The French ambassador has had enough

The outgoing French ambassador to the US has compared the Trump administration to the court of King Louis XIV, filled with courtiers trying to interpret the caprices of a “whimsical, unpredictable, uninformed” leader.

Gérard Araud, who retires on Friday after a 37-year career that included some of the top jobs in French diplomacy, said Donald Trump’s unpredictability and his single-minded transactional interpretation of US interests was leaving the administration isolated on the world stage.

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“It’s like [trying] to analyse the court of Louis XIV,” Araud said. “You have an old king, a bit whimsical, unpredictable, uninformed, but he wants to be the one deciding.”

Like the Sun King who dominated France in the 17th and 18th centuries, Trump “doesn’t want to appear under any influence and he wants to show it”, Araud said.

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“Actually, we don’t have interlocutors,” Araud said. “[When] we have people to talk to, they are acting, so they don’t have real authority or access. Basically, the consequence is that there is only one centre of power: the White House.

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Araud said the tweeted cancellation of North Korean sanctions, and the exclusion of Bolton from key meetings and meals at the Hanoi summit, were designed to “humiliate” Bolton and demonstrate that the president “is the master and the bureaucrats are nothing”.

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Araud expressed anxiety about the implications of the administration’s maximum-pressure campaign against Iran, championed by Bolton and the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo.

“[The policy is] increasing the pressure until the Iranians surrender, or in some quarters they believe until the regime collapses,” Araud said. “But if the regime collapses, what happens? And to this question the Americans are unable to answer.”

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“Basically, this president and this administration don’t have allies, don’t have friends. It’s really [about] bilateral relationships on the basis of the balance of power and the defence of narrow American interest.”

He cautioned the UK against expecting any special treatment from Washington in post-Brexit trade talks, predicting that the administration would force London to accept US imports on US terms, such as looser standards for genetically modified organisms (GMOs).

  Guardian

Only a blind man would think otherwise.

“They [the Trump administration] are not thinking in terms of multilateral cooperation first. And secondly, they don’t have any affection towards the Europeans. They treat Europeans the way they treat the Chinese,” Araud said. “And when the British come for a free-trade agreement, there will be blood on the walls and it will be British blood. "