The EU, NATO, and a number of European capitals are watching France’s political turmoil with growing alarm, as President Emmanuel Macron is clearly on the ropes, having called early elections, leaving a path open for the French ‘far-right’ to triumph. 

The foreign policy establishment in both Europe and Washington fears that large-scale joint initiatives like ramped-up military spending and the new push to fund Ukraine’s defense for years to come could also be in question, given Macron had long become among Kiev’s top cheerleaders.

He had even recently unveiled a controversial plan to send French and NATO military trainers to Ukraine. “Paris has been working for a while now with the Ukrainians on this,” a person familiar with France’s initiative had told The Financial Times. But given the plan wasn’t launched formally by NATO leadership, Macron is seen as the prime mover on the European continent behind all of this.

AFP via Getty Images

But France’s surprise political leader as of this past weekend, Marine Le Pen – who blew president Macron away in the European Parliament elections – is reaching out to mainstream voters as she aims to cement a majority in the next parliament, a result that would constitute an earthquake in European politics.

Her group, the National Rally, is already on track to become the biggest party in the lower house, a prospect which has caused alarm among investors, the national security establishment, France’s international partners, and a section of the French public. Two rounds of parliamentary elections will conclude on July 7.

Macron in a Tuesday address admitted he was hurt by his party’s defeat in the European Parliament elections, and said the country would have been in “chaos” without his call for snap legislative elections: 

“Without a dissolution, there would have been chaos,” Macron was quoted as saying on Tuesday by Agence France-Presse. “The decision I took was the most difficult, the most serious, but the most responsible.”

With the National Rally expected to make sizeable parliamentary gains, what is its stance on Russia-Ukraine policy? And what’s Jordan Bardella vision of the issue, who could become French PM at the young age of 28?

The ‘controversial’ and supposedly ‘Russia-sympathetic’ stance is perhaps best seen in some quietly removed sections of defense policy that had been on the National Rally’s website prior to June 11. The sections had called for deepening diplomatic ties with Moscow, and for France to exit NATO’s integrated military command. Politico details of the removed policy sections which undoubtably still reveal the party’s thinking…

The deleted proposals hailed from Marine Le Pen’s presidential run in 2022, in which her party had laid out 17 thematic booklets outlining its proposals across all policy areas. While 16 booklets remain online, the one on defense was removed from the web page some time after June 11. It can still be found online at a page that is no longer linked to on the party’s website.

In the manifesto, the National Rally had advocated distance from Washington while trying to engage with Moscow. Noting that Washington “does not always behave as an ally to France,” Le Pen’s program in 2022 proposed to seek “an alliance with Russia on certain issues,” such as European security or combating terrorism.

The withdrawn document also said that France should “immediately” leave NATO’s integrated military command.

The deleted document also proposed “to put an end” to cooperation projects with Germany in the military sector, given “a deep and irreconcilable doctrinal, operational and industrial divergence with Berlin.” Those include plans for jointly developed next-generation battle tanks and next-generation fighter jets.

To expand on the question of France’s political future and what it means for new roadblocks or even serious reversal of Macron’s Ukraine policies, columnist and political cartoonist Ted Rall told Russia’s Sputnik early this week that “There’s no Jordan Bardella without a Marine Le Pen.”

“We don’t want Ukraine to join NATO, and we don’t want to divide our nuclear deterrent at the European level and send troops into a war that is not currently France’s war. These are very serious questions.” –Marine Le Pen

‘Macron wants to send French soldiers to Odessa to bolster his image’ – Marine Le Pen

‘We don’t have the same sensitivity as Sarkozy or Mariani on this issue [the war in Ukraine]. What is certain is that we [France] immediately supported Ukraine, we immediately condemned Russia,… pic.twitter.com/XB4kEYuEML

— Ignorance, the root and stem of all evil (@ivan_8848) May 7, 2024

Rall explained that shift to the right is in part a reaction against Macron’s ratcheting Ukraine policies, and a reflection of the reality that “The French don’t have an appetite for conscription or even for wars of choice.”

“They haven’t been engaged in [a war] in a long, long time,” Rall explained. “Ukraine’s a hot war. It’s a real war. It’s not like a police action, like going to quell the natives in New Caledonia. This is real serious. Frenchmen will be coming back in body bags from Ukraine.”

“And it’s a conflict that a lot of French people are deeply divided about. The politics are bad for Macron,” he continued. I don’t know why he’s absolutely so determined to push this narrative because truly he and his administration and his legacy are really on the ropes right now. And the last thing he needs is a controversial or unpopular policy, which this, I think, is.”