“On the defense of Europe, progress has been minimal since 2017” | EUROtoday

LPresident Macron's evaluation of Europe is actually not negligible, as he didn’t fail to level out in his speech on the Sorbonne on April 25, 2024.

On one topic, nevertheless, progress has been minimal since his first “Sorbonne speech” in 2017, particularly in mild of the chance of destabilization posed to the Old Continent by the Russian struggle of aggression in Ukraine. This topic is the protection of Europe. Why this issue for Europeans to do extra on this space? We can be tempted to summarize this difficult topic in a easy components: underestimation for a very long time of the Russian risk, overestimation of the American safety assure (at the very least, of its sustainability).

The French actually professed to not fall into the second of those two failings, however they went very far within the first. And, from this perspective, Mr. Macron has proven himself to be a very zealous follower. This is the darkish facet of his European coverage. The Brégançon assembly in August 2019 illustrated an astonishing confidence within the dialogue with the Kremlin, continued even after the invasion of Ukraine, to not point out a sequence of unlucky declarations (“do not humiliate Russia”, For instance). It is troublesome, in these circumstances, to play a management function in Europe, to persuade our companions specifically of the necessity to transfer in direction of higher strategic autonomy.

Some argue that the French authorities' phantasm about Russia was shared by Germany and lots of others, together with American overseas coverage gurus comparable to Henry Kissinger or Zbigniew Brzezinski. Fine, however France didn’t have such urgent pursuits within the matter as Germany, whereas being much less distant from Russian actuality than post-Cold War America. The United Kingdom has not fallen into the entice. From 2011-2012, and much more so from the annexation of Crimea in 2014, it ought to have appeared apparent that Vladimir Putin had chosen cruel confrontation with the West.

Collective blindness

However, in truth, it’s not solely Mr. Macron who went astray, it’s a good a part of the French political class, as we might see in 2017, when he was the least “pro-Russian” of the candidates. within the presidential election. His predecessor, Mr. Hollande, was extra far-sighted than many others, however he himself wished to imagine in “dialogue” with Russia by inventing with Mr.^me Merkel the so-called “Normandy” negotiations (Germany, France, Ukraine, Russia) to resolve the Ukrainian disaster.

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