Paris
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As far as France is concerned, the case is now closed. US Ambassador to Paris Charles Kushner’s access to the French government has been restored, allowing him to resume his diplomatic mission. But the unrest, which threatened to temporarily derail relations between France and the United States in the year marking the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States, highlights a deeper problem facing Europe as the United States increasingly overtly intervenes in its internal affairs.
France’s foreign minister summoned Kushner this week and temporarily blocked him from meeting with government ministers when he failed to show up, after the embassy reposted comments from the U.S. State Department that said the recent killings of far-right activists in France showed “the rise of violent extremism.”
French President Emmanuel Macron has called for calm ahead of a rally held by far-right groups on Saturday in memory of Quentin Delanque, the 23-year-old far-right activist who was killed in a demonstration in Lyon earlier this month, deepening political polarization ahead of next month’s local elections.
French Foreign Ministry spokesman Pascal Confavreux said the US ambassador assured him that he had no intention of interfering in “French internal territory.” Regarding Kushner’s absence from the first call, Confavreux noted that the American real estate mogul had only arrived as ambassador to Paris in July and was relatively new to the more sophisticated world of diplomacy.
“It’s completely part of diplomatic grammar to subpoena an ambassador, so when you have an ambassador who is not a career diplomat, it can be confusing,” he said, referring to the father of US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.
But beyond France’s confusion over the lack of diplomatic subtlety, there lies the deeper question of how to deal with increasingly obvious attempts to interfere in Europe’s domestic affairs (often using the very public Platform X).
Tom Rhodes, the U.S. ambassador to Poland, recently posted that he is cutting ties with the House of Representatives leader who opposed awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to President Donald Trump.
In Belgium, Ambassador Bill White has repeatedly weighed in on an ongoing judicial investigation into circumcision practices in Antwerp’s Orthodox Jewish community. Most recently, Mr. White posted on X that “the case should be dropped immediately,” but unlike Mr. Kushner, Mr. White has shown up at the Foreign Office, at least when called upon.
All three cases simultaneously signal a new willingness on Washington’s part to break with traditional forms of diplomacy, use social media rather than back channels, and engage more actively in the judicial and political processes of other countries, particularly in Europe.
Pierre Vimont, a former French ambassador to Washington, says this requires a new kind of vigilance from Europeans. “There’s been a very strong ideological content to U.S. foreign policy these days, and I think that needs to be handled very carefully,” he told CNN. “Interference in domestic politics is not what diplomacy should be about. I think we should strongly emphasize to the American side that this is not the essence of diplomacy.”
As for why Europe is a special target for the US administration, Vimont also blames the ideology of the current US administration. “In theory, we share a common vision of what democracy is: democratic rules, freedom of speech, and an independent judiciary.” “And we are witnessing a slow rift between our values and how the MAGA movement and the current U.S. government view those same values.”
This suggests why French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrault was as furious as he was when he told French media that the U.S. State Department first looked into the controversy over Mr. Delanque’s death and that the tragedy should not be used for political purposes. Regarding ideological violence, he said France had “no lessons to learn from reactionary international movements.”
The next step will be a face-to-face meeting between Kushner and Barot, which a department spokesperson said is expected to happen within the next few days. The truth is that no one wanted a diplomatic rupture in this situation. In June, the G7 summit of major economies to be held in Evian, France, was rescheduled to take into account President Trump’s birthday. It will start on June 15th, rather than the day before as originally planned. This year also marks the 250th anniversary of what Washington calls its oldest alliance, and a series of events are planned on both sides of the Atlantic.
“We know this is a very important day for the United States and for us, so there are ups and downs in these relationships. We are allies, even if we are not aligned. It also helps us tell our allies what is true, or what we think is true,” Confabroux said.
A point that U.S. representatives have repeatedly made in recent months is that friendship should enable us to tell our allies the truth. The question is how diplomatically each truth can be conveyed.
