Sputnik: After recent diplomatic trips to Washington by both President Macron and Chancellor Angela Merkel it’s clear now that President Macron is the leading force and strategist with regard to European strategy and policy direction, what’s your take on last weeks visits?
Dr. Jeanne Zaino: It was striking, just the visual alone was striking, because Macron was greeted with pomp and circumstance and as many people have commented on he and President Trump have a very, very warm relationship there was lots of hand holding and touching, and kissing, and smiling, it was absolutely astonishing visually, and you contrast that with the visuals of Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Trump and it’s a stark contrast, there was not a lot of pomp and circumstance, it was a very understated visit, the White House didn’t do much to celebrate her arrival, and the body language itself was very much in keeping with her last visit, was sort of much more business like, much more professional, neither one of them seemed particularly thrilled to be with the other, so from a visual perspective it was striking, and then you get to some of the policy issues and you saw Macron go into Congress and take on the President almost step-by-step in terms of their policy differences, and, of course, we know that Angela Merkel was pushing the President on the two key issues, of course, the Iran nuclear deal, where he’s going to be making a decision very shortly on that, and then also the issue of tariffs on steel and aluminium, so it was a stark contrast visually and yet from a policy perspective what Macron and Merkel were pushing for may not have been entirely different but I think you're right, and as many people have noted Macron has taken the mantle of the kind of leader of Europe and the EU at this point and certainly seems to understand how to handle President Trump and perhaps move him in a different direction.
Sputnik: Why is it that Macron is given so much favour? Is it the fact that he’s got such a powerful command of the French democracy now with the seats in the French parliament compared to the fact that there is a hung Parliament in Germany and Chancellor Merkel has not got the same power now as she had before, has that got something to do with that?
Dr. Jeanne Zaino: I think it does, and you know we haven’t heard much from President Trump on this issue, so we’re reading the tea leaves a little bit but I think that plays a role, I think there has been speculation about the fact that President Trump seems to prefer male leaders to female leaders so you can track his relationship with Merkel and Theresa May from Great Britain with his relationship with somebody like Macron or Benjamin Netanyahu, and you can see a vast gulf there just in terms of how comfortable they seem together personally, and when we talk about Benjamin Netanyahu versus Macron you see they’re both close to Donald Trump. Netanyahu famously and Trump have been close for many, many years but you also see that they have very different styles of trying to influence the president, I think we saw that on display with the visit from Macron and the kind of bromance — hey, buddy, buddy — attempt to persuade him versus Netanyahu when he took to the stage the other day with the Iran nuclear deal and took a page from Donald Trump‘s playbook with the theatrics, opening of the curtain, and the big PowerPoint appealing to the president publicly and the American public to pull out of this deal, so I think we’re seeing two different ways in which we see these leaders from obviously Israel and France try to persuade this president to come to their side on key issues. I don’t know which is going to prevail, at this point I think many people including Macron expect on the nuclear deal the President will pull out and try to renegotiate, we don’t know that yet, but I do think you see kind of a different style when you look at Benjamin Netanyahu versus Macron, and I do think we know that president Macron, even in his presentation style, the way he’s a young up-and-coming leader, the way he won quite unexpectedly, it’s somebody the president really can respect and in that way that seems to be present Trump's style, so it’s hard to know whether will have an influence from a policy perspective because Macron hasn’t gotten big things out of the president yet, I mean, he hasn’t gotten climate change, the tariffs are still hanging, they would like to be permanently exempt, we don’t know about the Iran nuclear deal, so for all the handholding we don’t know if Macron is going to get policy wins out of the White House.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the speaker and do not necessarily reflect those of Sputnik.
