President Emmanuel Macron is starting to realign France’s foreign policy, setting out plans to be less interventionist in conflicts abroad and putting his country’s national security at the heart of diplomacy.
When Macron, 39, took office just over a month ago, he was widely expected to put the emphasis on continuity in foreign policy, an area in which he is a newcomer.
Following a policy based largely on ideological interests, France has in recent years been quick to intervene militarily in conflicts such as those in Libya, Mali and Central African Republic.
That appears to be about to change under Macron.
This week he dropped demands for President Bashar al-Assad to depart as a condition for any peace settlement in Syria and held out an olive branch to Russian President Vladimir Putin at talks in Versailles on May 29.
Macron appears to be broadly aligning his foreign policy with the US priorities of tackling terrorism while seeking better ties with Russia, which he considers a long-term partner rather than a direct threat to Europe.
Diplomats and officials say he is also seeking to shift policy by making clear his immediate aims are to weaken militants who threaten France from the Middle East and embark only on diplomatic initiatives that can bring concrete results.
“With me it will be the end of this sort of neo-conservatism that has been imported to France over the last 10 years,” Macron told eight European newspapers.
“We need to rediscover the coherence and strength of an international policy that restores credit and to have an unrelenting security policy to fight terrorism.”
French interventions in Middle East conflicts and its rigorous secularism have exposed it to attack by militants.
Some veteran French diplomats and officials say the policies of Macron’s predecessors, Francois Hollande and Nicolas Sarkozy, kept the country on the front line while others, such as the United States and Britain, pulled back from foreign adventures.
France also joined sanctions against Russia after it seized the Crimea peninsula from Ukraine in 2014.
Under Macron, France’s focus appears likely to shift to areas where Washington sees little added value, such as Africa, or to climate change, on which Washington and Paris disagree.
“You can bet that the Middle East peace initiative we promoted for the last few years is dead and buried,” said a French diplomat of international efforts to improve ties between Israel and the Palestinians.
By contrast, under Macron France has a rough plan for peace between rival factions in Libya, and has for the first time openly called for a united national army that includes eastern militia commander Khalifa Haftar to battle Islamist militants.
“Macron wants his team to focus on areas where there can be solutions and rewards for France.
I think he has realised that France is limited in what it can do and what its influence can bring,” said a Paris-based Middle Eastern diplomat.
“I think he sees things in terms of what are his red lines and beyond that, everything is negotiable.”
Macron’s approach has, however, caused unease among some French diplomats who call it one-dimensional, leaving France exposed to the whims of both the Russians and Americans.

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