Follow us on social

Shutterstock_2146950397-scaled-e1650536986765

Marcron v. Le Pen: What the French election means for the US

These presidential candidates, locked now in a super tight race, have vastly differing positions on Russia and European cohesion.

Analysis | Europe

As they go down the final stretch of the French presidential election, Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen sound much the same when it comes to foreign policy. On Ukraine, Russia, and NATO, the two candidates seem to share similar assessments and positions. But beware of surface similarities. In fact, Macron and Le Pen have deep disagreements on many critical foreign policy issues. The outcome of the French election will matter a great deal to the United States.

Both Macron and Le Pen have tried to strike a delicate balance when it comes to Russia: condemnation of the Russian invasion but desire to maintain contact with Moscow. Macron’s efforts since 2019 in developing a personal relationship with Putin and extending a hand to Moscow have often been denounced as ham-handed or even naïve by his European partners. But Le Pen’s ties with the Kremlin go much deeper than a willingness to negotiate. Her party, the Rassemblement National, or National Rally, is the beneficiary of two loans from Russian banks. It also opposed sanctions against Russia after Moscow’s invasion of Crimea in 2014.

Le Pen played down her previous support for Putin before the first round of the election. But more recently, she came out once again in favor of forming an alliance with Russia in a “new European security architecture.” She has announced that, as president, she would form an alliance in the European Union with Hungary’s Viktor Orban to transform the EU from the inside, focusing her attention on migration and social issues. But the effect of a Budapest-Paris-Moscow axis on the EU would almost certainly extend well beyond social issues. The ideological divisions it would create within the EU would essentially hamstring any effective European geopolitical action with respect to Russia (and probably China, too).

Le Pen would also want to withdraw from NATO integrated command as soon as the war in Ukraine ends. She describes the organization as a “warmongering alliance,” rendering it responsible, by its enlargement to the East, for the current war in Ukraine. She would put an end to France’s provision of weapons to Ukraine, both bilaterally and through the EU.

Le Pen also wants to give up all European defense industrial plans in order to focus on France’s national defence system. She would turn away from the Franco-German tandem and seek more cooperation with the United Kingdom and Poland, in particular. Though she has formally given up on the idea of withdrawing France from the EU (“Frexit”), she would implement a purely transactional and self-interested foreign policy, reminiscent of Donald Trump’s “America First” approach. If France, a founding and central member of the EU, were to take this position, it would essentially spell the end of the European integration process.

The approach to European integration is where the two candidates most fundamentally diverge. If re-elected, Macron wants to build a true European power that can provide for its own security, ensure European prosperity, and defend European interests and values on the world stage. This means building up the capacity of the EU, in cooperation with NATO, to act as a security actor in Europe and its neighborhood. It also entails launching defense industrial projects with key European partners in the East and North of Europe, too. The intent would be to transform the strong European reaction to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — the use of sanctions, the activation of the European Peace Facility and the rethinking European enlargement — into an EU power projection capability.

From a U.S. perspective, these are starkly different futures. For all its shortcomings, Macron’s France remains the last best hope for a Europe that can provide for its own security and reduce America’s security burdens in Europe. Le Pen, by contrast, would lead France in a retreat into itself. Her destruction of the idea of a Europe that is capable of geopolitical action would leave the United States with the Hobson’s choice of abandoning Europe to the tender mercies of Russia and China or assuming ever greater security burdens on the old continent.


Photo: Symeonidis Dimitrios via shutterstock.com
Analysis | Europe
Afghanistan withdrawal
Lloyd Austin, Kenneth McKenzie, and Mark Milley in 2021. (MSNBC screengrab)

Turns out leaving Afghanistan did not unleash terror on US or region

Military Industrial Complex

It will be four years since the U.S. withdrew from Afghanistan on Aug. 30, 2021, ending a nearly 20-year occupation that could serve as a poster child for mission creep.

What began in October 2001 as a narrow intervention to destroy al-Qaeda, the terrorist group that perpetrated the 9/11 attacks, and topple the Taliban government for refusing to hand over al-Qaeda’s leader, Osama bin Laden, morphed into an open-ended nation-building operation that killed 2,334 U.S. military personnel and wounded over 20,000 more.

keep readingShow less
Francois Bayrou Emmanuel Macron
Top image credit: France's Prime Minister Francois Bayrou arrives to hear France's President Emmanuel Macron deliver a speech to army leaders at l'Hotel de Brienne in Paris on July 13, 2025, on the eve of the annual Bastille Day Parade in the French capital. LUDOVIC MARIN/Pool via REUTERS

Europe facing revolts, promising more guns with no money

Europe

If you wanted to create a classic recipe for political crisis, you could well choose a mixture of a stagnant economy, a huge and growing public debt, a perceived need radically to increase military spending, an immigration crisis, a deeply unpopular president, a government without a majority in parliament, and growing radical parties on the right and left.

In other words, France today. And France’s crisis is only one part of the growing crisis of Western Europe as a whole, with serious implications for the future of transatlantic relations.

keep readingShow less
Starmer Macron Merz
Top image credit: France's President Emmanuel Macron, Britain's Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Germany's Chancellor Friedrich Merz arrive at Kyiv railway station on May 10, 2025, ahead of a gathering of European leaders in the Ukrainian capital. LUDOVIC MARIN/Pool via REUTERS

Europe's snapback gamble risks killing diplomacy with Iran

Middle East

Europe appears set to move from threats to action. According to reports, the E3 — Britain, France, and Germany — will likely trigger the United Nations “snapback” process this week. Created under the 2015 Iran nuclear deal (JCPOA), this mechanism allows any participant to restore pre-2015 U.N. sanctions if Iran is judged to be in violation of its commitments.

The mechanism contains a twist that makes it so potent. Normally, the Security Council operates on the assumption that sanctions need affirmative consensus to pass. But under snapback, the logic is reversed. Once invoked, a 30-day clock begins. Sanctions automatically return unless the Security Council votes to keep them suspended, meaning any permanent member can force their reimposition with a single veto.

keep readingShow less

LATEST

QIOSK

Newsletter

Subscribe now to our weekly round-up and don't miss a beat with your favorite RS contributors and reporters, as well as staff analysis, opinion, and news promoting a positive, non-partisan vision of U.S. foreign policy.