Macron The Consummate Politician

Macron says all the right things, unlike Trump re Ukraine/Russia, but unpacking what he said, he said basically we'll see how thing go. The guy is a consummate politician.

Macron said there's a possibility French ground troops could be sent to Ukraine. Sounds like backup for Ukraine's war weary troops. Not exactly, but points to Macron for presenting the right face when speaking publicly. In actuality, parsing his speech reveals that French troops will be only deployed to make sure any peace deal struck is enforced. No peace deal, no troops. TBD what comes out of the upcoming Saudi sit down to hammer one down.

Macron said France may extend their nuke deterrence (nd) over Europe to compensate if the US one is withdrawn. This is an interesting idea. For the most part, US supplied European nd is for the protection of the US against Russia, with Europe being the main fighting arena to do it in order to mitigate as much damage to US homeland as possible. That the US nd benefited Europe was a tangential plus for them they were happy with.

Macron knows it is not likely the EU only led NATO would vote to use the unconventional warfare because France can't mange the most basic deterrent of nd, mutually assured destruction, with only 5% of Russian, 10% if counting the Brits' as backup, without US help. Russia has (100) in Kaliningrad as France combined total (250). Russia also has significantly more overall military hardware, even counting the likelihood % of some nonfunctioning, to deal with what France sends their way. Not good to start a nd fight that can't be won. The added Russian bonus, Russia can set back up farther east while Europe has no other options. That is if China doesn't decide to take that eastern Russian portion back while the grabbing is good.

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anonymous Political March 07, 2025 at 11:27 am 0 0