Emmanuel Macron’s refusal to rule out sending troops to Ukraine has caused an uproar across the French political spectrum. “Madness!” said the leftist leader Jean-Luc Melenchon. “Our children!” cried Marine Le Pen, from the hard right. They should all calm down. The president of France
isn’t going to send soldiers to the killing fields of the Donbas, but he was signaling a new urgency in Europe’s approach to the war. Now he needs to deliver it.
Macron had called an emergency meeting of Ukrainian allies in Paris, after Kyiv’s forces suffered battlefield losses in large part for lack of critical ammunition from the US and Europe. His real point was to show the Kremlin that whatever happens in the US, Europe won’t give up on Ukraine. Instead, he upgraded Europe’s pledge of support for the country’s defense from “as long as it takes” to “whatever it takes.”
This was why Macron said that no options can be ruled out, including putting boots on the ground, even while adding that there’s no consensus among Ukraine’s allies. Nor will there be, as other European leaders quickly made clear. Yet this was a necessary counter to the corrosive narrative being pushed hard by the Kremlin and its allies abroad, that resistance is futile because Russia cannot lose.
Of course Russia can lose. When Moscow’s ambassador to the United Nations, Vassily Nebenzia, on February 23 pushed a line at the Security Council that across history, Moscow has only ever been invaded and always won, Poland’s Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski delivered a withering response. He recalled the many times Russia attacked others, including Poland, and the many times it lost. To be clear on what losing means, the Soviet Union also lost its 1939-1940 Winter War with Finland, even though it ended up taking some territory, because it was fought to a standstill at such a high price that it never tried again. This is what can and should happen in Ukraine.
Russia has far greater resources than Kyiv, which will fight on at ruinous cost if abandoned. Yet the means available to Putin are in turn dwarfed by those of the US and Europe, whether combined or separately. It is the political will of the West to “do what it takes” that’s in question, and that’s about weapons and money, not boots on the ground. Yes, Europe lacks industrial capacity to match Russia’s furious production and purchase of artillery shells, but it can build new production lines for 2025. Macron’s meeting was held to deal with the dangerous period in between.
The pop-up summit he called in Paris highlighted some progress. The Czech Republic, so often a practical leader in aiding Ukraine, put together a coalition to fund the purchase of 800,000 artillery shells for immediate use, while Europe builds up its own production capacity. Macron announced another coalition for the procurement of long-range missiles, a vital move after Germany’s legislature last week blocked the transfer of Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine. Other coalitions have been set up to deliver howitzers, air-defense systems, drones and more.
As I’ve written before, there is ample cause to be sceptical of Europe’s ability to step up to the plate if the US moves aside. Ukraine’s situation has become dire and if the French leader is to deliver on his bold rhetoric, he's going to need to do a lot more to make it happen. His record hasn’t been great; the “war economy” he announced for France to such fanfare in 2022 has not materialised.
Macron, like other leaders, will need to explain better to his people why it is that they stand to lose more by failing to defend Ukraine. And while France has provided Kyiv with some critical equipment, including Caesar mobile howitzers and Scalp cruise missiles, it has been among the least generous countries in its aid to date. This Macron will need to change. Avoiding talk about sending boots on the ground would help, too.
No doubt the French president is being opportunistic, seizing a moment when he can push a Gaullist agenda for establishing Europe’s “strategic autonomy” from the US. To maintain the credibility of NATO’s collective defense in a future Trump-like era, Europe will need to deter Russia on its own. That will be a tall order, made all the more vital and expensive if Putin emerges triumphant from his war for control over Ukraine.
It may seem unlikely that Russia would take on the rest of Europe after subduing Kyiv, but history is on the side of the cautious. Few, even in Moscow, thought Putin would invade Ukraine, because it was so clearly detrimental to Russian interests. Putin is open about wanting to restore the power and influence that Moscow lost with the Soviet collapse in 1991. He has been open, too, about his belief that Ukraine isn’t a country, that he has a right and responsibility to protect ethnic Russians wherever they live and that he is at war with the West. This week, an official in Moldova’s breakaway province of Transnistria said it was about to request annexation by Moscow, no doubt in response to a request from the Kremlin.
Putin was only half joking in 2016, when he said to a school child that “Russia’s borders do not end.” If Macron wants to lead a successful European defense of Ukraine it can be done, but he has his work cut out.
Marc Champion is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. Views do not represent the stand of this publication.
Credit: Bloomberg
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