In early 1969, President Charles de Gaulle interrupted a rather longish discourse by Richard Nixon, the newly elected US President then on a visit to Paris, on the lessons learned from the Second World War. "Mr President", the French leader told him, "in the Second World War, all the nations of Europe lost. Two were defeated." Nixon, whom De Gaulle admired, was impressed.

De Gaulle’s terse assessment of the 1939-1945 war was simply one more instance of the wisdom of French leaders as demonstrated in their analyses of global affairs. It was a happy reassertion of French political wisdom when President Emmanuel Macron informed the world a few days ago that his country planned to accord diplomatic recognition to Palestine as a sovereign state. Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu are predictably upset, but do the French care?

That France is a leading global player has been a reality since the times when the Bastille was stormed in 1789 and the floodgates to expressions of popular sentiments about the way they wanted to be governed were forced open. Liberty, equality and fraternity were terms that refashioned history. If the American Revolution of 1776 and the Russian Revolution of 1917 redefined life in the countries where they were led to fruition, the French Revolution served as the spirit behind every revolution erupting in nations beyond France. The bloodletting was there, of course. But the chaos eventually led to politics which definitively came to be people-centred.

Resilience has consistently been a feature of France as a nation. And with that has been the historical influence of men like Louis XIV, whose reported statement "l’etat c’est moi (I am the state)" remains a call to strong leadership around the world. Much though authoritarian leaders have been condemned in various countries, the truth for many of them has been a branding of politics on the Louis XIV personification of the state. It has often been proved that leadership in societies not quite ready for democracy has had to fall back on means of harsh discipline designed to promote the well-being of men and women.

To that question of resilience in France, in its politics, one would do well to journey back to the times of the Vichy collaborationist regime during the Second World War. Marshal Philippe Petain and Pierre Laval presided over a regime beholden to Hitler’s Nazis. But then came the Free French under Charles de Gaulle. The allied powers liberated France from the Nazis and Charles de Gaulle led his Free French triumphantly into a free Paris. French resilience soon came through the trials of the Vichy collaborators. Petain was not hanged but condemned as a war criminal; Laval was executed. France had asserted its self-esteem.

In modern times, French leaders have heard the call of history and have imbibed lessons from them, though they have sometimes stumbled along the way. Once it became obvious that Vo Nguyen Giap had inflicted a decisive defeat on the French in Indo-China at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, France did not have any second thoughts on leaving the place altogether. It left Algeria in 1962. All of this was in sharp contrast to the American position in Vietnam in 1968 in the aftermath of the Tet offensive. The United States, despite President Nixon’s Vietnamisation programme, did not leave Vietnam until the North Vietnamese stormed Saigon in 1975. 

French political leaders, in government and outside, have been careful in maintaining their country’s dignity as a nation subservient to no other nation. It was in that spirit that President De Gaulle withdrew France from the integrated military command of NATO, though not from NATO itself, in 1966. It was De Gaulle’s belief that France could not be part of a military structure dominated by the United States and Britain. His decision resulted in the headquarters of NATO, set up in 1949, to be moved from Paris to Brussels. French grandeur, a key component of De Gaulle’s worldview, was of crucial importance for his country.

In line with this sense of French individuality in geopolitics the government of President Charles de Gaulle decided to accord diplomatic recognition to the People’s Republic of China in 1964. It was a bold move, made at the height of the Cold War and with the West, typified by the United States, doing all it could to contain Beijing. The French leadership, well acquainted with the movement of history, knew full well that China would be unstoppable as a rising world power (only months later Beijing would detonate its atomic bomb and join the club of nuclear-powered nations), that it was on its way to casting its influence across the globe. De Gaulle’s decision left many in a state of shock. He was hardly bothered about it.

President Macron has in recent years been reinventing French links with Africa and has been visiting the continent reshaping Paris’ economic strategy with the French-speaking nations of the region. France has often had to come in to assist governments unable to combat terrorist forces on their own. Macron’s politics is thus a reassertion of France’s role in the world as De Gaulle and other French Presidents who came after De Gaulle envisaged it. Francois Mitterrand, in presidential office from 1981 to 1995, personified the image of a France rooted in its intellectual force. Mitterrand’s was an intellectual presidency, not necessarily agreeing with politicians governing other countries on how the world should be run.

In France, intellectuals have consistently defined the nature of the state and society. Andre Malraux served as minister of culture in the De Gaulle administration. In retirement and ageing, he nevertheless identified with the Bangladesh cause in 1971 and offered to lead a brigade, join up with the Mukti Bahini and wage war for the liberation of the Bengali nation. Joining Malraux in solidarity with the Bengalis was another leading French intellectual, Bernard-Henry Levy, whose work, "Bangladesh: Nationalisme dans la revolution", appeared in 1973.

Jean-Paul Sartre declined the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1964 because he did not wish to be identified as a Nobel laureate and because he did not think awards for writers were edifying. With Simone de Beauvoir, Sartre offered the world new insights into life and relationships. France has been home to some of the most distinguished artistes --- Brigitte Bardot, Catherine Deneuve, Alain Delon, Anouk Aimee, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Yves Montand, Romy Schneider, to name a few. Remember the many other reputed French individuals in history --- Voltaire, Rousseau, Descartes, Montesquieu, Arouet, Camus, Foucault?

President Macron’s decision to recognise Palestine as a sovereign state is an indictment of what the world has failed to do for Palestinians. It is a clarion call for the world to wake up and protest the tragedy that has reduced Gaza to an apocalyptic graveyard. It brings into eerie focus images of men, women and children holding out pots and pans for food, with many of them dying in the process (more than a thousand have already perished in Israeli gunfire). 

Emmanuel Macron informs the world that Palestine matters, that its dignity as a state, despite the dehumanisation it has been going through, matters. The French President speaks to us, loud and clear: those famished, emaciated, starving and dying babies in their parents’ helpless arms are the reason why Palestine must be born anew, why their oppressors must face justice.
France has historically upheld the cause of human dignity and survival. It is carrying out that moral crusade through its acknowledgment of the reality of Palestine being an idea that cannot be wished away. That, in essence, speaks of the idea of France. 

The columnist writes on politics, diplomacy and history