Back in 2019, years before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, it was the pronouncement that NATO was effectively brain dead. Indeed the post-war military alliance has struggled to rise to the occasion.

Now, at the Group of 20 summit in South Africa boycotted by the US — its most powerful member — Macron has put on his Cassandra-like hat again.

“Meeting for the first time on the African continent marks an important milestone in the life of the G20,” Macron said in his opening remarks in Johannesburg. “But we must also recognize that the G-20 may be reaching the end of a cycle.”

The very existence of the bloc, he added for emphasis, is at risk. 

His prognosis was reflected in the drab optics of the family photo, where the few recognizable leaders attending struggled to fill up the space against a sparse background. Typically, the backdrop to the photo should be iconic — the Sugarloaf Mountain in Rio de Janeiro, the Raj Ghat memorial in New Delhi. 

This time the effort to line up looked half-hearted. Last year, Joe Biden showed up late and the photo had to be retaken, an ominous sign even then of US retrenchment. This year it could have been Donald Trump taking center stage and doing the thumbs up with Cyril Ramaphosa. Instead, it was last year’s Brazilian host, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.  

Italy’s Giorgia Meloni was missing from the original line up with stand-ins subbed in for seven leaders missing. And then walled to the furthest corner of the conference hall for another.

Underscoring the drift, the French leader cited the absence of the US at the table, the difficulty to protect humanitarian law and the sovereignty of some countries like Ukraine as evidence that require an urgent collective re-engagement. 

“We are struggling to have a common standard on geopolitical crisis,” Macron said.

The French leader is no doubt reflecting on his own political life with his own presidential term ending in 2027. He’s now the most experienced statesman of the Group of Seven, which he is hosting next year, and has often reflected philosophically on the demise of multilateralism.

In the past, to some derision, he’s called for a “true European army” even before the existential danger Vladimir Putin posed to the continent become self-evident. But France has also struggled to match its rhetoric with actions.