Instead, Mélenchon wants France to strengthen ties with China as well as French-speaking countries in Africa, as well as South American countries. He sees the United States as an imperialist danger, while Germany — despite its turbulent relations with President Donald Trump — views the transatlantic relationship as paramount to its foreign policy. Mélenchon is opposed to Germany’s deeply held attachment to its free-market economic model and favors a planned economy instead.
Mélenchon is also critical of Germany’s rearmament and the continued presence of U.S. nuclear weapons on its soil, which he said: “raise serious security concerns for neighboring countries.” Berlin aims to become Europe’s predominant military power in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and American retrenchment from Europe.
Mélenchon’s 2015 book “Bismarck’s Herring,” subtitled “The German Poison,” was meant to be a response to the many politicians who at the time in France viewed Germany as a policy model thanks to its low unemployment and strong growth rates.
Mélenchon pointed to the poverty rate in Germany, which at that time was several points higher than in France, and low birth rates as examples of the model’s failures.
“My goal is to pierce through the veil of bliss surrounding so many commentators who are fascinated by Germany,” reads the book’s blurb. “A monster has been born right before our eyes — the child of deregulated finance and a country that has devoted itself to it, ravaged by the accelerated aging of its population.”
Parts of French media, even left-leaning outlet Libération, deemed the book excessively Germanophobic. In it, Mélenchon adopts a provocative tone and states that “political confrontation with German governments is one of the conditions for the liberation of peoples.”