Is Macron following in the footsteps of de Gaulle?

It can’t be much fun being a national leader these days. Be it the US, the UK, all are assailed on myriad fronts by coronavirus, widespread societal division and impending economic ruin. But being president of France takes the biscuit.

Since 2014, France is fighting a war against Islamist extremists in the Sahel. 5,100 French troops are battling insurgents across five states in an area several times the size of France. France is doing so to hold back the tide of northward advancing Islamist extremists and to block them reaching the shores of the Mediterranean. Despite this being in the interests of the European Union, France fights on with a death toll already over 50. Yet few other western states, let alone the EU, is willing to help.

At the same time, Macron is single-handedly attempting to protect and communicate vital western values of freedom of expression and secularism internationally against an array of Muslim-majority states, from Turkey to Pakistan, which are intent on traducing his words and actions.