Macron in Beirut

by STEPHEN PASCOE

French president Emmanuel Macron’s surprise visit to Beirut on 6 August 2020, two days after the shocking blast which stole the lives of at least 200 individuals and devastated large swathes of the Lebanese capital, has been lauded by certain international observers as a public relations coup. The swiftness with which Macron materialized in the city, riding the wave of collective anguish, gave him the appearance of a savior to some Lebanese lamenting the collapse of their country’s state and society. His apparent closeness to “the people” as he waded through crowds in the badly-damaged Gemmayze neighborhood—even hugging one woman despite the current zeitgeist of social distancing—conveyed a striking “optics and ethics.” That a foreign leader was present in the streets to offer consolation to victims before any high-profile Lebanese politician invoked an inevitable comparison with the non-responsiveness of the government. His empathetic outpouring, moreover, stood in marked contrast to the awkward physical and discursive distance he affected between himself and Lebanon’s detested ruling class. The uncomfortable body language and the terseness of Macron’s public statements following his meeting with his aging Lebanese counterpart Michel Aoun did away with customary diplomatic nicety.[1] 

There was something almost de Gaulle-esque in Macron’s affectation of charisma in the Lebanese capital: the impeccable timing, the careful stage management of the public pronouncements, the intuitive ability to read a crowd, the capacity to seem profound while saying nothing. In a June 1958 speech in Algiers to French settlers racked by anxiety over the Algerian war of independence, de Gaulle famously began with the phrase Je vous ai compris! —an empty sentiment into which each auditor could insert a personalized meaning. In a revealing reversal of the historical dominance of the French language in the Mediterranean, Macron addressed his well-wishers on the streets of Beirut last week in a combination of English and French. But the message was the same: “I have understood you.”  

Macron’s flash mob diplomacy reawakened colonial nostalgia among some Lebanese in the country and the diaspora.

Macron’s flash mob diplomacy reawakened colonial nostalgia among some Lebanese in the country and the diaspora. Within hours of his visit, more than 50,000 signatures had been gathered on an online petition calling for the re-establishment of a French mandate in the country(!) Citing the Lebanese government’s “total inability to secure and manage the country”, the signatories expressed their desire for Lebanon to “go back under the French mandate in order to establish clean and durable governance.” However, all those who—perhaps due to exasperation by the country’s plight in this moment of desperation—believed that Macron has understood them ought to be wary of the intentions of the smooth-talking Parisian president. Macron’s appearance bore the hallmarks of previous episodes in a long roll-call of French leaders, bankers, troops, generals, engineers, diplomats, investors, and missionaries arriving in Beirut—often in episodes of crisis like the present moment. Furthermore, Lebanon’s contemporary catastrophes are in no small measure the consequence of Frenchmen arriving in Beirut. Given the call to turn back the clock of history, it is worth pausing to revisit a few key episodes in French imperialism over the past two centuries and to evaluate their legacies.

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