In a plea sometimes fiery contrasting with the calm tone of speeches at the United Nations General Assembly, the French president called for the invention of “new cooperation” to meet the challenges facing the world, from conflicts to climate change and by pandemics.
“The situation of our planet increases our demands”, he declared, wishing “a collective start” to “build a new contract between the north and the south”.
This imperative is made all the more urgent by the war in Ukraine initiated by Russia and its President Vladimir Putin. “We all have a role in ending it because we are all paying the price,” he said.
– “Age of imperialisms” –
“What we have been witnessing since February 24 is a return to the age of imperialism and colonies,” insisted Emmanuel Macron. Or “who is hegemonic today if not Russia?”.
The Head of State is thus seeking to dismantle the idea that the war in Ukraine is a regional conflict resulting from the opposition between Westerners and Russia and, beyond that, the rest of the world. As a result, many capitals, in Africa, Asia or the Middle East, refuse to condemn Moscow.
“Contemporary imperialism is not European or Western and takes the form of territorial invasion backed by globalized hybrid warfare that uses the price of energy, food security, nuclear safety, access to information and population movements as weapons of division and destruction”, denounced Emmanuel Macron.
– “Cynicism” –
Faced with this, the countries “which are silent today serve in spite of themselves, or secretly, with a certain complicity, the cause of a new imperialism, of a contemporary cynicism which disintegrates our international order without which peace is possible,” he said.
In the longer term, Emmanuel Macron warns that this “attempt to partition the world (…) reinforces the tension between the United States and China”, particularly in the Indo-Pacific zone, one of the strategic priorities of the France.
In recent months, the French president has regularly scolded countries that have remained neutral, notably during a July visit to Cameroon where he denounced the silence in the face of Russia’s “hybrid presence” in Africa, particularly in Mali.
He was to carry this message again during a dinner to which the Ivorian, Colombian and Argentine presidents and Indian, Indonesian and Egyptian ministers were invited in New York on Tuesday.
Speaking at the UN, Senegalese President Macky Sall said Africa had “enough suffered the burden of history” and did not want to be “the home of a new Cold War” between Russia and Western countries .
Absent in New York, Vladimir Putin also again accused the EU on Tuesday of blocking, with its sanctions, the donation of 300,000 tonnes of Russian fertilizer to the countries that need it most. “The height of cynicism”, he denounced while receiving diplomats in Moscow.
The EU has repeatedly asserted that its sanctions do not apply to Russian fertilizers or grain.
For his part, Emmanuel Macron again defended the Farm program, “which makes it possible to supply vulnerable countries at low prices”, and announced that France was going to finance “the evacuation of Ukrainian wheat to Somalia”, whose part of the population suffers from famine, in support of the World Food Program (WFP).
