“Wherever I go, I find myself confronted with the accusations of double standards,” said EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell at Oxford University in May. At last year’s Munich Security Conference (MSC), French President Emmanuel Macron said: “I am struck by how much we are losing the trust of the Global South.”
Eisentraut makes this clear in her brief: The criticism of Western double standards is often justified. For example, countries from the Global South point out that the US and other Western states insist on the principle of the territorial integrity in Ukraine, but did not respect this principle during the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. Western states have often disregarded human rights by carrying out illegal detentions as part of their war on terror. And the Europeans have made common cause with North African autocrats in order to prevent migration to Europe.
However, Eisentraut also points out that critics from countries such as China and Russia often use their accusations to relativize their own violations. Or they use them to justify an approach to foreign policy that is no longer based on moral principles at all, but only on their own interests. The result is that the value of universal rules is being questioned around the world.
Completely agree. He just needs to look within his own borders to see why. The Left Alliance scores the largest bloc of the election; then Macron spurns them and looks to the right for a Prime Minister instead. Are we really supposed to believe him when he says he’s shocked that people are losing faith in the system?
At this point, it’s hard to see how he can be this stupid. The man is a liar and always has been. He understands well that to build trust (no matter with whom - either the Left Alliance in his own country or the Global South, or anyone else), he has to back down and learn to compromise.
But for him, it’s much easier to pretend that he doesn’t know what’s going on, bury his head in the sand, and continue with the status quo - the way he’s paid to do.