Can MAGA ‘Conquer’ France?
Transatlantic diplomacy has reached a low ebb of late. The American ambassador in Belgium, Bill White, just received a summons from Brussels and a public rebuke from the country’s foreign minister for accusing his hosts of antisemitism in a poorly-spelled X tirade. Charles Kushner, the American representative in France, has now gotten his second démarche from the Quai d’Orsay (both of them linked to his social media activity). These incidents are the latest crashes in our clown-car diplomacy, which in the past 14 months has done grave damage to the West’s alliance structure.
Recent media coverage, however, would have us believe that the White House’s foreign policy amounts to something more than saber-rattling and rants. According to a vague report in POLITICO Europe, the U.S. State Department is now attempting to cultivate a network of right populist organizations in various European countries. In Paris, this endeavor appears to have taken the form of a brand-new outfit: Western Arc, headed up by Nicolas Conquer, the former spokesman for Republicans Overseas.
The piece claimed Western Arc was on a roster of possible organizations that could be funded to advance the administration’s worldview in France. The article’s author did not confirm that the State Department was planning activities with Western Arc. The brief contained a Brussels dateline, carried a file photo of Conquer, and appears to have relied mostly on Conquer’s assertions to this effect.
Conquer’s incursion into the policy space appears to have come about recently. According to filings with the French government, his organization was created on December 22, 2025. The required statement of purpose contains numerous departures from grammar and punctuation conventions, omitting accent marks, apostrophes, and commas. The organization’s website names as its address the statue of the Marquis de Lafayette in Paris’ tony Eighth Arrondissement. The place of business registered with the French government is, in fact, a nondescript office building in a mid-market Paris suburb. The contact information for the organization is Conquer’s Gmail address and cell phone number.
The operation seems largely centered on Conquer himself. Conquer lists two collaborators on Western Arc’s website, but most of the content is directly sourced from him. The news (actualités) tab directs to a compendium of his columns published in the French popular press over the last year. The site features three position papers on the European Union’s Digital Services Act, Greenland, and Euro-American discord over the meaning of free speech. He is the author of two of three of these documents, the longest of which runs to twenty pages, each with large fonts and graphics.
Conquer provides this bio line in his position papers: “Expert in transatlantic geopolitics and digital governance, he has worked on questions of sovereignty and innovation at the intersection of Paris and Washington.” He markets himself on LinkedIn, however, as an “expert in SEO [search-engine optimization] and insights.” Indeed, through late 2024, his full-time job was at a cosmetics firm as a digital marketer. He worked prior to that in operations and financial planning for a hospitality conglomerate and a cookie company.
Conquer’s pursuit of political office has so far failed, perhaps due to being dispatched to a terre de mission. Running for a seat in parliament during the 2024 snap elections, he was routed by a nearly two-to-one margin by his Socialist opponent. He boasted in that race the nomination of Eric Ciotti’s Union of Rights for the Republic, a subsidiary faction of the Rassemblement National.
Conquer made a splash with a book in January 2026 titled Vers un Trump français (Toward A French Trump). The volume, coming from the major French imprint Fayard, has been depicted in the right-wing media here as more a travelogue and memoir than a policy manifesto. The postliberal Causeur opines that Conquer is more “a raconteur” than “an ideologue.” The magazine’s reviewer also engages in a bit of persiflage, observing the author’s “very American taste for clashes, theatrics, storytelling, and media buzz.”
Conquer might not be a policy wonk, but he certainly ranks as a habitué of television studios and column inches. He regularly appears on the premier cable channels, such as BFM-TV, and garners mentions in Le Figaro and Le Journal de Dimanche.
Conquer’s foray into the policy space is his affair. But French conservatives already have a vast infrastructure of policy shops and intellectual publications. Pierre-Édouard Stérin, a billionaire tech mogul, has poured millions into building a complex of think tanks, policy initiatives, and magazines that are laying the intellectual seedbed of the populist right in France. These include Hexagone, an outfit explicitly inspired by the Heritage Foundation, and Les Fonds du Bien Commun, a source of backing for right-coded civil society projects.
This White House is not exactly worldly. Conquer cuts a handsome figure with his brown mustache and double-breasted suit. He has become French cableviewers’ token Republican, and now he is punching his ticket in the other direction as conservative Washington’s token Frenchman.
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