Part V - International Relations and Diplomacy
Conclusion
The foreign policy of sovereign France is neither isolationism nor alignment: it is active non-alignment, assumed, coherent and lasting. A France that speaks to everyone without submitting to anyone, that chooses its commitments according to its interests and its values, that keeps its word and expects reciprocity, that refuses blocs and automatisms and that assumes the balance of power when necessary for lack of a better option.
This chapter is inseparable from the domestic reform agenda items. External sovereignty is built on internal sovereignty: an industrially strong, energetically independent, monetarily autonomous and culturally vibrant France is a France whose diplomacy is credible. A dependent and constrained France has no real diplomatic lever, whatever formulas are employed.
The ruptures are numerous and assumed: exit from the EU, NATO, the ECHR and the Council of Europe, end of African military operations, lifting of sanctions against Russia, support for the exit from the franc CFA, refusal of global free trade. These ruptures are not ends in themselves: they are preconditions for the construction of a foreign policy that is genuinely sovereign, genuinely independent and genuinely in the service of the French people.
The constructions are equally numerous: targeted bilateral partnerships, strengthened cultural network, unified and powerful external broadcasting, observer status at the BRICS, refoundation of the Franco-African relationship on equitable foundations, active defence of multilingualism in international organizations. Sovereign France is not a France that refuses the world: it is a France that freely chooses how it engages with it.