In February, France’s President Emmanuel Macron made a big splash by declaring a potential willingness to deploy French troops in Ukraine.
This watershed announcement was received positively by many in the United States. Finally, a major European power was showing leadership in reinvigorating the liberal international order. A ray of hope pierced beleaguered Ukraine’s clouds as the Europeans would now take on America’s burden of saving the rules-based order in their own backyard.
However, almost as abruptly as he threatened war with Russia, Macron disappeared from the radar. Not only did he tone down his rhetoric, but he failed to provide Ukraine with additional significant military and financial support that would match France’s status as a leading Western economic and military power. Is Macron serious about helping Ukraine? Can the United States trust Macron’s leadership to save the LIO?
First, a word about Macron’s approach to international affairs. Contrary to appearances, there is more to Macron’s foreign policy than salvaging the LIO. He went to the Hubert Védrine school of international relations, the French foreign minister (1997-2002) who coined the word “hyperpower” to criticize the U.S.’s domineering attitude during the unipolar moment and advocates for bringing back realpolitik. Macron appreciates the views of former Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin (2005-2007), famous for his strong stance against the war in Iraq and Western interventionism.
Macron also takes inspiration from former President Nicolas Sarkozy (2007-2012), who supports the need to simultaneously build up the European Union, remain in NATO, and seek rapprochement and accommodation with Russia. Macron respects the alliance with the United States but also understands that France’s interests do not always align with Washington’s views.
Like many French leaders before him, he wants France to play its own part in order to stay relevant on the world stage and remain engaged with Russia, China, and the “Global South.” “With me, it will be the end of a neo-conservative ideology that has been imported into France,” he once declared.
When the war in Ukraine started, Macron tried to play the mediator. He believed he had a good personal relationship with Vladimir Putin. In 2017, he had received the Russian leader in the Palace of Versailles, a rare honor for a visiting head of state. In 2019, Putin came to the Brégançon Fort, the French presidential holiday retreat, a suggestion that the relationship had become more personal.
Macron himself visited Putin in Moscow in early February 2022, just weeks before the Russian invasion. And on the very eve of that fateful step, Macron believed he had averted war after a phone call with the Kremlin. The next day, however, Putin called to tell him he would recognize the independence of the Donbas. Nonetheless, he was still addressing Putin as “tu,” a mark of friendship and informality in French culture, one month later. In June, Macron warned the West against any aim to humiliate Russia, seemingly in contrast to the hard line of London and Washington.
What had changed?
First, the French assessment of the balance of forces on the battlefield and the likely trajectory of the war. By late 2023 and early 2024, French intelligence had concluded that Ukraine was hopelessly losing the war. The botched counteroffensive of the summer of 2023 had destroyed some of Ukraine’s best units, Russia was adding new recruits and replenishing its forces faster than Kyiv, and Western support would likely never return to the highs it reached in the war’s early months. Hence, in the absence of some dramatic turn of events, the West would have to accept a decisive Russian victory.
Second, Macron had the June elections to the European Parliament on his calendar. All polls pointed toward a crushing defeat, as Macron had little to show for his seven years in power. The extensive economic reform program he had brought with him in 2017 had been set back by the 2018 Yellow Vests crisis, closely followed by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Although reelected in 2022, the embattled president lacked the parliamentary majority he enjoyed before and so found himself forced to compromise with the opposition to rule. He needed something to campaign on for the European elections. He continued hinting at direct French involvement until June 7, two days before the vote. But already in late June, he promised he would not send French troops to Ukraine for the foreseeable future.
A third consideration was Germany. During the early months of the war, Berlin had announced both a surprisingly hard stance against Russia and a historic investment in its defense, the Zeitenwende. The latter, however, provoked some unease in France, with some military officers calling for Macron to express their concerns about Germany’s military rise to Chancellor Olaf Scholz. As one put it, “we cannot say that [a formidable German army] worked too well for us during the last century.” Paris could not possibly be indifferent to a reawakening Germany.
In that context, Macron’s intervention threat in February was designed to serve three goals. He hoped that a clear threat of direct intervention would alter the Kremlin’s calculations. Faced with the prospect of a direct clash with a NATO country, Macron believed Putin would be more open to negotiation.
On the domestic front, Macron thought that his threat could help establish him as the effective leader of the EU and the West against Russian aggression and create a rally-round-the-flag effect in advance of the European Parliament elections.
Finally, he believed a hawkish stance would also serve to neutralize Germany’s incentives to rearm. With France in command, Berlin would feel less need to step up militarily against Russia. In this view, if Germany wanted to assert itself more forcefully, it would be under Paris’s leadership.
Macron, however, was never truly serious about intervening directly in Ukraine; rather he merely hoped that strong rhetoric would give Putin cold feet. Indeed, French officers warned the president that their forces were in no shape to take on the far larger and battle-hardened Russian military and that a small expeditionary force would likely be decimated without achieving much. Beyond Ukraine, however, assuming the role of the savior of Europe and the “Free World” would serve electoral purposes and help seal German Pandora’s box of rearmament.
In June’s European elections, however, Macron’s party suffered a rout. In July, it also lost the parliamentary elections, although that defeat was less severe than feared.
The vast majority of the electorate is clearly opposed to sending troops to Ukraine. Already deeply unpopular and isolated, Macron will be unwilling to risk hundreds of French lives for such a distant war nobody wants. Also, German and American exhaustion with the war has already led to a sharp reduction in financial and military support for Kyiv. France has so far proved unwilling to replace them.
Macron’s diplomatic scheme achieved little, as Moscow remained un-phased. But beyond that, no one should be fooled by the French president’s strong talk, which is only that. Paris is not about to chance a war with Russia over Ukraine, and Macron’s core foreign policy principles only partially align with the Biden administration’s focus on the liberal international order.
Macron knows full well what the Washington Beltway likes to hear and throws around the right rhetoric to garner its support. However, as always, France remains an independent-minded ally with distinct interests.
