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00:00Yeah, Arnaud Pontius from Radio France International and Elisabeth Talin from France 24 speaking there with French President Emmanuel Macron on the sidelines of the 80th annual opening of the United Nations General Assembly in New York.
00:15We will just watch that exclusive interview in the company of France 24's Douglas Herbert from our International Affairs desk and Vivian Walt, Paris correspondent for Time magazine.
00:27Now, this 80th opening of the U.N. General Assembly has been marked by a lot of drama.
00:36Let's begin with what's just happened in the last 24 hours, and that is Ukraine and Donald Trump, who gave a speech at the rostrum of the U.N. General Assembly where he barely mentioned it, but he sounded a bit miffed at Vladimir Putin.
00:53And then that was confirmed later. You heard Emmanuel Macron reacting there with sort of cautious approval of what Donald Trump had told Volodymyr Zelensky, namely that now Russia was to blame and that Ukraine could win the war.
01:11I think one has to pause very carefully what President Trump has to say on any given day, but particularly in front of the U.N. where he kind of gave this meandering, somewhat at times incoherent diatribe really at times, four times as long as his allotted time slot from the podium.
01:36And then came out with what seemed to be and then came out with what seemed to be an about-turn on Ukraine.
01:43However, he's done this a few times before, and it's not that long ago that he embraced Vladimir Putin in Alaska and appeared to be ready to give him whatever he wanted.
01:55So I think it puts President Macron in this very odd spot, a kind of tight spot, in which he's saying, you know, we have to take it up a notch because Russia's taken it up a notch.
02:11And, of course, the U.S. is going to be with us, I think his term was, in solidarity, through Article 5 of the Charter of NATO.
02:22Really? Do we really know that?
02:25He's said several times that he probably wasn't going to do that.
02:29And so I think for President Macron, he kind of presented this fairly optimistic scenario ahead.
02:38But there's another way to look at it, I think, which is that what President Trump is actually saying is, you guys sort it out.
02:46I'm sure you'll be fine.
02:48Kind of like you might do to your own kids, you know, who are fighting.
02:51And it's like, you folks sort it out, and, you know, I'm going to go off and do my adult business.
02:57Listening to that interview, Douglas, it began with Emmanuel Macron saying, Russia's weaker than it seems.
03:07Well, that is something Volodymyr Zelensky told Donald Trump yesterday.
03:10Is he saying that for the benefit of international audiences or for Donald Trump?
03:15I think a little bit both.
03:17But I think picking up on something Vivian was saying before, I think there's a lot of wishful thinking,
03:22where if you sort of wish enough that Donald Trump means a certain thing, perhaps it will actually become reality.
03:29Because there's a school of thought that would say Donald Trump himself hasn't put too much deep analysis or thinking into these statements.
03:35A lot of it is just personal.
03:37It could be a visceral reaction to this sense of feeling jilted by Putin, a man who he clearly likes and admires.
03:43We know from the things he said about Putin in the past.
03:45And so a lot of this could be on a very visceral, emotional level, things that he says without attaching to it a lot of the strategic nuance and the implications of what his words actually mean.
03:58I think what you're asking me, when Macron is talking to Trump, I think he's saying, well, let me take him literally.
04:04Let me take his words and let's go with that.
04:07Let's try to now take that narrative and try to maybe even talk Trump into his own narrative, if that makes any sense.
04:14So when he says Russia's weak, he's actually, yeah, he's picking up on Zelensky's line so that Donald Trump and he this time he did.
04:23And Donald Trump doesn't walk away from yet another meeting reciting the Kremlin talking points on the war.
04:27Vivian Walt explaining to us that it's still a jury still out as to whether or not the United States is now all in.
04:34And we saw that on Tuesday, there was a special meeting of NATO that took place after a series of provocations.
04:45First, it was those drones that fell inside of Poland.
04:49And more recently, a 12-minute violation of Estonian airspace, three MiG fighters that had to be escorted out by Italian NATO airplanes.
05:00In that interview that you just saw, Emmanuel Macron asked specifically about what was called during the Cold War, the language of deterrence.
05:11What would be the next step?
05:12Would it include, for instance, the likes of shooting down Russian airplanes if they violated airspace?
05:18The objective over what Russia is doing, as I see it, is to tell us, you want to support Ukraine, you want security guarantees.
05:27I'm signaling with these incursions that you should worry about your own defense.
05:32It's important to react quickly, which is what we've done.
05:35We need to enhance our posture, commit more resources, which is what France has done.
05:39And if there are further provocations, to take things up a notch, because that's what Russia will have decided to do.
05:46And I don't think it's in their interest.
05:49Now, we heard Poland's prime minister say, if we get more Russian planes, we're going to shoot them down, basically.
05:56Is that the language of deterrence?
05:58Is that on the same level we're hearing from Emmanuel Macron?
06:01Look, I think that, yes.
06:04I mean, it's great to hear Emmanuel Macron say these things, because clearly the war is creeping closer and closer.
06:13And I think Europeans, rather us in the European Union, are suddenly realizing that Russia is prepared to overstep these lines.
06:23There's one very clear reason why they're prepared to overstep these lines, and that is because they don't think the U.S. will intervene.
06:31And actually, another thing that Emmanuel Macron said throughout the interview was, we need the U.S.
06:38We need U.S. weapons.
06:40This plan is going to be the U.S. spearheading this plan.
06:45And I think, once again, as Doug says, this is kind of wishful thinking.
06:50You have a very volatile, very unpredictable U.S. president who's viscerally given to siding with Putin.
06:59And he said, I think only yesterday, that he thought Ukraine would be the easiest war to solve, because he had this great relationship with Vladimir Putin.
07:09And so I think that there's a lot of optimistic planning going on that might not really sync with the hard facts on the ground.
07:20He talked about NATO reacting proportionally so far.
07:26Has that been the case?
07:28I guess that is the case.
07:29I mean, in the sense that, look, there's not been casualties.
07:33It's not like you have Russian missiles, you know, slamming into a Polish city, which easily could happen.
07:41But it hasn't.
07:43And perhaps in the thinking of NATO, strategically, it's, you know, you don't want to ratchet things up to such an extent that you kind of lose control.
07:53So I think, yes, probably it is proportional.
07:58It's easier to escalate than de-escalate.
08:00And I think the context here is important, because Macron has always been cautious, even as he has tried to put himself front and center on the diplomatic stage.
08:09And he has always seen himself as perhaps the most forceful voice in Europe, trying to push forth a really cohesive foreign policy.
08:16At the same time, there's always been that, you know, you say in French, well, you know, at the same time, en même temps, he's always had sort of this counterbalancing instinct in whatever he says, whatever people ask him.
08:28And it's a default to caution.
08:31And I think it's interesting, because when I mention the context, this comes a day after Francois.
08:35We had Donald Trump, President of the United States, in his fifth UN address, right?
08:39He had four in his first term, first of this term, savaging the UN as an institution, ripping it to shreds, basically.
08:47Essentially, the speech could be summed up as, what have you done for me lately?
08:51And in that context, you have almost the accidental world leader, Macron, perhaps he wouldn't explicitly say he sees himself that way, but he's stepping into a breach here.
09:01He's stepping up to the plate, saying and acting in ways and doing things and making speeches before the UN that you might have expected in the past from a U.S. president to do.
09:12And hence, he probably also feels a responsibility to be balanced in what he says, to take on that pulpit of global responsibility.
09:20He was asked, you know, with both respect to Putin and with Netanyahu afterwards, he was, you know, asked why, you know, perhaps why hasn't he been more forceful?
09:29You know, what does he think of him really? And he says, listen, I respect him because he is the elected leader, you know, the democratically elected leader of his country.
09:38And I remember Macron saying exactly, he said the exact same line about Donald and he said the exact same thing.
09:45Yes, about Netanyahu in this case, but exact same thing when I sat in that very same room at the French mission to the UN several years back at another UN General Assembly.
09:52We asked him that question, but with respect to Trump. Why does he keep being buddy-buddy with Trump?
09:57What are all these meetings about? What is that relationship about? He used the same line.
10:01He says, I have to respect this as a democratically elected leader of the most powerful nation on earth.
10:07I owe it to both the U.S. and to the people who elected me here in France to be as even-handed and as responsible in our relationship with that president.
10:17All right. Yeah. And you mentioned then the other major part of that interview that we just watched here on France 24 of the French president.
10:25And there again, Emmanuel Macron on the subject of Israel and France, co-chairing that meeting on a two-state solution Monday where Paris recognized a Palestinian state,
10:40a symbolic move that was joined by the 10 others, including the likes of Britain, Australia and Canada.
10:49Emmanuel Macron putting the onus on the current offensive in Gaza City, the guns not going silent, and was asked how far the pressure on Israel should go.
11:06There are two ways of doing it. I've used both with a maximum effort to convince the Israelis and to convince the Americans to put pressure on them.
11:15And then, in the days ahead, if things continue in Gaza, all us Europeans will have responsibilities to take.
11:23You mean sanctions?
11:24Obviously.
11:26But you can see that the EU 27 are divided.
11:29When I see things, I'm trying to change them. We're all faced with the same situation.
11:34The analysis I've made is factual, and everyone has their own leanings and history.
11:39For more, let's cross now to Jerusalem and correspondent Noga Tarnapovsky.
11:45Noga, in that interview that we just heard, Emmanuel Macron talking about possible sanctions,
11:51saying, yes, Hamas does not want to free the hostages, but neither does Netanyahu.
11:58How's his speech going to go down where you are?
12:00Well, I think it's going to get quite a lot of attention.
12:06There were a number of points made by President Macron, none less dramatic for Prime Minister Netanyahu
12:13than President Macron's confirmation of news that we heard from Politico just in the last hour.
12:21And that is that for the United States, as for France, any West Bank annexation is a red line
12:29that Benjamin Netanyahu cannot cross.
12:32Netanyahu has come very, very close to promising that exact move to his cabinet,
12:37a very extremist right-wing nationalist cabinet.
12:42And if this, in fact, holds, and when Benjamin Netanyahu meets Trump next Monday,
12:47Trump says no to that move, Netanyahu could find himself in a very difficult political bind back home,
12:56not because of the citizens of Israel, but because of promises made to his ministers.
13:01I also think that Macron was very careful to address himself, perhaps obliquely,
13:07but to Israelis, reminding all of the public listening to him
13:12that France is the only country that held a national memorial for those killed on October 7th,
13:18something the Israeli government has not dared to do.
13:21And he said flat out that Netanyahu's contention,
13:27made most recently in Netanyahu's Sparta speech,
13:30in which he basically warned Israelis that two blocs are forming in the world
13:35and Israel belongs to none of them, and that they should prepare to go alone.
13:40Macron related directly to that, and he said that is false, directly to Netanyahu.
13:46I think all of this is going to garner quite a bit of attention in Israel tonight.
13:51How will the tone of the French president go down,
13:53particularly when it comes to recognizing a Palestinian state?
13:57You know, the recognition has been so dramatic diplomatically
14:07and took up so much of the airspace in New York
14:10that it's difficult to understand that for Israelis,
14:14it actually has not caught their attention very much.
14:17One of the reasons is technical.
14:19This was a long, very long Rosh Hashanah weekend for Israelis.
14:23Many are abroad or away on holiday.
14:26Others were gathered with their families.
14:29So attention hasn't been on the news in the way it normally is.
14:32In addition, Israelis remain completely focused on the plight of the hostages.
14:37Hamas released a hostage video, a pretty harrowing hostage video,
14:42of Alon Ohel, a young classical pianist, being held by Hamas
14:47just on the eve of this holiday.
14:49So Israelis are really focused on their hope to end the war
14:54and their hope to still rescue those hostages still alive.
14:59And much less focus has been put on the question of Palestinian statehood,
15:04although there have been some civil society organizations that welcomed it,
15:10coexistence organizations, Israeli-Palestinians organizations have welcomed it.
15:16And indeed, it did get a lot of attention from Netanyahu's ministers,
15:21whose reactions have been really, I have to say, out of bounds,
15:26very harsh against Macron, even harsher against Keir Starmer,
15:33including Israel's ambassador to the United States,
15:36who is a close political ally of Netanyahu's,
15:40who compared Keir Starmer to, he called him,
15:43a new Chamberlain, recognizing the new Nazis.
15:47So those reactions have been very extreme.
15:49Reactions among regular Israelis have been extremely muted so far.
15:53Noga Tarnapovsky, many thanks for joining us there from Jerusalem.
15:56Vivian Walt, you know, much of that segment devoted to the French recognition of Palestine,
16:05devoted to the reaction here in France.
16:08Did Emmanuel Macron strike the right balance?
16:11He has had this continual fight to counteract the sort of narrative about anti-Semitism in France,
16:23which has only been, you know, greatly increased since the new U.S. ambassador was installed in Paris,
16:31who is not only the father of President Trump's son-in-law, but also a fairly observant Jew.
16:40So it's been his campaign to fight against anti-Semitism in France.
16:48Macron was very blunt in saying that that was totally not his role.
16:53to get in, to intervene in such issues and basically discounts it.
16:59Although I did think that it was very interesting that Macron took the time
17:04to actually outline the problems that Jewish French people are facing right now,
17:12which he does not usually do.
17:14And I think clearly he wanted to convey very strongly the message that there were like real
17:21things happening on the ground, kids being too scared to go to school and people, you know,
17:29not wanting to wear the skull caps in the streets and so on.
17:33But making the point that the only way to fight this was to essentially end this war,
17:42bring the hostages back, create a kind of two-state solution.
17:47Otherwise, it was going to be kind of a disaster for Jews worldwide.
17:52He's not the only person to say this, of course.
17:55There are many, many Jewish, including rabbis, who actually have made this point.
18:00Yeah, he talked when it came to the Russia-Ukraine segment about the U.S. playing a key role.
18:09Here, he went even further.
18:11He said the need for the United States to spearhead things.
18:17And there again, Donald Trump, there was his speech at the United Nations, scant mention of...
18:23No mention, really, of Gaza. He did, he mentioned, obviously, getting the hostages...
18:26He said he thought it was a bad idea because it was a gift to Hamas to recognize Palestine.
18:31But did you get a sense, listening to Macron there, because he did have a bilateral meeting with Donald Trump,
18:37that things could be moving between now and the time that Trump sits down in a few days' time with the Israeli prime minister or not?
18:44Well, this being Donald Trump, mercurial, unpredictable, we don't know.
18:48We won't even know, you know, five minutes before it could be different than a minute before.
18:52I think Emmanuel Macron, and I go back to what I said about wishful thinking, is trying, is trying to think that perhaps he has no illusions,
18:59that nothing is going to change in the Middle East calculus, especially with respect to this conflict,
19:03unless the influence of Israel's closest ally, still closest ally, is its influence is somehow brought to bear in a heavy way in this conflict, as in others.
19:14And I think that Macron, once again, is trying to harness a hope that he can perhaps channel that somehow in Donald Trump before he goes to the meeting.
19:25I mean, it's very important, the timing, when meeting with Trump.
19:27You have to make sure that your words to him and your meeting with him are as close as possible to his actual physical meeting with the person that you want him to convey your message to.
19:35And you have to do it in a very certain, delicate way.
19:38I think in this case, he is under no illusions.
19:43I think he is, yes, he's spoken out time and again about anti-Semitism, how it's antithetical to the values of the French Republic.
19:51He's perhaps been the European leader who was perhaps most often, most frequently in his public addresses, time and again condemned anti-Semitism.
19:59And perhaps the European leader that the fewest people realize has time and again condemned anti-Semitism.
20:04That's a paradox as well.
20:06I think that in the case of Donald Trump, he is probably under few illusions.
20:11Trump is the only one right now who can really, really change Netanyahu's behavior.
20:17And even there, it's a roll of the dice.
20:20Even there, it is not a sure bet that Donald Trump in the United States in its current configuration has still the influence of the power.
20:28Remember when Biden, a Biden who was, you know, the only really self-declared Zionist president, right, in U.S. history, even Biden, a close friend, self-professed close friend of Netanyahu, was unable to really fundamentally change Netanyahu's behavior, bring that influence and that friendship to bear.
20:47And those longstanding ties to Israel, Donald Trump says he has the ties to Israel, that he is, you know, a great friend of the Jewish state.
20:55But at the end of the day, his influence with Netanyahu may be limited, despite that conventional wisdom that we've lived with for ages, that unless the U.S. steps into the equation, Israel isn't going to change its behavior.
21:07So when it's wheels up for the French presidential plane after this U.N. week, will Emmanuel Macron have made a difference in the Middle East?
21:15You know, he talks about this meeting that 143 countries, you know, were on board with, which is quite an accomplishment.
21:27And I think, yes, I think he should be pretty proud of that.
21:32The problem is that the most important player, just as Doug was saying, was not one of those 143 countries.
21:39And you have the really almost impossible situation right now that the most isolated leaders in the world right now are Donald Trump and Bibi Netanyahu.
21:52And they are increasingly isolated on so many different levels.
21:58So, yes, you have President Macron saying the most powerful country in the world, the U.S.
22:03It is the most powerful economy in the world, but it is through a very serious series of, you know, kind of self-inflicted acts in the past nine months, becoming perhaps less powerful globally.
22:23You have other kinds of alliances forming very, very, very quickly, whether it's in the Middle East, whether it's, you know, Modi and Xi.
22:35I mean, all sorts of other alliances are forming that are going to impact the Middle East hugely.
22:41It's not only about Trump right now.
22:44And it's not only about Trump when it comes to Europe's defense.
22:49That's what we'll be talking about next in the France 24 debate.
22:53I want to thank you, Vivian Walt.
22:54I want to thank Douglas Herbert for joining us for this special edition after that exclusive interview with France's President Emmanuel Macron.
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