LPresident Macron’s assessment of Europe is certainly not negligible, as he did not fail to point out in his speech at the Sorbonne on April 25, 2024.
On one subject, however, progress has been minimal since his first “Sorbonne speech” in 2017, especially in light of the risk of destabilization posed to the Old Continent by the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine. This subject is the defense of Europe. Why this difficulty for Europeans to do more in this area? We would be tempted to summarize this complicated subject in a simple formula: underestimation for a long time of the Russian threat, overestimation of the American security guarantee (at least, of its sustainability).
The French certainly professed not to fall into the second of these two failings, but they went very far in the first. And, from this point of view, Mr. Macron has shown himself to be a particularly zealous follower. This is the dark side of his European policy. The Brégançon meeting in August 2019 illustrated an astonishing confidence in the dialogue with the Kremlin, continued even after the invasion of Ukraine, not to mention a series of unfortunate declarations (“do not humiliate Russia”, For example). It is difficult, in these conditions, to play a leadership role in Europe, to convince our partners in particular of the need to move towards greater strategic autonomy.
Some argue that the French authorities’ illusion about Russia was shared by Germany and many others, including American foreign policy gurus such as Henry Kissinger or Zbigniew Brzezinski. Fine, but France did not have such pressing interests in the matter as Germany, while being less distant from Russian reality than post-Cold War America. The United Kingdom has not fallen into the trap. From 2011-2012, and even more so from the annexation of Crimea in 2014, it should have seemed obvious that Vladimir Putin had chosen merciless confrontation with the West.
Collective blindness
However, in fact, it is not only Mr. Macron who went astray, it is a good part of the French political class, as we could see in 2017, when he was the least “pro-Russian” of the candidates. in the presidential election. His predecessor, Mr. Hollande, was more far-sighted than many others, but he himself wanted to believe in “dialogue” with Russia by inventing with Mr.me Merkel the so-called “Normandy” negotiations (Germany, France, Ukraine, Russia) to resolve the Ukrainian crisis.
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