Emmanuel Macron — a man, a moment, and a mighty challenge

He arrived in Australia yesterday as Europe’s newest best hope. But Emmanuel Macron is far more — he is a liberal, a disrupter and a reformer, a unique trifecta these days as he engages in an acrobatic diplomacy of being Donald Trump’s alliance friend as well as a major critic of his policies.

The crisis of Western politics vests Macron with a series of remarkable roles — in France he aspires to defeat the unions and combat 9 per cent unemployment with labour market reforms denied for generations; across the ­Atlantic he acts as the bridge trying to hold Europe and America together; with populism and polarisation rampant in the democracies, he wants to prove middle-ground centrist politics can still succeed; and finally, in his extraordinary speech to the US congress Macron becomes chief upholder of the global liberal order now under assault on many sides.

Macron has important business to transact with Malcolm Turnbull on what is just the second visit by a serving French president to Australia. But events are making Macron into a vital global figure. He may fail to deliver fully on any of those four goals — but each testifies to the daunting challenges facing the democratic West.

There is much shared ground and common spirit between the French President and Australia’s Prime Minister. With Turnbull ­visiting France last week for the Great War centenary events near Amiens — the town where Macron grew up — and Macron in Australia this week, the emotional history and ties are vast.

French-Australian bonds have been revitalised given the decision that France will partner with Australia on the $50 billion 12-submarine project described by Turnbull during his visit to Paris last year as “the largest and most ambitious military project in Australia’s history”.

Events give Macron and France fresh opportunity in a Trumpian world where Theresa May struggles with domestic fixations arising from Brexit, and Germany’s Angela Merkel is now weakened and heading towards the twilight of her long period as Chancellor.

Macron is now the driver of EU reform. No other Western leader has been able to deploy the blend of astute flattery and significant differences in dealing with Trump that has marked Macron’s audacity. Whether it works is another issue.

Events are also bringing Australia and France closer — witness vast new defence industry co-operation, the potential for co-operation across the Indo-Pacific where France has a tangible presence and a range of territories, and the shared Macron-Turnbull strategic concern about the tactics of China and Russia.

Although a liberal internationalist, Macron believes in the value of engagement, the use of power (witness his involvement in the recent US retaliation against Syria) and the need to renovate democracy. “What we cherish is at stake,” he told America last week. “What we love is in danger.”

Macron’s political feats have been astonishing. He won the presidency and then secured a parliamentary majority via En Marche, the party he had created, thereby effectively restructuring the party system — before turning 40. The question now becomes: can he translate such success into economic reform?

His task, above all, is to repair France’s fractured domestic economic policy framework. Macron campaigned on a reform agenda in a country where ludicrous trade union privileges, a huge welfare state and “resort to the streets” radicalism have crippled France’s economic delivery for decades.

If Macron fails then reform will be postponed for yet another generation. In recent weeks he has faced prolonged strike action by railway workers (with train drivers able to retire at age 50, while the national retirement age is 62), strike action by Air France staff, agitation on university campuses and rising hostility from public sector unions.

While Macron, now 40, is the youngest president in the history of the republic, youth, good looks and eloquence will not suffice to win these battles — he must negotiate France through a historical change in its political culture by a mix of willpower, empathy and judgment. If he is beaten by the street his mission is ruined.

You cannot miss the irony that the famous student leader from the 1968 street revolt, Daniel Cohn-Bendit (known as Danny the Red in the English media), backs Macron. While the Socialists and Communists are far weaker than 50 years ago — and the unions are not as strong — the defeat of a reform-based new president would be devastating for France and Europe. A window of opportunity has opened for France; it may not come again for many years.

Addressing the US congress last week, Macron skilfully invoked the long revolutionary ties between America and France, their “common vision for humanity”, and recalled the meeting in Paris between Voltaire and Benjamin Franklin amid many kisses. Last year, on the first Bastille Day of his presidency Macron invited Trump to Paris — a masterstroke. “Freedom is a call to think and to love,” Macron told the US legislators before his litany of reference points from Thomas Jefferson to jazz to World War II and 9/11.

Then he launched a frontal assault on Trump’s framework. “We can choose isolationism, withdrawal and nationalism.” These were “options” but “closing the door to the world” was futile. Macron was “convinced” that this was a “critical moment” with the fate of institutions from the UN to NATO at stake, along with “the liberal order we built after World War II.”

The answer today, he said, lay in a revived multilateral system that still allowed national cultures to thrive. Macron told the Americans, Republican and Democrat alike, this liberal order had been built by the US post-war.

He came now in the spirit of America to champion human rights, climate change action, market economics, globalisation and a tough line against terrorists. On climate change, he said there was “no planet B”; on Muslim migration he said the answer was not rejection but getting everybody “to respect the laws of the country”. This was not the Trump “America first” credo.

Macron predicted the US would eventually rejoin the Paris Agreement on climate change. After declaring that Iran must never possess a nuclear weapon, he hammered the dangers in Trump’s policy of wanting to scuttle the Iranian nuclear deal that the US President has previously branded “insane”.

Macron’s message was that France would not abandon its position unless there was a viable alternative agreement. As a realist, he conceded Trump was unlikely to be persuaded. The moral, however, is that with Trump, pressure usually has an impact.

In a flight of hyperbole the president of the US Council on Foreign Relations and Trump critic Richard Haass said Macron “solidified his standing as leader of the West (to the extent there still is a West)”.

It is easy to say Macron hasn’t persuaded Trump to change his mind. But he has done two things: made clear he wants a partnership with America (that means a personal connection with Trump) and made equally clear he was prepared to rebuke his host where he thinks Trump’s policies are counterproductive.

Earlier this year Macron visited China and signalled his determination to build an enhanced economic and trade relationship with Beijing. He supports China’s Belt and Road Initiative but says the growth benefits must be shared and the policy cannot be a unilateral exercise.

France has a deep sense of its national sovereignty; it has a global vision and is an Indo-Pacific power. Under Macron it has a President with a leader’s mentality and an activist’s energy.

It is still too early to judge whether idealism or realism will have the most sway within Macron or how successful he might be. But Macron has arrived at the right time for Australia: we need a more broadbased strategic framework everywhere — in the Pacific, in managing China and dealing with the consequences of Trump’s America.