Jean-Yves Le Drian: “Our competitors have no taboos or limits” – Le Monde

Jean-Yves Le Drian, Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs of Emmanuel Macron since 2017, after having been Minister of Defense in the government of François Hollande, deplores, in an interview with World, the “Diplomatic populisms”.

How has the pandemic aggravated international tensions?

We are not yet completely out of the Covid-19 crisis, but we are already observing that the world is getting worse and worse. We see not only the brutalization of the reports, but also a real race for power, aggravated by a competition of models. Our competitors have no taboos or limits: they project private militias everywhere, hijack planes, detonate satellites, they subordinate peoples, siphon resources on certain continents, I am thinking of Africa, by forcing the countries concerned to collapse under debt. We must act now, otherwise history will not wait for us. The challenge for Europe is to accelerate in order to have the capacity to be an asserted power, defend its model and promote effective multilateralism.

But isn’t Europe itself threatened?

We are seeing the rise of populism, which can distract us from this need. The populist drift also concerns foreign and European policy. I am thinking of those who play with the fundamental principles of our own European project. I am thinking of those who are fascinated by authoritarian regimes, who will even look for a form of guarantee there, of those who can give in to temptations of alliance of setbacks, of those who consider that the migration policy is the alpha and the l omega of all foreign policy. These diplomatic populisms are in fact a hidden renunciation of power, of European identity and of our values, in the form of a posture of matamores. For our part, we are making concrete progress. The French Presidency of the European Union [UE] from January 2022 will allow us to accelerate in the affirmation of its power, its sovereignty and its model.

Is what is happening on the border between Belarus and Poland a “migration attack”, or a hybrid war operation?

It is not, in the first place, a migratory crisis. It is first of all an instrumentalisation of migrants by a dictator to try to destabilize Europe. This problem must be treated as a cynical and organized provocation. This is trafficking in manipulated human beings. Faced with this, we must show great firmness and very strong solidarity with the European countries which are victims of this manipulation. This requires new sanctions against Minsk.

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