in a very weak position. De Gaulle’s ambition then was to make France a natural member of the club of the winning parties, and he succeeded in spite of its weakness at a time, France became one of the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council. During the Cold War, the strategy was to play a leading role through the development of a strong and French led European integration process; what we can call the ‘’Europeanization strategy’’. Also, by showing independence between the two super powers (the USA and the Soviet Union) and this led to a French Foreign Policy that often was interpreted as Anti-American. Finally, after the end of the Cold War, there was an opportunity for this kind of policy of a ‘’French dominated Europe’’, and we saw also an abuse in the integration process with the French-German leadership at the core. What followed was the establishment of political union, the Euro, a strong European security and defence cooperation, the enlargement process, etc.
With these, the challenges earlier mentioned also came; creeping both at the national, the regional and global level, a French role in international affairs and in Europe was gradually weakened. This was something, the French were not really prepared for, so base on this background, the questions asked are: has France now abandoned its ambition of playing a global role? Has it accepted a new role as a middle power? Or has its global ambition status has taken a different form?
We argued that French Foreign Policy has not abandoned its traditional ambition of ‘’grandeur’’, it has just taken a new form. And this new form is characterised by an emphasis on some symbolic power and cultural capital rather than material power. This means that French political leaders had since around the turn of the millennium, been increasingly preoccupied by promoting themselves as defenders of the liberal order or liberal values. This also comes natural as they genuinely believe that these values have their origin from France in the light of the French Revolution and the enlightment period.
This is noticed from 2003 upward. Firstly, with the dispute of whether or not to enter in Iraq; France opposed the Bush administration and the US. This turn is observed in many other domains as well, and it has become more obvious recently with Macron handling of Putin, Brexit and Trump. In many ways, there seems to be a window of opportunity for France to return to the global scene as the defender of the liberal order that is increasingly being threatened. And Macron also seems particularly eager and clever to take advantage of this opportunity. But what does this really mean? Does it mean that France has certainly becomes a normative power? Not necessarily. At least, not more than other liberal democracies. Our argument is that first and foremost, this is a strategic choice. It is seen as the only way France can play a global role in a changing world.
The symbolic power approach which is dominant in the French Foreign Policy today is most obvious in the French-Africa policy; French-Russia policy and the French-US Relations. On security relations, the French-NATO policy and the French approach to counter-terrorism; the symbolic power turn is perhaps less obvious.0
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