Macron desperately wants to carve his name into the history books as a French president who actually did something. Anything.
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Just what is Emmanuel Macron thinking with his recent media trysts which have gained the attention of the world? Initially, we thought his statements about sending French troops to Ukraine to fight Russian forces was merely chaf to throw up in the air to distract journalists and a gullible French public. It’s true, it has rattled Germany which promptly replied to Macron, reminding him that EU countries are not “at war with Russia” – a curious statement given that just a week earlier, a leaked audio conversation with German air force chiefs revealed that they wanted to send Taurus missiles to Ukraine so as to hit the Crimean bridge.
Of course, now that we all know what the intentions of the Germans were, Scholz has been forced to backpedal and downplay the scandal, sticking to its position of neutrality.
But if you think that’s funny, wait until you see what Macron has in store for Old Europe. Could it be really true that he believes French troops could end up in Ukraine? A quick glance at the actual quote from Le Parisienne interview would suggest the opposite and that he’s hedging his bets, or, as some suspect trying to bait the Americans into wanting to get there first. Is this what the British expression “jumping the gun” really means?
“Maybe at some point – I don’t want it, I won’t take the initiative – we will have to have operations on the ground, whatever they may be, to counter the Russian forces,” he is quoted as saying. In reality, it seems as though he has been misquoted as there is no story here. Even he is saying on the record that he won’t authorise it. So is he hinting at other western countries taking the lead, perhaps the Poles, Lithuanians and Latvians? Possibly.
But in reality, the most likely scenario would be the U.S. biting the bullet and financing a private army made up of various nationalities. Yet even this initiative would need to be prepared for media and even Russia itself so that the underlying point is clear: this is not a NATO war.
Of course, this thinking is fatally flawed as it is based on a premise that Putin wouldn’t dare retaliate against those units of troops who he knows are located in a particular spot, as this could invoke Article V of the NATO treaty itself. Yet any two-bit geopolitical hack who knows Putin, knows this would not stop him as killing western troops – or even better capturing a small number – would mean the end of the West’s intervention. Western elites have the technology and well-trained soldiers. What they lack is the stamina and political courage to face the baptism of outrage once body bags start arriving back on home soil. It may well mean, for Macron, if he were ever to entertain the idea of French troops, that it would or could be African troops from former French colonies enrolled under private contracts as mercenaries.
But as I saw in Somalia in 1993, Western leaders like Clinton had no stomach whatsoever for even a small number of their own being killed or captured. Osama bin Laden watched how Clinton soiled his own pants when just 18 soldiers died in the spectacular U.S. Rangers failure in Mogadishu with an operation which was supposed to take an hour. Black Hawk Down and its implications inspired Bin Laden to bomb both the Dar Es Salam and Nairobi U.S. embassies after seeing how vulnerable the West is fighting terrorism, or merely sticking its nose into other countries problems. All it actually took was Newsweek to run a cover of a U.S. soldier’s body being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu to make Clinton not only pull out of Somalia altogether, but convince the UN itself to leave later in 1995. It also meant that the West would not help hundreds of thousands of victims of the civil war in Rwanda which led to the genocide in 1994. One U.S. soldier. One Newsweek cover.
The idea of western troops in Ukraine is a non-starter and represents, if nothing else, yet another jaw dropping miscalculation of western leaders struggling to come to terms with losing a war in Ukraine. But if all Macron wanted was media coverage and something to distract the French away from the more tawdry reports circulating if his wife actually being a man, then this fitted the bill. Macron, we should remember, is in his last three years in office as President and desperately wants to carve his name into the history books as a French president who actually did something. Anything. So, his media people are cooking up a number of stories which are aimed towards those who write the history books to be kind to him and airbrush out how he lost at least three Sahel countries to Russia during his term due to his own stupendous arrogance and belief in the Republic and its importance in African 50 years ago. How does such a weasel of a politician boost his popularity and make himself look more of a man than his wife when the whole world sees him for being a coward, a failed statesman and a liar? Produce a photo of him as a boxer punching a sack, of course! Voila.
