Macron rues global crisis, calls for new alliances

PARIS: French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday lamented an “unprecedented crisis” in the global political system and urged new alliances to solve the world´s problems, in a call backed by Chinese and EU leaders. Macron hosted some two dozen heads of state and government at a Peace Forum in Paris just days after he sent shockwaves through Western capitals by warning about the viability of multilateral bodies NATO and the EU.

“We are experiencing an unprecedented crisis in our international system,” the president said, continuing the theme of an interview he gave to The Economist, published Thursday, in which he had warned NATO was experiencing “brain death” and the EU risked becoming insignificant. The president, who has sought a prominent place on the international stage since coming to power in 2017, said “new ways of cooperation, new alliances” are needed between states and organisations. The global political and economic systems constructed after the end of World War II, he added, had brought peace to some regions and helped lift many out of poverty. But new inequalities have emerged between peoples and countries to cause the rebirth of nationalism and unilateralism “even among those who are the last-resort guardians of this international system,” said Macron. To face today´s challenges — poverty, war, unchecked population growth, migration and dwindling natural resources — the world needed “more cooperation”, not less, the president insisted.

And he warned there should be no “squeamishness or hypocrisy” when it comes to questioning the workings of multi-national bodies such as the United Nations, which he said had become “blocked”.

Macron´s interview with The Economist caused much controversy, with German Chancellor Angela Merkel saying his comments were “drastic” and US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo insisting NATO was “important, critical”.