Le Pen wants the EU to withdraw from NATO , alleging that it would end American dominance in Europe. She repeats Trump’s assertion that NATO is now obsolete, and has in fact declared publicity that Trump’s victory makes such a feat quite possible now. To her way of thinking, NATO is a “tool for making sure countries that are part of it comply with the will of the United States. She finds this unbearable.
What would she substitute it with? She has some interesting proposals in this regard. She has called for “cooperation agreement” with Russia with close cooperation between European capitals and Moscow. In other words, Washington gets substituted with Moscow. She claims that there is “absolutely no reason we should turn systematically to the United States.”
This may sound a bit incoherent. She sees Trump’s victory as an additional stone in the building of a new world order but at the same time wants the EU to take its distance from the US. How does Le Pen square this circle? Thus: “Obviously we have to compare this victory [Trump’s] with the rejection of the European constitution by the French people, of course, with the Brexit vote, but also with the emergence of movements devoted to the nation – patriotic movements in Europe. All these elections are essentially referendums against the unfettered globalization that has been imposed upon us, that has been imposed upon people and today has been clearly shown to have its limits.”
That is to say, she sees Trump’s victory as a “victory of the people against the elite.” This of course is populism at its best, or perhaps its worst.
What is most intriguing about the above glaring statements is that they seem to reveal a mind-set quite similar to that displayed by Trump and Putin. All three seems to have quite a few affinities and seem to like each other. The major affinity seems to be this: they see the political struggles currently going on as struggles of civilizations against each other. Le Pen is on record as saying that next year’s presidential election in France would “establish some real choices of civilization. “She made such a statement in the context of a lashing out against the EU and its immigrant policies based on open borders.
She added: “Do we want a multicultural society, following the model of the English-speaking world, where fundamentalist Islam is progressing … or do we want an independent nation, with people able to control their own destiny, or do we accept to be a region, managed by the technocrats of the European Union ?”
She has gone as far as comparing the European Union to the Soviet Union. “I don’t see why we should recreate, virtually, this wall between European countries and Russia, unless to obey the orders of the United States, which up until now, have found an intest in this. “She has moreover blamed the EU and the US for destabilizing Europe’s relations with Russia, and has claimed that there is not “a hair’s breadth” between her party and the UKIP regarding immigration and the European Union.
Writtern By Dr Emanuel L Paparella