Samantha Vinograd tops her weekly briefing with a look at the French president’s aims for his state visit with President Trump this week.
French President Emmanuel Macron has made no secret of his efforts to seduce you. He’s been after you since your first meeting in Brussels, Belgium, last year and followed up that encounter with your invitation to France for Bastille Day. He wants a serious relationship, but when he arrives in Washington on Monday — the first state visit of a foreign leader for this administration — he’s coming with a hefty personal and political agenda.
He’s up against strong headwinds in France; his domestic approval ratings are at their lowest point since he took office with only 40% of the French population saying they have a favorable opinion of Macron, a drop of 12 percentage points from December. His approval rating has dwindled as he pushes forward with politically sensitive public sector reforms.
He has described your relationship as « direct and frank » but knows you are not a popular figure in France (polls have shown that you have a 14% approval rating there). So he’s going to want to come out of this visit looking like he’s gotten something for investing time, effort and patience in your « unbreakable » relationship and will want to show that he, and France, are increasingly becoming the go-to powerhouse on the continent. Macron has tried to position himself as a global mediator, including with the Palestinians, Syrians and Russians, and Lebanese and on a personal level will want you to recognize his role.
Macron will have a long list of agenda items including:
● Russia – Call it like it is: Macron is not a wilting flower on Russia. He has urged dialogue with Russia over Syria and France has been vocal about Russian meddling in the French elections, ongoing illegal activities in Ukraine, and the poisoning in the United Kingdom of the former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter. Macron will likely be looking for you to join him in condemning Russia’s ongoing global misbehavior while supporting dialogue to de-escalate tensions in Syria. There is more that France could be doing — France has not sanctioned Russian oligarchs, like the administration did recently, so you could use your meetings to urge him to look into all means of pressure — financial, diplomatic, and otherwise. Multilateralizing sanctions could move them from symbolic to impactful.
● Syria – stay in it: Macron may believe the road to Damascus leads through dialogue with Moscow, but he does not want the United States to reduce our military footprint in Syria anytime soon. At one point, he claimed credit for persuading you to keep US forces in Syria, so it’s clear he wants to portray himself as calling at least some of the shots. He’ll want to reaffirm the ongoing US mission in Syria, and it may be a good time to clarify — privately before publicly — what the coalition red lines are, in fact, on future chemical weapons use. France remains a partner in our broader counter-ISIS campaign and in private you could ask him for additional resources as needed in Syria or elsewhere, particularly as France has suffered ISIS-inspired attacks for several years.
● Iran – this deal is better than no deal: Macron has criticized your decision to unilaterally pull out of deals like the Paris climate accord, and he will push you to avoid decertifying the Iran deal on May 12. He knows that administration requests to change the deal aren’t finalized with other parties and that the deadline for US certification is weeks away. He’ll likely raise the Iran deal when he addresses a joint session of Congress later this week. On Sunday he admitted he has no « plan B » if we withdraw from the deal so will likely use a lot of his horsepower to convince you that this deal is better than no deal, and it’s likely that he’s coming to Washington armed with some new concessions from other signatories. (Germany’s Angela Merkel will likely double-team on these points when she meets with you on Friday.) New European sanctions against Iran may be part of the combined European « stay in the deal » package.
● Trade – friends want benefits: After visiting Berlin on Thursday to coordinate his approach with Merkel, Macron is going to urge you to drop your proclivity for unilateral trade announcements, like the steel and aluminum tariffs that almost set off a trade war before exemptions were announced. He’ll probably try to get you to agree to extend the European Union’s exemption from the tariffs and will likely be looking for a public announcement to this effect.
Notably, Merkel will be with you at the White House a few days after the Macron state visit. They are likely coordinating their approach on all these points.
Kim Jong Un has a summit shopping list
After North Korea’s announcement that it is suspending nuclear and missile tests and closing a nuclear site, excitement ensued, including via Twitter. We assess that this was not, at its core, a conciliatory good faith gesture. Kim made this announcement because he may no longer need tests — he’s gotten his nuclear and missile program where he wants them to be. The official North Korean statement indicated that, « Under the proven condition of complete nuclear weapons, we no longer need any nuclear tests, midrange and intercontinental ballistic rocket tests, and that the nuclear test site in northern area has also completed its mission. »
While the timing of this announcement was likely meant to spark goodwill ahead of Kim’s summit with South Korean President Moon later this week, it is not a North Korean white flag. In fact it could be a move to pave the way for North Korea’s recognition as a nuclear power. The North Korean bottom line?
Tests — that may no longer be needed — are frozen, but the rest of the nuclear and missile program are not.
Add this announcement to Kim’s ongoing rapprochement with Moon, from the Olympics to K-Pop, he’s been making some friendly overtures. In the run-up to their Friday meeting at the Demilitarized Zone, the two Korean leaders even established a direct phone line between their offices for the first time.
Moon undoubtedly wants the intra-Korean summit to be a win; he’s invested a lot personally in this diplomatic « breakthrough. » But with all this seemingly positive momentum, the question still remains, what does Kim Jong Un want?
It is dangerous to assume that a leader as deeply paranoid as Kim Jong Un — and a leader engaged in so many malign activities — had an epiphany and has suddenly decided to open up his country to the world for nothing. Even if he does in fact believe that focusing on economic growth and improving the national economy is the best path forward, everything is a negotiation, and everyone wants something, including Kim Jong Un.
He probably views his summit with Moon and his summit with you, Mr. President, as part of a larger sequence, and so we have to assess what’s on his combined summit shopping list:
● Kim puts Kim first: First and foremost, Kim Jong Un cares about himself and confidence that he’s safe from regime change (or worse) is going to be the prerequisite for him seriously engaging in any way. And even if he actually intends to denuclearize, he’s going to want an ironclad assurance that this all isn’t a ruse to get him out of power. Remember that we don’t think he even left North Korea from 2011 until his recent trip to Beijing because of deep-seated paranoia about assassination attempts. If Mike Pompeo didn’t deliver a security assurance to Kim when they met over Easter weekend, Kim’s going to be shopping for one before he makes any real concessions.
● He wants to be Nuclear Prom King: We’ve seen Kim’s love affair with the spotlight play out since his publicity tour kicked off in January, and it’s clear he desperately craves attention. International recognition as a nuclear power has been on his shopping list for a while, and if he is going to agree to the complete, verifiable, irreversible dismantling of his nuclear program, he’s going to first want the world to acknowledge that, despite incredible constraints, he was able to achieve the nuclear capability that has eluded so many others.
