There is nothing wrong at a time of hot and noisy wars with celebrating some amity between old, often grumpy neighbours. The original Entente Cordiale, 120 years old this week, was an unsentimental colonial carve-up between great powers — Egypt confirmed as a British client, Morocco under French control — but has mutated today into a useful, mature framework for aligning policy on Ukraine, for dealing with illegal immigration, for sharing intelligence and for jointly preparing a response to climate shocks.
The sight of the Coldstream Guards stamping their feet outside the Élysée Palace and the French Garde Républicaine marching into the forecourt of Buckingham Palace was designed to send a simple message: our defence is your defence. It hasn’t always worked that way during the tenure of President Macron.
The British were not the only ones to be baffled by his repeated attempts to persuade President Putin to think again before invading Ukraine. Poised awkwardly on the edge of a chair at the end of a preternaturally long table in the Kremlin, Mr Macron appeared to many of his allies to be occupying a supplicant role rather than projecting strength. That has changed over the course of the war.
Mr Macron no longer refers unhelpfully to the Nato alliance as “brain-dead”. Britain no longer has the blond-haired prime minister who declared that the “jury is out” on whether the French president should be regarded as a friend or foe. Now the British and French are jointly deployed in Estonia, Nato’s front line, and they are both training Ukrainian pilots to fly jet fighters. London and Paris also quietly co-ordinate the delivery of the long-range cruise missile systems Storm Shadow and Scalp to Ukraine.
From Mr Macron there has been a notable hardening of tone towards the Kremlin. In part this may be to distinguish his policy from the muted tones of his German partner. It is also a way of marking himself out from the Moscow-friendly posturing of his far-right rival Marine Le Pen. And there is a sense that if the United States chooses Donald Trump as its new president in November Nato powers in Europe will have to be ready with a credible strategic posture. Britain, which is quite likely to have a new prime minister by the time America chooses the next occupant of the White House, understands that a warmer institutional relationship with France is not only desirable but vital.
Advertisement
The international system has shifted from a world of blocs into one that will depend on a range of coalitions. That demands more honesty about the real leverage commanded by nation states like Britain and France. The Ukraine war has brought the European Union and Nato closer together, on both Russia and China, and that endows the old entente with new significance. For a start Britain could back the French proposal (already supported by more than 100 states) to suspend the power of veto wielded by the permanent five members of the United Nations security council in cases involving mass atrocities. The obstructionism of Moscow and Beijing has eroded the authority of the UN.
A renewed entente is needed not only for closer co-operation on migration and climate change but also to strengthen the stabilising influence of Europe’s two nuclear powers in a fractious and uncertain age.
