The two remaining candidates in the French presidential race, independent centrist Emmanuel Macron and far-right nationalist Marine Le Pen, offer voters stark, opposing choices for the future of their country, as well as its security and defense.
Macron, who ran on a pro-Europe platform, topped Sunday’s first round vote, followed by Le Pen, who wants to pull France out of the European Union. The two will face off in a May 3 debate before the May 7 second round vote.
From terrorism to Russia to European defense, the candidates are “polar opposites,” Martin Michelot, deputy director of the EUROPEUM Institute for European Policy in Prague, and a non-resident fellow at the Paris office of German Marshall Fund of the United States, said.
Broadly speaking, Macron supports closer European defense integration, while Le Pen backs a nationalist defense policy buoyed by her stringent anti-Islam, anti-immigration rhetoric.
The first round result marked the first time in modern French history that no candidate from one of the major mainstream political parties has advanced to the next round. Experts say Macron, a new face on the political scene who served as Economy Minister under outgoing Socialist president François Hollande, would offer France and the world continuity on a range of security and defense issues.
Le Pen would represent a staggeringly different France at home and abroad. She advocates nationalist and populist policies with pledges to close borders, quit the eurozone and the Schengen passport-free travel area, withdraw the country from NATO’s integrated command, and potentially hold a referendum on France’s EU membership. She also seeks closer ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin and pushes pro-Kremlin policies.
“On a macro level, Macron represents continuity and Le Pen represents the rupture,” Jeff Lightfoot, a senior fellow with the Atlantic Council's Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security, said.
Le Pen, who polls currently suggest has no real chance of winning the May runoff, believes there is an opening to attack Macron on terrorism and security, and kicked off her campaigning Monday targeting him on those issues. She told reporters she wants to draw voters’ attention to “important subjects, including Islamist terrorism, on which Mr. Macron is, to say the least, weak.”
Three days before Sunday’s first round vote, a police officer was shot dead on the Champs Élysées in an attack claimed by ISIS. A national state of emergency has been in force in France since the November 2015 Paris terror attacks, with the current extension ending July 15. National Assembly elections take place in June.
Lightfoot noted that on terrorism, Macron sees the fight “as taking place outside France’s borders as well as within them,” while Le Pen is focused on closing borders, expelling individuals, and cutting down immigration.
Christopher Chivvis, Associate Director of the International Security and Defense Policy Center at the RAND Corporation, said “superficially, Le Pen’s anti-foreigner rhetoric could appear to be tougher on terrorism, but the reality is the terrorism problem France faces is largely from citizens of France who have been living there for many years.”
“Her policies are not going to go anywhere in resolving that problem,” he added.
With a hardline anti-immigration, anti-Islam message, she has also vowed to expel foreigners on intelligence watch lists and reduce immigration from 200,000 to 10,000 a year, for instance.
Terrorism and security present a potential vulnerability for Macron, as Le Pen has suggested, given his lack of experience. However, he has built up a substantial team of security and defense experts, most notably French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, a very popular and well-respected figure whose endorsement was “badly needed” to push back against the perception Macron is weak on terrorism, Michelot said.
On the whole, however, the terrorism discussion during the campaign “has not been serious because it has really been politicized and used as a personal attack by Le Pen to try to show Macron is unprepared for the fight against terrorism,” Michelot said.
Le Pen Monday temporarily stepped aside as her National Front party’s leader, a symbolic act to try to reach out to more voters as she struggles in the polls. Her party has long protested “American imperialism” — so although there are notable similarities between U.S. President Donald Trump’s “America first” platform and Le Pen’s policies, experts say the potential for discord with the United States under a Le Pen presidency is substantial.
“Le Pen’s party is fundamentally anti-American, and I have a hard time seeing how a Le Pen presidency would really work well for the U.S.,” Lightfoot said.
A France more in line with Russia, as Le Pen promotes, could spell trouble for intelligence sharing, for instance. Le Pen advocates warmer relations with Moscow and she frequently espouses pro-Kremlin policies such as lifting Russian sanctions and saying Crimea “has always been Russian,” along with her anti-EU stance. Her party has also received financial assistance from Russia and she recently had a splashy meet-and-greet with Putin.
“If you had a clash, for example, over Russia, that could be one obstacle to deepening intelligence sharing between the United States and France,” Chivvis said. “If there was reason to believe intel sharing with France was riskier, that could impede it.”
Macron offers the typical French line of having measured dialogue with Russia on an ad hoc basis — and only when necessary. His pro-European campaign has been targeted by disinformation campaign tactics associated with the Kremlin. His presidency would not turn to Russia, but instead to Germany and Chancellor Angela Merkel. He has spoken of the centrality of a strong Franco-German relationship, as well as the buildup of EU defense structures.
“Who is the person that they would pick up the phone first in any instance? For Macron, it’s Berlin and for Le Pen, it’s Moscow,” Lightfoot said.
Le Pen has frequently talked about “no longer being the lapdog of the United States,” Michelot noted, and in French political discourse NATO and the U.S. tend to be interchangeable. The far-right candidate often alludes to leaving NATO’s integrated command and building up the country’s own capabilities, saying that she “doesn’t want France to be forced into the battles of the Americans,” he said.
Pulling back from NATO “would not be popular with the United States, under any president including the current administration,” Chivvis noted. Although Trump once blasted NATO as “obsolete,” he has recently changed his tune.
“It’s hard to see how France, if run the way we would expect Le Pen to run it, would contribute to the two main objectives of the Trump administration — do more to help U.S. counterterrorism objectives and spend more on defense,” Chivvis said, noting that if the economy were to shrink under Le Pen, given her policies on the euro and closing borders, it would have a huge impact on funding defense capabilities.
Macron has talked very little about NATO in his campaign, although he would once again represent likely continuity with the current French government. He has been much more vocal on EU issues, especially on bolstering European defense cooperation.
The two candidates do share some similar talking points — notably, they each say they would reconsider the deployment of Opération Sentinelle, the French military operation in which troops patrol streets and tourist attractions to protect from terrorist attacks. In addition, both support adding more police officers and increasing defense spending, for instance.
But even in these cases, Le Pen and Macron take very different approaches. On defense spending, Macron says he expects France to reach the 2 percent of GDP objective by 2025, while Le Pen talks about reaching that next year, and hitting 3 percent by the end of her prospective term.
Macron’s approach is “probably the more realistic assessment of when France could actually reach that goal,” Michelot said, and his breakdown is in line with the French defense establishment, which has largely rallied around Macron’s candidacy.
Meanwhile, Le Pen wants to reinforce the national police and ensure they are all armed and legally able to use their weapons in certain cases, and Macron advocates strengthening the municipal, local police.
As French voters prepare to head back to the polls, they face glaringly opposing choices on defense and security, Lightfoot said.
“It is very much a clash of worldviews and whether France should block itself out from the world — or if it should remain open to the world, engage and try to regain its influence,” Lightfoot said.
Mackenzie Weinger is a national security reporter at The Cipher Brief. Follow her on Twitter @mweinger.
