Keynote speaker: Sylvie Bermann's career path

Sylvie Bermann did us the honor of inaugurating the "Foundations and Practices of Diplomacy" summer school, co-organized by Delphine Allès, director of Inalco's International Relations program, and the Ecole nationale d'administration publique de Montréal (ENAP), by looking back on her career as a diplomat during a lecture given at the end of the first day, on Monday, June 27, 2022 at Inalco's Maison de la recherche.

From 2011 to 2019, Sylvie Bermann was Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of France to three permanent member countries of the United Nations Security Council: mainland China (2011-2014), the United Kingdom (2014-2017) and Russia (2017-2019).

In this "Grand Témoin" lecture, Sylvie Bermann looks back on her career and sets out her vision of today's world through the prism of her experience in diplomacy and international relations.

Career diplomat

Alumna of Chinese at Inalco, Sylvie Bermann explains that it was at Langues O' that she became interested in diplomacy and then directed towards a career in this field. In fact, Inalco is the only public institution of higher education and research in the world to offer such a wide range of courses in languages and civilizations (103 languages and civilizations taught). Chinese has been taught here since 1840, and Inalco's Chinese Studies Department is one of the world's leading sinological sites.

Sylvie Bermann began her diplomatic career in 1979, when she became French Vice-Consul in Hong Kong at a time when the present-day Special Administrative Region was still part of the British colonies. She recalls that, at the time, the Chinese had no political role there, with the exception of the tycoons capitalists who helped the city emerge as a financial center. At that time, integration with China was beginning to become a reality. The Shenzhen River that separates Hong Kong from mainland China, serving as a natural dividing line between Hong Kong, a capitalist place, and its socialist-system hinterland, is tending to disappear. This is known as the "Vanishing Border". It's the embodiment of Deng Xiaoping's famous formula: "One country, two systems".

Sylvie Bermann was subsequently appointed Second Secretary at the French Embassy in China in the Asia and Oceania Directorate of the Quai d'Orsay.

Then she became second counselor at the French embassy in Russia, or more precisely in the former USSR, a "colossus with feet of clay", as Sylvie Bermann refers to it: a country strong in appearance but which was actually proving very fragile. Working during perestroika (literally "reconstruction"), Sylvie Bermann witnessed first-hand the economic and social reforms undertaken by President Gorbachev. The aim of this change of political direction was to restructure the economic and social life of the Soviet Union, and to change mentalities by relying in particular on communication and transparency through the introduction of a certain freedom of expression and information. But the failure to establish a genuine market mechanism proved destructive to the living conditions of the Russian people, helping to reinforce nationalist protests and demands and making the dismantling of the Union in 1991 inevitable.

In 1992, she became second counselor at France's permanent mission to the United Nations (UN) in New York, before being appointed head of the foreign and security policy department at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

In 2002, she became Ambassador, Permanent Representative of France to the Western European Union and the Political and Security Committee ("PSC") of the European Union in Brussels.

In February 2011, Sylvie Bermann was appointed Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of France to China. She becomes the first woman to hold the position of French ambassador to a country that is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council.

She then becomes Director of the United Nations, International Organizations, Human Rights and the Francophonie (NUOI) at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs from December 2005 to February 2011.

On June 19, 2019, Sylvie Bermann is elevated by the Council of Ministers to the dignity of Ambassador of France. Once again, she is the first woman to be elevated to this dignity.

She will end her ambassadorial duties at the end of 2021 to join the presidency of the Minsk Group, a political subgroup fighting for the reintegration of the Donbass into Ukraine, as part of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).

Diplomacy in historically significant contexts

Ms. Bermann observes that during her career as a diplomat, she has always held office in historically significant contexts.

She traveled to China in 1989, where she witnessed the Tian'anmen demonstrations, the most important political event of the post-Cultural Revolution era.

Later, in 2011, she served as French ambassador to China when the current president of the People's Republic of China, Xi Jinping, came to power, whom she describes as the "man of China's opening and modernization". Her tenure was also marked by the 50th anniversary of the establishment of SinoFrench diplomatic relations, the golden wedding anniversary between China and France.

In July 2014, she was appointed French ambassador to England, a country that seemed a priori "without history", but on June 23, 2016, 51.9% of British voters voted to leave the European Union in a referendum that was marked by a high turnout and at the behest of Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron. According to Sylvie Bermann, the choice was irrational and dangerous for democracy. This turning point, says Ms. Bermann, gives reason to fear a polarization of the world.

She left her post in England for Moscow in 2017. While there, she quickly noted Russia's very strong influence on the international stage, particularly at the Russia-Africa summit in Sochi in 2019, which will bring together 46 African heads of state who have responded to Vladimir Putin's call to strengthen ties between Russia and Africa. Sylvie Bermann also notes Russia's closeness to Middle Eastern heads of state, particularly after Russia's military intervention in Syria, its first military intervention outside its borders since the Afghanistan war.

More recently, Sylvie Bermann followed the first exchanges between French President Emmanuel Macron and Vladimir Putin. She explains that, at that time, the Russian head of state was not in a logic of war, as he had agreed to meet the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky.

Describing the Russian political spirit, Sylvie Bermann uses the formula used by Andrei Gratchev to title his book published in 2014: "Russia's past is unpredictable".

Sylvie Bermann concludes her lecture by indicating the need to rediscuss an architecture of peace in Europe in order to avoid the emergence of a new Chinese Wall or Iron Curtain.