the impossible compromise of the French left

The equation is simple, it is always the international question that divides the left, since at least the Congress of Tours in 1920 and the birth of the French Communist Party (PCF). A legacy of the Cold War or campism, there have always been two lefts, says Gérard Grunberg, political scientist and long-time companion of the Socialist Party (PS). In light of the war in Ukraine, there is “the anti-NATO and pro-NATO lefts ready to do all they can to help Ukraine”, he said. Admittedly, the elected representatives of La France insoumise (LFI) had to amend their speeches making Russia a “more reliable partner than the United States”as Jean-Luc Mélenchon said in 2020. On the first anniversary of the conflict, they are now pleading for the exploration of negotiated ways out of the conflict. “The war in Ukraine must end. This is what we must focus on. It’s a matter of diplomacy more than artillery fire”wrote Jean-Luc Mélenchon in December 2022.

Negotiate ? Vladimir Putin assured in January to be ready to dialogue with Ukraine on the condition that kyiv accepts “new territorial realities”. When they are asked about the reality of a negotiation given this requirement, the “rebellious” refer to a choice of the Ukrainians. “It’s up to the Ukrainians to know on what condition they want to accept peace. Russia violated the rules of international law, it cannot win this war. It is up to the Ukrainians to decide at what price peace is acceptable, it is not up to us to say it for them”believes the LFI deputy for Seine-Saint-Denis Bastien Lachaud.

trap text

Arms deliveries, usefulness of the arrest warrant for war crimes against Vladimir Putin, issued by the International Criminal Court, and soon a text in the National Assembly proposing to qualify the Wagner militias as a terrorist organization, each chapter of the conflict Ukrainian and other theaters of Russian engagement give rise to divergent positions on the part of these two lefts. Positions put, many, under the extinguisher, perhaps to avoid fracturing the New People’s Ecological and Social Union (Nupes) too much. “Rebellious” and communists had indeed called for a debate at the beginning of the year on arms deliveries, seen as likely to provoke an overbidding, it was not held…

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Meanwhile, socialists and ecologists work with the opposite conviction, that expressed in February, in a column published in The worldthat “Any retreat from Putin would only drive our continent into a spiral of insecurity and violence”. The president of the socialist deputies, Boris Vallaud (Landes), was thus one of the spearheads of the vote of a resolution recognizing as a genocide the Ukrainian famines of the Holodomor, in the years 1930. The text, voted on March 28 in the Assembly, however, was like a trap. Only the communists voted against, the “rebellious” did not take part in the vote, while the National Rally (RN) was delighted to be able, for once, with its anti-communism as a banner, to side with the majority in the face of the conflict. Ukrainian.

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