As the war in Ukraine enters its third year, French President Emmanuel Macron called his country’s European allies to a grand summit in Paris. The event comes after a string of Ukrainian defeats—Kyiv’s 2023 counter-offensive failed with no significant territory retaken and heavy losses in men and matériel; renewed Russian advances, most notably Moscow’s victory in the battle of Avdivka, have shown the rising vulnerability of Ukraine’s battered forces; in the U.S., Congressional gridlock has put military aid for Kyiv on hold for the time being. Longstanding rumours of political infighting in Kyiv were proven correct in early February, as President Zelenskyy dismissed the respected commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces, Valery Zaluzhny, and many other commanders—a number of them apparently finding out about their ouster from the media. As Business Insider put it a few weeks ago, “things are going badly for Ukraine—really badly.” An eventual Russian triumph in the bloody conflict, as repeatedly warned by realist-minded commentators—politicians and businessmen such as Professor John Mearsheimer, Vivek Ramaswamy, and Elon Musk —now looks likelier than at any point since early 2022.
During his remarks after the Paris meeting, and with Ukraine’s prospects now universally recognised as bleak, the French leader has defiantly declared that “Russia cannot and must not win” the war. To give weight to his words, Macron announced a new ‘missile coalition’ of countries willing to supply Ukraine with medium- and long-range weapons—and he went further still by suggesting that the deployment of European military forces inside Ukrainian territory can no longer be seen as being off the table.
These comments caused a firestorm, with Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov immediately announcing that sending Western contingents to Ukraine would lead “not to the probability, but to the inevitability of direct conflict” [between NATO and Russian forces]. Whatever one might think of Mr. Peskov, it appears difficult to disagree with his assessment. Were NATO countries to place their military forces within Ukraine—regardless of whether or not in combat roles—it seems unavoidable that they would be engaged by Russia, whose military regularly strikes objectives in the entirety of Ukrainian territory. Such an event, of course, would lead to public outcry in the West—in all likelihood, to the activation of NATO’s mutual security clauses, in the form of Article V of the Washington Treaty, and probably to immediate retaliatory strikes against Russian targets. The escalation to full-scale war would then become hard, if not impossible, to stop. While Russia’s inferior conventional capabilities would determine its defeat in such a conflict, Moscow would then have little alternative to making use of its vast nuclear arsenal, which remains the world’s largest, as explicitly permitted by its military doctrine. The scenario proposed by Emmanuel Macron would lead directly to a nuclear war in the heart of Europe.
In all likelihood, the Elysée understands the unfeasibility of its proposal. While the West’s reputational, military, and financial investment in the Ukrainian cause explains Macron’s bellicosity, the idea is patently unserious. The risks of such an enterprise are extreme, to the point of making the whole thing unacceptable to any rational foreign policy actor. Instead, the discussions in Paris appear designed to scare Vladimir Putin into peace negotiations.
This is the ‘Madman Theory’ with a French flavour—an act of brinkmanship designed to move Moscow’s hand with the threat of all-out war. More likely than not, the move reveals the simmering fear in Paris and other Western capitals that Ukraine’s fortunes are even bleaker than recognised by the mainstream media. This scenario appears consistent with reports that the Pentagon believes Ukrainian ammunition shortages could become ‘catastrophic’ by mid- March or that Western strategists are gaming NATO’s war readiness for as early as May. Given the apparent severity of Kyiv’s predicament, Macron’s ploy, however desperate, might have helped convince Moscow of the usefulness of a peace deal whereby the current frontline is frozen in exchange for the Russians not advancing further west.
As much as the self-proclaimed French ‘Jupiter’ might have found it wise to take a page out of Richard Nixon’s playbook, however, he has shown himself to be the mediocre student of a great master. It was not long for Macron’s miscalculation to become painfully apparent. If the scenario of Western armies flowing into Ukraine was supposed to send shivers down Putin’s spine, it instead caused a Europe-wide war panic. With the collective mood clearly hostile to further involvement in the Ukraine crisis and more Europeans in favour of reducing the current levels of aid than those eager to increase it, Macron left the leaders of Europe scrambling to reassure their domestic electorates while distancing themselves from Paris. In the hours that followed the infamous press conference, nations as diverse as the United States, Germany, Italy, Britain, Poland, Spain, Portugal, Slovakia, Hungary, and others made public assurances that there would be no deployment of their militaries into Ukraine, with only Lithuania and Estonia stating that the idea was ‘worth considering.’ Paris was left utterly isolated—its disagreements with Berlin now more obvious than ever. French opposition leader Jordan Bardella’s estimation that Macron had unwittingly “exposed our divisions and weaknesses, thus playing the game of Vladimir Putin” seems hard to reject.
Instead, what the episode has left abundantly clear is that there is little will—whether in the corridors of power or among the wider Western public—for further escalation in Ukraine. As the end game for Europe’s largest land conflict since 1945 draws near, the contours of peace will be determined by the existing balance of power—not by the clever tricks of an illusionist, and certainly not by the whims and preferences of the political class. Should the results prove disadvantageous for Western interests, they will have no one to blame but themselves.
https://europeanconservative.com/articles/commentary/the-macron-theory-of-madness/