Trump should be wary of advice from Macron

French President Emmanuel Macron arrived in Washington Monday for his first official state visit, which will include a lavish dinner, an address before Congress, and plenty of tête-à-tête with President Trump. Macron is expected to focus on issues of trade, environmentalism, and U.S. foreign relations, urging Trump to keep the United States in the Iran nuclear deal, also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and to maintain a long-term military and nation-building presence in Syria.

Trump is famously chummy with Macron, but he would do well to be wary in accepting the French president’s foreign policy advice. Though he too is new to politics, the thrust of Macron’s efforts in this arena is maintenance of the status quo, with very mixed results.

{mosads}On the Iran deal, Macron makes a prudent case for stability.

JCPOA is not “a perfect thing for our relationship with Iran,” he conceded in conversation with Fox News’ Chris Wallace Sunday. “But for nuclear, what do you have as a better option?” he continued. “I don’t see it. What is the what-if scenario or your Plan B? I don’t have any Plan B for nuclear against Iran.” This sort of pragmatism may not appeal to Trump’s much-professed love of obtaining the “best deals,” but he would be wise to heed Macron’s argument that this is the best deal available because it has already been made.

Maintaining U.S. participation in JCPOA is particularly important as Trump’s negotiations with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un approach, for Kim is less likely to make significant concessions if he believes Trump’s offers cannot be trusted. For negotiations with ally and enemy alike, Macron’s counsel of consistency has advantages. 

Where Trump must not be swayed by Macron is in regard to his advocacy of long-term American occupation and nation-building in Syria, a former French colony. Macron has taken credit for persuading Trump to escalate U.S. military intervention in Syria against his impulse toward withdrawal following the dramatic decline of the Islamic State’s territory and power in the country. While in Washington this week Macron intends to do more in that vein.

“We will have to build the new Syria after [the Islamic State is defeated], and that’s why I think the U.S. hold is very important,” Macron said on Fox. “Why? I will be very blunt. The day we will finish this war against ISIS, if we leave, definitely and totally, even from a political point of view, we will leave the floor to the Iranian regime, Bashar al-Assad and his guys, and they will prepare the new war. They will fuel the new terrorists.”

“So, my point is to say, even after the end of the war against ISIS,” he went on, “the U.S., France, our allies, all the countries of the region, even Russia and Turkey, will have a very important role to play in order to create this new Syria and ensure Syrian people to decide for the future.” Though he did not describe it in so many words, Macron’s aim here is a generational commitment to nation-building.

He speaks the language of multilateralism and global cooperation, but his goal is a lengthy occupation in which France plays an ancillary role while U.S. troops and taxpayers shoulder the futile burden of attempting to forcibly remake another Middle Eastern nation in the image of the West. 

There is no denying Assad’s regime in Syria is abhorrent and should not exist. Assad has amply demonstrated he is cruel and unfit for power. But if the last 17 years of U.S. foreign policy have taught us anything, it should be that U.S. military intervention — with (Afghanistan) or without (Iraq) French help — is no panacea.

The agenda of occupation, nation-building, and perhaps even regime change Macron envisions offers no promise of peace or even stability. The only certainty in his plan is that it comes at a cost of U.S. blood and treasure; that it will make American troops party to Syria’s ongoing suffering; and that it puts the U.S. at real risk of great power conflict with Russia, Assad’s most powerful ally. This is a reckless déjà vu.

In his Syria policy, the prudence Macron demonstrates over the Iran deal is nowhere to be found. With Iran, Macron rightly recognizes there is no good military option and embraces diplomacy, imperfect though it may be. With Syria, by contrast, he seeks to repeat the United States’ foreign policy failures of the last decade and a half, force-fitting a global military solution to a regional problem in which the U.S. (and France, for that matter) has no vital interest at stake and plenty to lose.

Whatever Macron may say, the United States’ wisest course in Syria is withdrawal from the civil war and support for negotiations that can reach a workable détente.

Bonnie Kristian is a fellow at Defense Priorities and weekend editor at The Week. Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, Politico,USA Today, the Los Angeles Times, Relevant Magazine, The Hill, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.