PARIS, Mar. 27 (Bloomberg) – Emmanuel Macron didn’t need to release images of himself walloping a punching bag to tell the world he was up for a fight.
Even before he broadcast Raging Bull poses all over Instagram, the French president’s hawkish new stance was evident when he contrived to very publicly refuse to rule out sending troops to Ukraine.
With the UK no longer in the European Union and Germany’s government riven with division, Macron has been fashioning himself into the continent’s de-facto figurehead on foreign policy. He’s taken a lead on confronting Russian aggression and the humanitarian disaster in Gaza. But not all his allies are convinced he’s the best champion of their interests.
His controversial comment about boots on the ground earned an instant and very public recrimination from German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and angered US officials who privately say such a move might even risk fomenting a clash with Moscow, according to a senior official familiar with the discussions among allies.
Macron’s hints were issued to keep Russian President Vladimir Putin guessing, he said at the time, but officials familiar with NATO discussions on Ukraine said they may have had the opposite effect.
By forcing Berlin to publicly rule out the possibility of sending troops, Macron managed to dispel what lingering ambiguity there had been about the whereabouts of allies’ red lines, according to a senior US official.
Nor were the comments very smart from the standpoint of operational security — according to separate officials who also spoke to Bloomberg on condition of anonymity — especially given that several countries already, quietly, have some personnel in Ukraine.
Russian Threat
The matter of Europe’s military unity is all the more important now Putin’s emboldened by victory in the election he staged on the anniversary of his annexation of Crimea, while months-long doubts over the supply of Ukraine’s weapons have yet to clear.
There’s also French domestic politics at play. Macron is throwing Ukraine to the forefront of the campaign for European Parliamentary elections in June, depicting his far-right rival Marine Le Pen as a Putin ally.
“It’s increasingly clear that Russia is a threat to us,” French Defense Minister Sebastien Lecornu told a news conference on Tuesday. “We can’t permit ourselves to envisage a Russian victory.”
There’s little doubt some EU premiers are looking to Macron for leadership, with many welcoming his hardened stance on Russia, according to an official familiar with discussions at their most recent Brussels meeting.
At the same time, France has backed Poland in demanding the EU thinks again on allowing Ukrainian grain to flow freely into the single market, something that’s fueled farmer protests.
But one of Europe’s many plans to resolve the shortage of arms in Ukraine is emblematic of why Macron rubs some allies the wrong way. The French president’s critics say he’s more talk than action.
The Czech Republic is leading an initiative that foresees the procurement of some 800,000 shells in the near future from sources outside the EU. Even though Macron said last month that he backed the Czech initiative, France has yet to make a financial contribution. Germany, by contrast, is spending €300 million ($325 million) to buy 180,000 shells.
Since the start of the war, France has lagged far behind its allies in terms of overall aid sent to Ukraine, according to the Kiel Institute’s Ukraine Support Tracker. It’s pledged Kyiv less than €2 billion in support, in contrast to Germany’s €22 billion. That’s a stark discrepancy, though the French government says those figures don’t take into account the disproportionate impact its modern weapons have had on the battlefield.
Macron has sought to fill the void left when Angela Merkel stepped down as German chancellor in 2021 and in flexing France’s foreign policy muscle, the country’s youngest leader since Napoleon taps into a long legacy.
He was bolder than some fellow European leaders when, according to a readout of the conversation from Macron’s office, he told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel that any forced transfer of people out of the city of Rafah would constitute a war crime.
Yet recent foreign policy adventures outside Europe have had some misses. His Africa strategy is in tatters as France struggles to convince nations in the Sahel region to tolerate the presence of a former colonial power. Niger had been a linchpin in Macron’s strategy there, but last year the French government had to evacuate its citizens after soldiers took the president of Niger hostage and declared themselves in control.
But after almost seven years in power, the French president has also built a track record of experience. He is one of just two leaders in the Group of Seven, for example, who have worked with Donald Trump.
Ahead of an election in which the former president may return to the White House, Europeans are already questioning the US commitment to transatlantic relations and Ukraine, with more than $60 billion in funding for Kyiv held up in Washington.
“Macron missed an opportunity at decisively grabbing European leadership at the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine,” said Rym Momtaz, a Paris-based researcher for the International Institute for Strategic Studies. “He is now making strides toward rectifying that mistake.”
Photo from Sputnik
