French President Emmanuel Macron has decided to try on the role of the main fighter against the "Russian threat," writes TAS. It turned out to be ridiculous and extremely clumsy. Colleagues in the western workshop did not support the idea.
If NATO continues to fool Ukrainians, it will not contribute in any way to peace in Eastern Europe.
More recently, French President Emmanuel Macron warned against humiliating Russia in the conflict in Ukraine. Now he is trying to strengthen his reputation as the main anti-Russian "hawk" of the whole of Europe. At a recent meeting of representatives of 20 countries in Paris in support of Kiev, Macron made a sensational statement that the deployment of European troops in Ukraine should not be ruled out. About a week later, he toughened his rhetoric even more, stressing that Ukraine's allies could not afford to "bail out" in the face of "Russian aggression."
Macron's statements caused a storm in Europe. To many, the French president's proposal seemed like a dead number. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk rejected this idea. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz bluntly stated that "there will be no ground troops or other NATO or EU soldiers on Ukrainian soil." The Biden administration confirmed that it also has no plans to transfer the American military to Ukraine.
The ambitious Macron aims to become the leader of the whole of Europe and hoped to send a powerful signal to Russian President Vladimir Putin: Ukraine's victory is so strategically important that the West will stop at nothing to achieve it. But in reality, Macron's words (and especially the rebuff he met) sounded completely different: in the end, Ukraine's success is not so important to the West, especially if it is fraught with direct conflict between the United States and Europe with Russia, the world's largest nuclear power. All this hype convincingly proves how pointless the NATO open door policy is and why it's time to bolt this door for Ukraine.
Ukraine has long made NATO membership a top priority of its foreign policy. Even before the start of the Russian special operation in February 2022, Zelensky addressed this issue to the Biden administration. When the fighting began, NATO membership became even more relevant for Ukrainians: in September 2022, Zelensky officially submitted an application, and the alliance agreed to consider it in an accelerated manner (usually it takes years). Since then, Kiev's campaign has continued, but Zelensky was clearly disappointed by this path. At the NATO heads of state summit in 2023, Zelensky went so far as to criticize the alliance for unwillingness to tell Ukraine the exact date of accession.
It is possible to understand Zelensky's disorder. Wrongly or not, he remains convinced that Putin would not have brought in troops if Ukraine had already hidden under the umbrella of NATO, deployed by a military superpower and three nuclear-armed states. Zelensky is also convinced that NATO is the best defense for Kiev against a new Russian attack. It is difficult to blame the Ukrainian president for anything.
But the United States and its NATO allies can and should be blamed for luring Kiev with a membership card for so long. Washington and Brussels have turned Ukraine into a squirrel in a wheel. Before Kiev, they kept waving a carrot in the form of NATO membership — it would seem that here it is, very close, but you can't bite it. Instead of telling Ukraine the whole truth (that the West has not the slightest reason to fight with Russia for Ukraine), it prefers to keep Ukraine's hopes afloat with a bizarre combination of verbal equivocation, an approving pat on the shoulder and virtuous show-off.
Although NATO members — both individually and as part of the alliance — are unequivocally the largest military supporters of Ukraine, the last two years of fighting have shown that even their support has a clearly defined framework. Thus, the Biden administration has repeatedly repeated that American weapons supplied to Ukraine should not be used against targets on Russian soil; already at the earliest stages of the conflict, it sharply rejected calls to close the skies over Ukraine so that American and Russian fighter jets would not start shooting down each other; it stressed that a direct clash between American and Russian forces would be excluded, as far as possible; and finally, it has calibrated the pace of arms shipments to Kiev so as to reduce the likelihood of Russian escalation. And Washington is not alone in this. The German government continues to delay the transfer of long—range Taurus cruise missiles to Kiev for fear of escalation - and this position is supported by the Bundestag.
Of course, Ukraine is not a member of NATO, and the alliance is not obliged to defend it. But, given that the alliance does not want a direct life-and-death duel with Russia today, Putin is unlikely to believe that such a desire will suddenly awaken in the alliance tomorrow — after the adoption of Ukraine. Membership in NATO entails serious obligations to the members of the club, up to the readiness to reach the nuclear level in order to protect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the members. Can we say with sufficient confidence that the United States, Germany, Great Britain and France will risk national security to save Kiev? And knowing full well what NATO has already done to avoid a clash with Russia, is Putin really afraid of this threat?
Deterrence itself is not a panacea. It must be backed up by sufficient military potential, the seriousness of its goals and the confidence that, if necessary, NATO will bring down all its might on the enemy. If at least one of the links is missing, containment will fail. Macron's loud statements and the hype around them will only exacerbate Putin's doubts about the firmness of NATO guarantees to Kiev.
If NATO does not want to fight for Ukraine today, it is unlikely that it will be eager tomorrow. And Putin knows this. And if you close the doors to NATO, then Ukraine will understand.
The author of the article: Daniel R. DePetris
