In what I and many others believe will go down as one of the best speeches that Emmanuel Macron will give as President, he had one very strong message to give to the world: wake up.

Having spent the past seven months hearing claims that the French President was taking Vladimir Putin’s side, that he was willing to sell out the Ukrainians, that his comments on the need for an “off-ramp” were code for giving away territory that wasn’t France’s to give away, and after claims that he was too friendly with Russia to make smart decisions, these rumours were put to rest in an impassioned and powerful call to action to the global community.

He launched the speech by recalling the fact that, when France herself was under a similar attack from the German state, when France was occupied by the Nazi regime, that people from across the world fought to liberate her and liberate the French, as well as using the momentum from the victory of this raw to create the United nations, to “[Write] our charter and [build] the walls of [the UN]”

He called upon his fellow leaders to understand the situation they were in, and “to make a simple choice: that of war or peace”, slamming countries that were refusing to take a side in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, accusing them of being complicit in Putin’s “new [Russian] Imperialism”, and were effectively betraying the very values that the UN Stands for.

“Those who remain silent today - despite themselves or secretly with a certain complicity - are serving the cause of a new imperialism, a contemporary cynicism that is destroying the world order,”

He also brutally dressed down the announcement of the Russian state, with a certain implicit support from the Chinese, about their plans for a new world order:

“When I hear Russia saying it's ready for new cooperation and a new international order without hegemony, that's a tall story. On the basis of what? Invading your neighbour, non-respect of borders you don't like. What's this order? Who is hegemonic today? Russia”

Decrying the “return to the age of imperialism and colonies”, he called on world leaders to make the choice between “war and peace”, whilst also attacking those who he clearly sees as hiding from their duty to the international community.

“I want to say things quite clearly today: Those who want to mimic the struggle of the nonaligned in refusing to express themselves clearly are making a mistake and this will carry a historic responsibility”

Clearly, during this speech, he was highlighting the fact that, in April, 58 countries, including India, Brazil, South Africa and Indonesia, abstained during a vote on a resolution to suspend Russia from the U.N. Human Rights Council.

On top of that, there have been claims from the Russians and other state that ‘The West’ was trying to act purely in its own interests, and that its actions towards Ukraine and in other conflicts has caused the rest of the world to suffer.

"I call on all the members of this assembly to support us on the path to peace and act to force Russia give up the choice of war so that it realises the cost on itself and us and ends its aggression…It's not about choosing a camp between East and West, but the responsibility of everybody to respect the UN charter."

A question of influence

There was also an undercurrent of the fight for influence in this speech, which takes particular precedence due to the recent setbacks that French and European diplomatic efforts have seen in states like Mali, where the typically European use of conditionality led to the Russian Wagner Private Military Company supplanting a European presence, and effectively causing a decade’s worth of work to unravel.

With many opting to stay out of the fighting taking place in the ‘developed world’, opting instead to focus on their own interests and playing a careful balancing game between attracting both European/Western and Russian support, Chinese investment, and attempting to encourage development in whatever way they can to support their own people.

Unfortunately, this has clashed with an ideal that many hold, particularly in the global ‘west’ and the global north, see as a moral duty to defend those who are under threat, who are being assaulted, and whose very existence is being threatened.

Macron is one of these people, and he sent a poignant message to them about the reality of those attempting to bribe them into silence, reminding many of these countries of who had stood by them, supported them, and did what they could to keep them safe:

"Who was here during the pandemic? Who offers financing to help the climate transition? Not those who are coming to you today with the idea of a new world order. Not those who didn't a have a vaccine that worked and offer nothing in the face of climate change,"

He went on to argue against Russia and China’s attempts at creating a ‘new world order’ on pragmatic grounds, pointing out that the divisions they wanted to force in the world would not only launch a new cold war, but would create imbalances that would encourage and “multiply regional conflicts, resume the path of nuclear proliferation and roll back collective security”.

He touched on the need to avoid this, in particular due to the fight against climate change. He pointed towards Pakistan where “a third of the country is under water, with 1,400 dead, 1,300 injured, millions of people in emergency situations”, the droughts in the horn of Africa, the famines in Somalia, Yemen, South Sudan, and Afghanistan, and the food crisis hitting the vulnerable across the world.

He made it clear that we were seeing a rowing back of a centuries worth of progress, global polycrises of geopolitical strife, climate change, pandemics, lack of food supply, and potential nuclear disaster, and argued that it was our common responsibility to work together and help the vulnerable, calling back to Indian Prime Minister Modi’s comments that “this is not a time for war”.

But what will France do?

Macron announced several initiatives, such as France continuing to work to build the EU’s “corridors of solidarity” which is helping to export grain and cereals out of Ukraine and that France will finance the evacuation of Ukrainian wheat to Somalia as part of the global food partnership.

He also announced that France was at the centre of efforts to unite the African Union, United Nations agencies, the World Trade Organization, the IMF, development banks and the European Commission to build a viable fertilizer access mechanism for Africa.

He also called for the launch of several other initiatives, such as a new ‘contract’ between the north and south to intensify cooperation on food, climate, biodiversity and education, and the need for the “construction of coalitions of concrete actions making it possible to reconcile legitimate interest and common good”.

He made calls for solidarity from China and other emerging countries, declaring that they “must make a clear decision at the COP” meeting happening in Egypt in a few weeks. He noted that it was imperative that coalitions be built with them, that these coalitions be used to build comprehensive solutions for energy and industrial production models, that would enable the required transitions to survive the crises to come.

He called for the G7 to lead by example, to implement what had been agreed, to help encourage others to follow suit. Finally, he declared his interest in seeing a reform of the UN Security Council to make it more representative, an announcement that fell to the side in some announcements, but which could have major geopolitical consequences on the global stage.

Ultimately, Macron’s speech was not just a speech calling for solidarity, but a call to action for the global community. A call to action to fight against the increasingly intransigent behaviour of states such as Russia who want to snuff out entire populations. A call to action to fight against petty disputes and to come together to work together as allies, not as enemies. A call to action to fight and contain larger states who attempt to bully smaller states into submission.

It was a call to action to defend the ideals that the United Nations stood for, to stand against those trying to remodel the world in a nightmarish way that would make it resemble the wars of old that Europe had fought so hard to overcome, lowering us all to the level of small minded, proto-realist geopolitics that killed millions throughout history.

It was a call to action that, in many ways, could be reduced to the need to defend a very French set of values, those which underpin the very work of the French republic:

Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité.

And in the fight to defend these values, French President Emmanuel Macron made his intentions clear:

On this path, each country present here can unfailingly count on France.

You can read President Macron’s speech to the United Nations General Assembly here:

Discours du Président de la République devant l’Assemblée générale de l’Organisation des Nations unies.

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