Macron is entirely correct: as an independent nation, Ukraine can invite whoever it wishes onto its land. Before the full-scale invasion, Kyiv hosted troops from Nato members as part of the Operation Unifier and Operation Orbital training missions. More recently, special forces from various Western nations have operated inside Ukraine, with the Kremlin fully aware. The French leader’s idea is not only possible, but has precedent.

Yet that is not to say that it is pragmatic. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has repeatedly rejected the prospect of peacekeepers from Nato countries in Ukraine, explaining that their presence would be “unacceptable” to Moscow — even “under a foreign flag, the flag of the European Union or the national flag”. Already dragging his feet on the way to the negotiating table, Putin will be even more reluctant to cease Russia’s war effort if he knows that will beckon Western soldiers. An ex-Kremlin official told the Financial Times last week that the Russian President would consider these deployments as Kyiv gaining “quasi Nato membership”, a prospect so objectionable that he would “rather keep fighting”.

Having publicly made such views clear, the Kremlin would likely react forcefully to having them ignored. Western peacekeepers heading to Ukraine without Moscow’s approval would bring a serious risk of escalation along with them. While all such missions bear a degree of danger, these troops would be particularly vulnerable. An “accidental” strike on peacekeepers, some missing troops, or a few captured soldiers paraded online by Moscow’s local proxy forces would cause diplomatic and domestic headaches for European leaders torn between showing their own worried electorates that they are standing up to the Kremlin and facing the ramifications of wading into a battle with Moscow.

Underlying all of this is the question of America’s reliability. The White House has still not committed to providing a backstop and, even if Donald Trump did promise to clear up Europe’s mess in the event of trouble, Putin knows that this is a US President pulling away from Nato allies and eager for any peacekeeping mission to be entirely European. From Putin’s perspective, revenge for having his views ignored, long-term resentment over Western assistance to Ukraine, and a desire to exacerbate tensions between America and Europe are all potent motivations to test the waters.

So what is the alternative? The former Kremlin official interviewed by the FT indicated that Putin would accept Ukraine entering into bilateral security arrangements with Western countries. Kyiv would likely voice concerns at this being the extent of its protection, remembering how well such agreements worked when it gave up its nuclear arsenal in return for guarantees from the US, UK and Russia. Besides, 29 of Nato’s 32 members have already signed bilateral security arrangements with Ukraine, the G7 having established a framework.

Yet vague provisions to consult with Ukraine within 24 hours of any future Russian aggression could be tightened to promise troop deployments. While Ukraine’s leadership could sell this as back-up being just a phone call away, the Kremlin could spin it as Western forces being many miles from the action.

Macron has a long history of coming up with ideas, some of which actually prove useful. However, in this instance the threat to place Western peacekeepers on Ukrainian soil in spite of the Kremlin’s refusal risks inflaming tensions rather than calming them. The French leader’s suggestion is posturing, not policy.

Bethany Elliott is a writer specialising in Russia and Eastern Europe.

But it should be kept in mind that Joe Biden has always ruled out, including in the pre-war period, deploying US troops.

During the Cold War, NATO and Warsaw Pact countries carefully avoided any direct military confrontation. Never before has a Soviet soldier shot an American soldier and vice versa. Taking such a risk today may seem paradoxical to say the least. French Armed Forces Minister Sebastien Lecornu ruled out sending combat troops on the ground, thus correcting (or clarifying) the president’s comments.

Admittedly, things are looking pretty bad for Kiev, which is experiencing serious difficulties at the military level. While some hoped for the collapse of the Russian army at the end of 2022, in 2023 we instead witnessed the failure of the Ukrainian counteroffensive, with the Ukrainian army losing ground once again. Vladimir Zelensky complains about the insufficient amount of ammunition he receives. In addition, the demographic ratio does not work in his favor, as Ukraine’s population is four times smaller than Russia’s. Western countries support Zelensky’s conditions for ending the war, namely to return all lost territories not only in 2022, but also Crimea conquered in 2014, to try Vladimir Putin in the International Criminal Court, and to demand that Russia make reparations for war damage. To say that these goals are difficult to achieve is to say nothing.

Isn’t that why President Macron mentioned sending Western troops that could tip the scales in Ukraine’s favor? But such a decision could lead to a direct confrontation with Russia, a nuclear power. How then to explain the antic by Emmanuel Macron, who later accused of cowardice those who did not want to be firm enough with Vladimir Putin?

The French president gave a new impetus to French politics after his speech in Bratislava in May 2023. However, he has long been an advocate of dialogue with Moscow and has been criticized by Vladimir Zelensky for his flabby support. But now he seems to want to play the role of a leader in supporting Kiev. Before the European elections, there may be domestic political goals to oppose Rassemblement Nationale and Unconquered France, which favor a cease-fire. Ukrainians consider this prospect unacceptable, as it would be tantamount to recognizing Moscow’s territorial conquests. Western countries are in a sense trapped, and they have put themselves in a trap. By fully adhering to Zelensky’s military objectives and repeatedly stating that their strategic reputation is at stake, they find themselves up against the wall if Ukraine failures.

Emmanuel Macron has undoubtedly seen a window of opportunity. The United States is locked in a domestic debate in Congress, and the prospect of Donald Trump returning to the White House makes its Western solidarity even more uncertain. Great Britain is wallowed in domestic political difficulties, and Germany’s ruling coalition is not in a leadership position. In addition, Emmanuel Macron has undoubtedly told himself that he has a trump card to exercise European leadership. To regain the initiative and no longer take a defensive posture, France and Germany are heavily criticized in eastern Europe for their relative closeness to Russia. The problem is that by positioning itself in this way, he abandons France’s traditional and advantageous position of serving as a bridge between the West and the global South at a time when the gap between the two is widening. In the tradition of De Gaulle and Mitterrand, France is certainly a Western country, but it cannot simply be characterized that way. It also stands out for its active policy towards the countries of the South, especially as the latter are gaining ground on the international scene. By positioning itself sharply in support of Ukraine, France is distancing itself from most countries in the Global South, for which ending this war is essential. This was also mentioned by Pope Francis when he asked Zelensky to have the courage to raise the white flag. But for Macron and Zelensky, this would mean cowardly concession.

The problem is that no one can guarantee that continuing the war that will entail human, economic, and social costs will lead to the desired outcome. According to Pope Francis and many Southern leaders, we will unnecessarily prolong the war without changing the territorial situation.

The problem is that Western countries have never wanted to condition their aid on gaining some influence for military purposes. There’s a difference between possible and desirable. Some would like Ukraine to regain all lost territories. It’s not certain that this is possible. It’s doubtful that it’s possible at all. And there’s a risk that forcing the decision in this direction will lead to an uncontrollable spiral.

The angst in the French mind is understandable as the five centuries of western dominance of the world order is drawing to a close. This predicament condemns France to a diplomacy that is constantly in a state of suspended animation interspersed with sudden bouts of activism. 

But, for activism to be result-oriented, there are prerequisites needed such as the profiling of like-minded activist groups, leadership and associates and supporters and sympathisers — and, most important, sustainment and logistics. Or else, activism comes to resemble epileptic fits, an incurable affliction of the nervous system.  

The French President Emmanuel Macron’s halcyon days in international diplomacy ended with the recent  dissolution of the Franco-German axis in Europe, which dated back to the Treaties of Rome in 1957. As Berlin sharply swerved to trans-atlanticism as its foreign-policy dogma, France’s clout diminished in European affairs. 

The stakes are high in the reconciliation meeting on Friday as Macron travels to Berlin to meet Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who not only snubbed him by ruling out the use of ground troops from European countries in the Ukraine war, but also digging in on Taurus missile issue arguing that it would entail assigning German staff in support to Ukraine, which, he announced on Wednesday in the Bundestag, is simply “out of the question” while he remained the chancellor. 

Of course, this is not to decry Macron’s formidable intellect — such as when he declared in a blunt interview in late 2019 with the Economist magazine that Europe stood on “the edge of a precipice” and needed to start thinking of itself strategically as a geopolitical power lest it will “no longer be in control of our destiny.” Macron’s prescient remark preceded the war in Ukraine by 3 years. 

According to the newspaper Marianne, which interviewed several French soldiers, the military reportedly estimates that the Ukraine war is irretrievably lost already. Marianne quoted a senior French officer saying derisively, “We must make no mistake facing the Russians; we are an army of cheerleaders” and sending French troops to the Ukrainian front would simply be “not reasonable” . At the Élysée, an unnamed advisor argued that Macron “wanted to send a strong signal… (in) milli-metered and calibrated words”. 

Marianne’s editor Natacha Polony wrote: “It is no longer about Emmanuel Macron or his postures as a virile little leader. It is no longer even about France or its weakening by blind and irresponsible elites. It is a question of whether we will collectively agree to sleepwalk into war. A war that no one can claim will be controlled or contained. It’s a question of whether we agree to send our children to die because the United States insisted on setting up bases on Russia’s borders.” 

The big question is why Macron is doing this nonetheless — going to the extent of cobbling together a ‘coalition of the willing’ in Europe. A range of explanations is possible starting with Macron posturing and trying to earn political points at minimal cost, motivated by personal ambitions and intra-European friction with Berlin. 

But then, until fairly recently, Macron was a supporter of dialogue with Moscow. The perception in most European capitals, including Moscow, is that Macron is making an attempt to bring the Ukrainian crisis to a new level by announcing western combat deployment against Russia  publicly as an obvious political manipulation. 

The geopolitical salience is that Macron who once not too long ago called for dialogue with Moscow and offered his mediation in it, who made the famous declaration of a “Greater Europe” in 2019 and maintained contacts with Russian President Vladimir Putin thereof; who as of February last year, while speaking about Russia’s “certain defeat” in Ukraine, called for avoiding Moscow’s “humiliation”; who repeatedly underscored his commitment to the matrix of diplomacy attributed to Charles de Gaulle, which assigned France the role of a “bridge between East and West” — has now swung to the other extreme of harsh Euro-Atlantic rhetoric.  

This appalling inconsistency can only be seen as stemming out of the unfavourable development of events in the scenario of the Ukrainian crisis with the prospect of a Russian defeat in the war no longer in the cards even remotely and replaced by the growing possibility that peace will ultimately be attainable only on Russia’s terms. Put differently, the power dynamic in Europe is shifting dramatically, which, of course, impacts Macron’s own ambitions to “lead Europe.” 

Meanwhile, Russian-French relations have also been undergoing a stage of fierce competition and rivalry — even confrontation — in a number of areas. For a start,  French Foreign Minister Stephane Sejournet said in an interview with Le Parisien in January that Russia’s victory in Ukraine would lead to 30% of world wheat exports being controlled by Moscow. For Paris, this is a question of the sustainability of one of the key sectors of French national economy.

French agriculture is marked by its history that had its beginning with the Gaulois in 2000 BC. It needs to be understood that In modern history, French Revolution of 1789, which altered every part of the French social order and led to the abolition of privileges for upper classes, was also an Agricultural Revolution, which allowed a broad land redistribution. Suffice to say, the bond of French people to their agriculture is very strong.

As it is, African states are changing the structure of grain imports due to the technical regulations introduced by the European Union as part of its green agenda and French farmers consequently face rising costs, and over and above that, there is now also the looming loss of regional market share to Russia. 

This is on top of the inroads Russia is making in arms exports to the African continent lately. In politico-military terms too, France has lost ground to Russia in the resource-rich Sahel region, its ex-colonies and playpen traditionally. The fact of the matter is that the birds are coming to roost over France’s neo-colonial strategies in Africa, but Paris prefers to put the blame on Russia’s Wagner group which has moved in to fill the security vacuum in Sahel region, as anti-French forces have come to power in several countries at once — Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Chad, CAR. 

In the best traditions of geopolitics, France has begun retaliating in regions sensitive to Russian interests — Armenia, Moldova and Ukraine where Russian military presence is in French crosshairs. Unsurprisingly, Ukraine is the most strategic turf where Macron hopes to achieve a bigger French presence. 

Through that, Macron hopes to advance his leadership ambitions in Europe as the navigator of the EU’s foreign policy strategy in a wide arc from the African continent across the Mediterranean to Transcaucasia — and potentially all the way to Afghanistan. 

All this is unfolding against the historic backdrop of an inevitable US retrenchment in Europe as Indo-Pacific hots up and the simmering rivalry with China becomes an all-consuming passion for Washington. Indeed, alongside, the towering presence of Russia across Europe is beginning to be felt intensely as it surges as the number one military and economic power in the strategic space between Vancouver and Vladivostok.  

Today, the paradox is, then Russian president Dmitry Medvedev had proposed way back in 2008 a legally binding pan-European security treaty, which would develop a new security architecture in Europe, involving the reshaping of existing, and creating new institutions and norms regulating security relations in Europe in a wider geopolitical space stretching east “from Vancouver to Vladivostok.” But, alas, the US encouraged the Europeans to see the so-called ‘Medvedev Initiative’ as a trap to enfeeble NATO, the OSCE, the EU and other European bodies,  and reject that wonderful idea which would have anchored the post-cold war era firmly on a binding security architecture. 

The most important NATO members, led by Washington, rejected his suggestion. Nevertheless, Macron, whose bombast contrasts sharply with his government’s miserly contribution of about a billion dollars to Ukraine, doubled down, receiving support from allies at the other end of the military spectrum, including Czechia, Estonia, and Lithuania. For instance, the prime minister of Estonia, with all of 7,200 men and women under arms, insisted that “everything is on the table to help Ukraine beat Putin.” As in the past, NATO states with the least military capabilities seemed most ready to proffer grandiose plans for using other members’ militaries. 

The U.S. and several NATO allies already are deeply involved in the proxy war-plus against Moscow. Providing a plethora of weapons to kill thousands of Russians is provocative enough. In the past, both Washington and Moscow played the game—Afghanistan and Vietnam, respectively, come to mind. Yet in neither case were the neo-belligerents so public about their direct involvement and ostentatious in their celebration of the deadly results.

To start, many foreigners fighting with Ukraine against Russia are unofficially deployed. Explained former Pentagon official Stephen Bryen, “Now the Russians are saying that many of the so-called ‘mercenaries’ in Ukraine are, in fact, highly trained NATO soldiers. They wear Ukrainian uniforms with national patches identifying them. They are ‘necessary’ to operate the high tech weapons NATO has sent to Ukraine. When the Russians recently took over Avdiivka they found bodies of  these mercenaries, some American and some Poles.” 

A few weeks ago, Russia claimed to have killed French combatants in an airstrike. Paris called the report “disinformation,” but its denial was widely disbelieved, especially now. Added Bryen, “Most of the deaths of NATO personnel are covered up. When they are reported at all, they generally say that the ‘volunteer’ was providing medical assistance.” 

Other allied forces operate more openly. German Chancellor Scholz revealed that both France and the United Kingdom had troops assisting in the use of high-tech weapons transferred to Kiev. Observed Scholz: “What the British and French are doing in terms of target control and support for target control cannot be done in Germany.” 

The UK admitted the truth, criticizing Scholz only for leaking the information. London has assisted Ukraine in destroying Russian war ships. Moreover, international affairs specialist Michael Brenner explained, the UK’s “specialized personnel have been operating the Storm Shadow missiles (counterpart to the French SCALP) employed against Crimea and elsewhere. MI-6 has taken a lead role in designing multiple attacks on the Kerch Bridge and other critical infrastructure.” Rumors circulated that British personnel were assisting with the air defense unit which downed a Russian plane carrying Ukrainian POWs.

Such activities are widespread. Le Monde reported, “Since the outbreak of the invasion of Ukraine, numerous state actors associated with Western intelligence services, often with military status, have been present in the country. Undercover diplomatic personnel, advisers for Ukraine, and members of special forces have inherently played a role since the start of the war.” 

Macron’s proposal to escalate the conflict triggered an allied war of words. He suggested that his critics were craven weaklings: “We are surely approaching a moment for Europe in which it will be necessary not to be cowards.” His government was reportedly considering sending Special Forces to aid Ukraine in its air defense operations. 

The U.S. also has personnel on the ground in a training role and more. Two German generals whose conversation was tapped by Russia observed that “we know that many people with American accents in civil clothing are running around there.” Apparently, a lot of them. Explained Brenner:

Roughly 4–5,000 Americans have been performing critical operational functions from the outset. The presence of a majority predates by several years the onset of hostilities 2 years ago. That contingent was augmented by a supplementary group of 1,700 last summer which was as a corps of logistic experts advertised as mandated to seek out and eradicate corruption in the black-marketing of pilfered supplies. The Pentagon people are sown thought the Ukrainian military from headquarters planning units, to advisers in the field, to technicians and Special Forces. It is widely understood that Americans have operated the sophisticated HIMARS long-range artillery and the Patriot air defense batteries. This last means that members of the U.S. military have been aiming—perhaps pulling the trigger on—weapons that kill Russians.

The CIA also has played an active role in Ukraine’s defense: 

CIA officers remained at a remote location in western Ukraine when the Biden administration evacuated U.S. personnel in the weeks before Russia invaded in February 2022. During the invasion, the officers relayed critical intelligence, including where Russia was planning strikes and which weapons systems they would use. “Without them, there would have been no way for us to resist the Russians, or to beat them,” said Ivan Bakanov, who was then head of Ukraine’s domestic intelligence agency, the S.B.U.

U.S. officials anonymously but publicly took credit for killing Russian generals and sinking Russian ships. Washington is one of the prime suspects in the attack on the Russo-German Nord Stream 2 pipeline.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg encouraged escalation too, arguing that “it will be up to each ally to decide whether to deliver F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine, but the country has the right to self-defense, including striking legitimate Russian military targets outside Ukraine.” The issue is not just the range of the planes, but who would fly them. Moscow assumes NATO would also provide pilots, however unlikely that might seem to Americans. But then, Russians flew planes on behalf of North Korea against the U.S. and Egypt against Israel. 

Some Ukraine partisans would push the boundary of potential casus belli outward. Foreign troops could play a variety of non-combat roles in Ukraine, but all would risk drawing NATO into the fray. Paris admitted that one purpose of introducing troops would be the hope that the “presence of French soldiers or [those] of other nations would potentially protect certain areas of the Ukrainian territory.” That is, the French military operating in a war zone would become a human shield behind which Ukraine could freely attack Russia while avoiding retaliation. Rather like President Woodrow Wilson’s ludicrous claim that one American on board immunized a British reserve cruiser carrying munitions through a war zone, one French soldier in Kiev, Odessa, or Kharkiv would immunize an entire city from attack. That would be ridiculous, of course, with French soldiers choosing to enter a war zone. However, Paris already has complained to Moscow about killing its citizens in Ukraine. 

The hawkish former Rep. Adam Kinzinger would turn this doctrine into U.S. policy, contending that, with a missile strike some 500 feet away from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and visiting Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis in Odessa, “Russia just got within 150 meters of an article 5, with news of the strike in Odessa almost hitting the Greek Prime Minister.” Even more so, presumably, he would expect America to go to war if a U.S. politician grandstanding with Zelensky in Kiev or U.S. soldiers training Ukrainians elsewhere perished in a Russian strike.

Why the widespread enthusiasm for lighting the fires of what could become a nuclear World War III?

In an odd sense, we are paying a price for the fact that Putin has failed to escalate. Washington and its allies began cautiously, hesitant to act as Ukraine’s armorer. However, as Putin ignored military provocations, NATO governments unleashed a deadly munitions cascade, costing the lives of thousands, and perhaps tens of thousands, of Russian personnel. So far, despite sharp criticism from the nationalist right, Putin has rejected escalation. France’s foreign minister now confidently insists that the allies can send troops “without crossing the threshold of belligerence.” 

In similar circumstances, would Washington be as restrained as Russia has been? Four years ago candidate Joe Biden said what many Americans were thinking: “I don’t understand why this president is unwilling to take on Putin when he’s actually paying bounties to kill American soldiers in Afghanistan.” That story wasn’t true, but Washington was filled with demands for retaliation. Imagine if Moscow had emptied its armories and shipped everything to the Taliban, provided missiles to strike U.S. territory, sent personnel to Afghanistan to operate Russian weapons, ran intelligence operations for the insurgents, and openly debated introducing Russian troops to aid the Taliban. Washington would do something, and probably a lot, in response. 

In this regard, Western states have benefited from Putin’s apparent belief that Russia is winning, so presumably he refuses to risk widening the war. (The invasion has been costly, but he evidently believes that he will nevertheless achieve his objectives.) Yet the allies say they are determined to prevent Moscow from triumphing. Some insist that sufficient support be rendered to ensure Ukraine can negotiate a favorable peace. Others, like Macron, talk of producing a Ukrainian victory. All of Kiev’s friends hope to expose Putin’s ambitions as folly.

Ukraine’s future obviously is an existential interest for Ukrainians, but is not, despite the florid rhetoric on both sides of the Atlantic, for Americans or Europeans. Indeed, popular support for Ukraine on both sides of the Atlantic is thin and declining. As time passes, this drop is likely to accelerate.

In contrast, the Russian government and its nationalist backers also see Ukraine’s status as an existential interest. So in all likelihood does Putin, in assessing both his historical reputation and, more immediately, his political survival. If the allies openly join the battle or enable systematic attacks on Moscow and other major Russian cities, serious threats against Crimea, or virtual destruction of Russian military units, Moscow’s relative quiescence is unlikely to continue. For Putin, defeat truly is not an option. And given the Russian military’s lower threshold for use of nuclear weapons, the consequences could be dire for all.

Allied aid has helped the Ukrainian people preserve their independence from Moscow’s assault. Yet the Napoleon-wannabe Macron talks of defeating Russia. That is a fool’s errand likely to result in a broader and more destructive conflict. Instead, Washington and Brussels should concentrate on bringing the conflict to a peaceful end.

Doug Bandow is a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute. A former Special Assistant to President Ronald Reagan, he is author of Foreign Follies: America’s New Global Empire.

More influential forces, such as the Socialist Party and conservative Republicans, also condemned “the French president’s muscle play.” Notably, in the run-up to June’s European elections, Macron’s centrist liberal party is significantly behind the left and right parties in the polls.

There were also no statements in the media in favor of this idea, and on all news channels, when asked whether France should prepare for war with Russia, the answer was an emphatic “no.” The same views were expressed in most European countries, with the exception of some eastern ones, primarily the Baltics and Poland.

Biden tries to strike fear by claiming Russia wants to take over the whole world

So, then, how is our hegemon, “the leader of the free world” Joe Biden doing? The answer came during his recent annual address to Congress, when, instead of speaking traditionally about the state of his own country, he began immediately with Putin. “If anyone in this room thinks Putin will stop at Ukraine, I assure you he won’t,” Baden said, adding that although Europe is “in danger,” he remains “determined” not to send American soldiers to defend it.

As the New York Times ironically noted, Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson, who was invited to this speech, must have gone dizzy. Indeed, the threat of a Russian invasion of Europe was the strongest argument to attract new members to NATO for their own protection. But if such incursions were a real concern, the USA would have been obliged to send its troops there.

It turns out that Sweden and Finland decided in vain to trade their favorable neutral status, which allows them to stand aside from destructive conflicts.

At the present time, many Europeans, as well as Americans, are fed up with war. They are convinced that Ukraine cannot win it and the Russian threat is a fiction or a bogeyman to extort taxpayers’ money for its continuation.

Interestingly, the recently published book La Défaite de l’Occident (The Defeat of the West) has been at the top of France’s bestseller lists since January. Its author, the famous historian and anthropologist Emmanuel Todd, predicted the collapse of the Soviet Union as early as 1976 in his book The Final Fall.

In 2002, i.e., even before the US invasion of Iraq, his book After the Empire was published, already predicting “the collapse of the American order.”

Todd is also a critic of US intervention in Ukraine, but his reasoning differs from those who believed that only NATO expansion, the neoconservative ideology of democracy promotion, and the demonization of Russia provoked the war. He believes that an additional, if not the primary, factor in this interference is the American quest for global hegemony, which has not only jeopardized the rest of the world, but has “corroded the American character.”

Todd also argues that the global immersion of Americans in the world economy was a mistake and cites the following facts: “The United States is now producing fewer cars than it did in the 1980s and is growing less wheat.” But it’s not just that, since “economic problems are linked to deeper, longer-term cultural shifts that used to be called ‘decadence.’”

Too many people seek to manage and hold command positions. They want to be politicians, managers. It doesn’t always require learning intellectually complex things. In the long run, it has already led to the disappearance of those values that favor a deep comprehensive education.

Todd also estimated that the United States today produces fewer engineers than Russia, not only on a per capita basis, but also in absolute numbers. America is experiencing an “internal brain drain” as its young people move from demanding, high-skilled, value-added professions to law, finance, and various occupations that simply “betray the importance of the economy, and in some cases may even destroy it.”

Speaking of America’s internal problems and the negative actions it is taking in the world, the author emphasizes its violent spread of the liberal value system. This system is often described as some kind of universal human rights, but as a specialist in family anthropology, Todd warns that many of the values currently propagated by Americans are less universal than they think. “Waging a values-based war requires good values,” the author concludes, but, as he also ironically notes, “they are, to put it mildly, not quite good.”

Macron tries at all costs not to go to Kiev

Returning to the current “micro-Napoleon” named Macron, we note that he has yet again postponed his visit to Kiev. The explanations have changed several times, from security concerns to the need to first build a coalition of those willing to send troops to Ukraine.

The latest statement from the Elysee Palace says the visit will take place in the next few weeks. We’ll see if he postpones it once again, but it would make sense for Macron, as a Catholic, to go to the Vatican instead of Kiev, talk to Pope Francis, listen to why Kiev needs to admit defeat and request negotiations to reduce the sacrifices of its people.

But Macron’s comments may help deliver a stiff (and much needed) dose of reality to Washington elites, who are still clinging to 90’s-era notions of America as the unrivaled global superpower and “indispensable nation” — ideas which have long since lost their currency in much of the world.  

China’s rise is only one factor that heralds the arrival of a “multipolar” world in which global power is slowly diffusing away from the United States. It should come as little surprise to Washington that middle powers like France hope to navigate this emerging reality in a manner that their leaders believe best suits their nation’s interests. 

In an interview following his meeting with President Xi, the French president warned of Europeans becoming “vassals” of a world dominated by Washington and Beijing, and framed a potential confrontation between China and Taiwan as a crisis that is “not ours.” He pitched an alternate vision of European strategic autonomy and an independent French foreign policy.

This did not go down well in Washington, to put it mildly. Congressman Michael Gallagher, chairman of the new Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party and a China hawk, called Macron’s interview a “massive propaganda victory” for the CCP. Texas senator John Cornyn criticized Macron’s “vow of neutrality against Chinese aggression in the Pacific.” Though the White House tried to douse the fire, it is unlikely to have placated anyone.

It remains to be seen if Macron is able to achieve his goal of greater European policy independence on China. Much will depend on his ability to forge a consensus with Germany and some other EU states, which will not be easy.

Had dissent from U.S. strategy been limited to France, that would not have been so surprising. After all, the French strains of Gaullism and Left populism have always chafed at American dominance, even as France has remained a committed U.S. ally on most common challenges. 

The most glaring example in recent decades was France’s defiance of Washington’s illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003. Macron may be an unlikely messenger of Gaullism, or even more so, of French left populism. But if we zoom out to the rest of the world, his is hardly a lonely voice.

The fact is that the U.S. alliance and partnership system is going through a substantial shift, especially in the Global South. Whereas during the Cold War, many U.S.-backed regimes in South and Southeast Asia, Latin America, and Africa could be counted on to back Washington in regards to major rivals (though even then there were significant plays at autonomy), this is much less true today.

Witness Egypt’s alleged covert planning to supply as many as 40,000 lethal rockets to Russia in recent months (a development it vehemently denies). Or the surprise Saudi peace deal with Iran achieved with Chinese assistance. Or India’s continuing purchase of  huge volumes of Russian oil. In Southeast Asia, Singapore has a pointed message on the U.S.-China rivalry: this is not our fight. 

This is what multipolarity looks like. As an American mayor once notoriously said: “get over it.” But the United States is not ready for a post-unipolar world. Its moral hectoring on democracy and human rights (with all the glaring contradictions evident) falls on deaf ears, from New Delhi to Havana. Its strident calls for a global coalition against Russia and China — with Iran thrown in somewhere for good measure — is met with a shrug of shoulders. Its frequent appeals for a “rules-based international order” mystify more than clarify.

Make no mistake: the Global South has not roundly or warmly welcomed Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine. And China’s intrusive behavior has put Southeast Asian states on the edge. But that doesn’t mean that these states are willing to fall in line behind the United States either. 

There will certainly be some instances when Global South states align or ally against Washington’s pet rivals — Singapore on Russia or India on China or Israel on Iran. But those are more the exceptions than the rule.

Rather than universalize its preferences, Washington might benefit from abandoning its tendency to moralize when it sees behaviors and governments it doesn’t like. Of course, when core American interests — that is the safety and security of the American homeland, its people and prosperity, and the U.S. political system — are directly threatened, the United States must act. 

But expecting states as distant and dissimilar as Egypt and India and Brazil to fall in line on a global battle against other great powers is futile and counterproductive. The United States must realize that, in a multi-civilizational and messy world, its strategic preferences and cherished values (to the extent it itself abides by them) may be increasingly a part of an a la carte choice rather than a set menu for a hungry world. 

Global South states, as also important voices in Europe, still prefer American leadership as long as it serves their interests. Otherwise, they will go where the best deals are to be found. In a sense, a freer market of interest-shopping has arrived. Surely, this is a very American thing?

Macron said that “We need to prepare what we are ready to do, how we protect our allies and member states, and how to give guarantees to Russia the day it returns to the negotiating table. One of the essential points we must address – as President Putin has always said – is the fear that NATO comes right up to its doors, and the deployment of weapons that could threaten Russia.”

Macron’s statement agreed with Putin that NATO expansion to Russia’s doors is an essential point that must be addressed by security guarantees to Russia, as Putin had requested as recently as the eve of the invasion. The French leader was proposing negotiations that are prepared to include discussion of Russia’s security concerns about NATO expansion, Ukraine joining NATO, and NATO weapons in Ukraine and elsewhere near Russia’s borders.

That is a significant break from the public US position that NATO is a defensive alliance that poses no threat to Russia, that Ukraine has a right to choose its own alliances, that Russia has no veto over NATO membership and that Ukraine’s request for membership never be on the negotiation table with Russia. It reflects a willingness to discuss one of the core demands Putin made when he requested negotiations on mutual security guarantees in December 2021 before the war.

Since his election in 2017, Macron has advanced the position that, contrary to US insistence, an ostracized and threatened Russia is not in the interest of Europe. Perhaps more than any other Western leader, Macron has kept a line of communication open with Putin since the war began. Along with Germany, France has never been as certain as the US that NATO expansion into Russia’s neighborhood is in the security interest of their countries, nor that expansion into Russia’s neighborhood wouldn’t be perceived as a security threat by Russia. It was Germany and France in 2008 who opposed the US plan for Ukrainian and Georgian accession to NATO.

And it is Germany who contributed the second statement to the pattern that could change negotiations on the war.

Like Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz provided his own camouflage for his paradigm changing statement. In an article in Foreign Affairs, Scholz offered up a harsh critique of Putin and his war. Aside from his recognition of a new multipolar world, his piece fit the US paradigm.

But a piece he penned on December 1, the same day Macron was in Washington, was very different. Like Macron’s camouflaged statement, Scholz’ seems to have received little attention.

After criticizing Russia for “destroying the peace order we worked on for so many decades,” the German chancellor made a startling addition. He said there was a “willingness” to engage with Putin on issues of arms control and missile deployment. He said that “We have to go back to the agreements which we had in the last decades and which were the basis for peace and security order in Europe.” And then he said that “all questions of common security could be solved and discussed. There is a willingness to do so.”

Like Macron, Scholtz is suggesting that negotiations to end the war should include negotiations on a European security architecture that addresses Russia’s security concerns. The pattern is forming.

And the pattern may extend beyond the US’s two most important European NATO partners. There have been changes to the message coming out of the other major player across the Atlantic.

On October 23, British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace expressed a “desire to de-escalate this conflict.” Surprisingly, and perhaps for the first time for a British official, he added that “the UK stands ready to assist” if “Ukraine and Russia seek a resolution to the war.” That offer is a significant shift from Boris Johnson’s reprimand of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that Putin “should be pressured, not negotiated with” and that, “even if Ukraine was ready to sign some agreements with Russia, the West was not.”

And it is not just the current government in the UK that is shifting. Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson has enjoyed a close relationship with Zelensky, so his words may be weighty. In a December 9 opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal, Johnson continues to support Zelensky’s line that there can be “no land-for-peace deal.” But, subtly, without comment Johnson redefined the land that could not be traded by Ukraine for peace. “Russian forces,” Johnson insisted, “must be pushed back to the de facto boundary of Feb. 24.”

Contrary to the US mantra of nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine, and Zelensky’s insistence that Crimea and the entire Donbas be reincorporated into Ukraine, Johnson says that Russia must return to where it was before the day of the invasion. But that means that Russia would keep Crimea and large parts of the Donbas.

That is a big change from Johnson’s insistence that the West was not ready to negotiate with Russia. It is a big change from his opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal a month earlier in which he said that for Ukraine to give up land would be “disgusting” and “a moral reproach to humanity.”

Keeping those eastern ethnic Russian regions, coupled with a willingness to negotiate a European security structure that takes seriously Russia’s security concerns, starts to sound like a new opening in the West to engage diplomatically in a real conversation with Russia.

And Johnson is not a lone voice. On December 7, in the same nine day period that Macron, Scholtz and Johnson made their statements, Secretary of State Blinken made the same startling statement. For the first time, Blinken modified the US demand for territorial integrity, defining it, not as all of Ukraine, including Crimea and the Donbas, but Ukraine as it stood on the eve of the invasion. Blinken told the Wall Street Journal that the American goals in Ukraine are unchanged: “Our focus is on continuing to do what we’ve been doing, which is to make sure that Ukraine has in its hands what it needs to defend itself, what it needs to push back against the Russian aggression.” But then, shockingly and little noticed, he added that the goal was “to take back territory that’s been seized from it since February 24^th.”

Blinken and Johnson had slipped in the same line. The goal was no longer to push Russia out of all of Ukraine but to push it back into the parts it was in before the invasion. And that implies the possibility of a negotiated settlement that leaves the ethnic Russian regions of Crimea and parts of the Donbas in Russia.

That was the first time a US official had redefined the diplomatic goal in public. But it had been foreshadowed by the fifth statement, one that had been made in private.

In mid November, it was reported that “Two European diplomats briefed on the discussions said [National Security Adviser] Sullivan recommended that Mr. Zelensky’s team start thinking about its realistic demands and priorities for negotiations, including a reconsideration of its stated aim for Ukraine to regain Crimea, which was annexed in 2014.” That statement, too, contributes to a pattern of a new stance on diplomacy.

Other members of the Western alliance have echoed these statements. On December 13, it was reported that “Some Western officials said Tuesday that the status of Crimea and the Donbas should be up for negotiation in eventual talks between Moscow and Kyiv.” One Western official said that “The long-standing issues of Crimea and the status of the Donbas might be something which are spoken about thereafter.”

British officials expressed “the absolute minimum needed for Russia to demonstrate it is serious about negotiating” as their willingness to “withdraw to positions that it occupied on Feb. 23, before the reinvasion.”

Germany said they will support whatever red lines Ukraine draws but added that “they believe it is unrealistic to expect that Russian troops will be fully expelled from all the occupied territories.”

Other officials and former officials who do not speak for the US government have contributed to the pattern as well. Former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Admiral Mike Mullen has said  that the US needs to “do everything we possibly can to try to get to the table to resolve this thing,” adding that it “really is up to . . . Tony Blinken and other diplomats to figure out a way to get both Zelensky and Putin to the table. . . .The sooner the better.” Current chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley says that will have to happen with a recognition that “The probability of a Ukrainian military victory – defined as kicking the Russians out of all of Ukraine to include what they claim as Crimea – the probability of that happening anytime soon is not high, militarily.”

Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger has twice recommended Johnson’s and Blinken’s before February 24^th formula. In May, he called for negotiations in which “the dividing line should be a return to the status quo ante,” meaning the state of affairs existing prior to the war. Again, that would leave Crimea in Russia and Russia controlling parts of the Donbas.

On December 17, Kissinger repeated that call, saying “the time is approaching to build on the strategic changes which have already been accomplished and to integrate them into a new structure towards achieving peace through negotiation.” The changes that have been accomplished include Russian control of Crimea and parts of the Donbas. Kissinger recommended “establishing a ceasefire line along the borders existing where the war started on 24 February. Russia would disgorge its conquests thence, but not the territory it occupied nearly a decade ago, including Crimea. That territory could be the subject of a negotiation after a ceasefire.”

The comments of Mullen, Milley, Kissinger and the unnamed European officials join the four statements made by Macron, Scholtz, Johnson and Blinken within a nine day period and the advice given Zelensky by Sullivan in a pattern that suggests the possibility of a break with Zelensky’s preconditions for negotiations. The pattern that emerges suggests a new openness to the possibility of negotiations that include discussions of both the status of Crimea and the Donbas and Russia’s security concerns regarding NATO and the deployment of weapons that could threaten Russia.

Ted Snider has a graduate degree in philosophy and writes on analyzing patterns in US foreign policy and history.