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A
victory for the French far-right’s Marine Le Pen would be a far greater
geopolitical shock than Britain’s 2016 decision to leave the EU ©
Bloomberg Nations
that lose on the battlefield often claim their troops were stabbed in
the back by civilians back home. That drove the script of Adolf Hitler’s
rise after the first world war. The idea also surfaced in the American
right’s post-Vietnam narrative. Claims of betrayal are usually
mythological. But the west is dangerously capable of political self-harm
in its showdown with Russia. By
most measures, Vladimir Putin’s military is losing in Ukraine, or at
least not winning, which for the time being amounts to the same thing.
Ukraine’s military is over-performing, as are its highly motivated
people. Nato continues to provide them with the tools to humiliate
Russia. Putin’s best hope is that Nato descends into squabbling and
loses its appetite for the struggle. France’s presidential election,
which holds its first round this Sunday, and a two-horse finale a
fortnight later, presents Putin with the kind of political reversal that
could change the nature of this war. If Russia cannot dominate on the
battlefield, its next best hope is for dramatic new evidence of western
decay. Enter
Marine Le Pen, a self-professed admirer of Putin, who is now running
neck and neck with Emmanuel Macron in polling for the second round. The most recent survey,
conducted this week, shows her winning the French presidency with 50.5
per cent to 49.5 per cent for Macron. These are Brexit-type late poll
movements after months of assumptions that Macron was cruising to
victory. But
a victory for the French far right in this situation would be a far
greater geopolitical shock than Britain’s 2016 decision to leave the EU.
What gives the French polls credence is the nature of the rest of the
field in first-round voting intentions. Le Pen trails Macron by 21.1 per
cent to his 27.3 per cent. But if you add up the third and
fourth-placed candidates — the far-left Jean-Luc Mélenchon, and the
far-right Éric Zemmour, both of whom are also fans of Putin — you reach
almost half. Le Pen would then need to peel off just a slice of support
for fifth-placed Gaullist candidate, Valérie Pécresse, to take her over
the threshold. A Le Pen victory would put last weekend’s dispiriting re-election of Hungary’s Viktor Orban and Serbia’s Aleksandar Vukic
into the shade. Both strongmen are Putin groupies who manipulated their
countries’ electoral rules. A pro-Putin victory on a French level
playing field would be a far more dramatic event. As Europe’s leading
nuclear weapons state, and the only one inside the EU, a Le Pen victory
would have strategic as well as political shock impact on the war in
Ukraine. Le Pen has vowed to withdraw France from Nato’s military
structure, lift French sanctions on Russia and urge Ukraine to accept
Russia’s terms. Like Zemmour, the neo-fascist nutjob whose rise has
inadvertently helped make Le Pen look respectable (“hygienic” seems to
be the term of art), Le Pen is an overt admirer of Putin. But she is far
savvier than Zemmour. After Russia’s February 24 invasion, Le Pen had
to pulp millions of electoral booklets that included a picture of her
meeting Putin in the Kremlin. It
is quite possible that France’s voters will sober up after this Sunday.
The first round is traditionally where France indulges its spirit of
protest and people vote with their hearts — and many of them despise
Macron. Once the field whittles down to a direct choice between two
candidates, minds get concentrated and fear outweighs contempt. Le Pen’s
surge has a lot to do with the fact that she has switched her focus to
domestic issues, such as the cost of living and immigration, rather than
Ukraine. If events force the conversation back on to Ukraine, that
ought to benefit Macron. Do not count on Putin to assist Macron in that
regard. I imagine he will try to keep things quiet in Ukraine in the
build-up to the second round. This
will be the third Le Pen stab at the presidency. In the first one in
2002, Jean-Marie Le Pen, Marine’s estranged and openly anti-Semitic
father, got just 18 per cent of the vote. In 2017, Marine took 33 per
cent. The trendline is pretty clear. Even if she loses, which is still
marginally more likely than her winning, nearly half of France would
have endorsed a homegrown neo-fascist in the middle of a struggle
against the world’s leading one. Le Pen draws from the same anti-modern,
Christian chauvinist well as Putin. Whatever happens, the next two
weeks will be fateful for the west. |