French President Emmanuel Macron has reiterated that France does not rule out deploying its troops in Ukraine after Vladimir Putin responded to Macron’s initial “all options on the table” discourse, by making, the usual nuclear threat and declaring that French troops in Ukraine would be the equivalent of Russia being at war with NATO. Strange, I assumed, the Russians already believed they were fighting NATO, or at least that’s what their propaganda says.
Macron is following a textbook defensive posture that aims at keeping its strategic leverage and promptness by refusing to bow down to Moscow’s pressure and appease it with talk about “diplomacy”. If Macron actually follows through with his statements, he would be upstaging the US with defensive intervention just like Sarkozy upstaged the US by being first in bombing Ghaddafi’s army as it was en route to Benghazi to massacre its citizens. Such a move would also reinforce Europe’s defensive posture making it less dependable on the US even by prompting other European states to take the situation more seriously – as they should be doing.
So far, Macron is creating serious dilemmas for the Kremlin and changing their expectations on Europe’s defensive posture – and this is good. Now that Macron has picked up this stance, it needs to be maintained to preserve its strength; otherwise, Europe would be perceived as even weaker than before.
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