Marine Le Pen has been planning ahead for a long time now. She sees herself as ready to move into the Elysée's presidential office and the Jupiter command post, the bunker from where France's nuclear arsenal is commanded. Mastery of diplomatic issues, as Le Pen told Le Monde, occupies an "important place" in the construction of her political image, although it is "by definition more complicated to make appearances and score points on international affairs when you haven't been in power."
International affairs, and relations with foreign leaders, have remained her exclusive responsibility even as her lieutenant Jordan Bardella took the reins of her party, the Rassemblement National. It's even what most distinguishes her from Bardella, who has achieved strong popularity among party members and the wider public since his election as chairman of the party on November 5, 2022.
Alas for the three-time presidential candidate Le Pen, the international situation is unstable and, for her, there have been few victories to reap. Her promise of a "Frexit" in 2017 and her relations with Russia in 2022 were reasons for her failures. She hailed the electoral wins of Brexiteers, Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro, and long campaigned for a strategic alliance with Vladimir Putin's Russia. These proved to be bets made on leaders who only added to the world's disorder.
Embarrassing allies
Le Pen has not changed her line of thinking: "There is an ideological competition in the world between nations and supranational structures, which the nations are winning," she says. In this power struggle, she says she wants to "speak to everyone, because the great powers cannot be denied," and restore France to a position she says it has lost: a force for "world peace." As for her relationship with the United States, she has remained wary: "They are our ally, but we need to redefine the conditions of this cooperation. An ally is not a friend and can, on certain issues, behave like a competitor, or even an adversary." Among some in her entourage, the theory of the US being responsible for Russia's aggression against Ukraine has remained widely shared.
When it comes to international issues, Le Pen has relied less on her senior officials than on a handful of advisors from outside the party, who are familiar with embassies or the defense industry. None of them, however, would contradict her party's ideological framework, which is more Eurasian than Atlanticist, observes Olivier Schmitt, a professor of international relations at the Center for War Studies at the University of Southern Denmark: "You can't change your worldview easily. For the French far right, the US is the anti-model – corrupt and rootless – the opposite of a fantasized Slavic world, a Russia that has remained ethnically and ideologically pure."
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