Raphäel Glucksmann, a Hawk in Progressive Clothing
French center-left presidential hopeful Raphaël Glucksmann embodies the hawkish tradition of the nouveaux philosophes. Having learned little from recent military disasters, his is a brand of liberalism all too comfortable with “humanitarian” war-making.
Raphaël Glucksmann is likely to be the main center-left candidate for next year’s French presidential election. Like US neocons, he believes that Western power is not merely permitted to confront tyranny abroad but morally obliged to do so. (Thierry Monasse / Getty Images)
On August 23, Raphaël Glucksmann, the French essayist and member of the European Parliament (MEP), officially announced what had long been an open secret: his candidacy for the 2027 presidential election as a standard-bearer of the French center left.
To my eyes, his candidacy is a disaster in the making and, in fact, a story I’ve already seen unfold from close range. I first encountered him not in Paris elite circles but in the wreckage of Georgian hubris, back in 2013, when I visited that country as part of the delegation of the European Parliament’s foreign affairs committee.
Glucksmann, then in his early thirties, was suave, articulate, and utterly convinced of his own righteousness. He was then serving as a foreign adviser to Mikheil Saakashvili, the mercurial Georgian president whose adventurism, encouraged by the George W. Bush administration, had culminated in the 2008 war with Russia and Russian forces advancing deep into Georgia.
This article is for subscribers only. Please login or subscribe to access our full archives and beautiful print and digital magazine starting at just $3 a month.