Trump went as far as to say that he will not protect a European country that does not pay its share within NATO. That was enough for Macron to feel invested with a new mission just in case we would now have to replace the american leadership. He found this an opportunity to puff out his chest and say that the possibility of sending troops on the ground in Ukraine should not be ruled out.

Despite the systematic rejection of this idea by all NATO countries, an unprecedented agitation took place on all French television panels.

Far from being relevant or likely, Emmanuel Macron’s proposal is more the expression of nostalgia towards a France that used to have exercised a certain leadership.

It’s one thing to see Macron acting as if he was General Charles De Gaulle, it’s another to see so many established commentators producing analyzes that give credibility to the idea put forward by him.

Most of these analyzes ignore in two different ways the crucial role played by the United States. First, commentators are deluded about the possibility of going it alone against Russia without American support, despite the fact that it has always been the Americans who did set the tone, make the decisions and conduct NATO operations.

Secondly, and in my opinion, this is much more serious, we also ignore the role played by the United States in the creation and continuation of the Ukrainian war. The Americans not only wanted and provoked it, they turned it into an inevitable outcome. Getting Russia involved into this war was done in order to subsequently justify sanctions, exclude Russia from the Swift system, end the sale of Russian gas to Europe and destroy the Nordstream gas pipeline. In short, Russia had to be brought down economically, and the proxy war was the way to achieve this goal. It would be a prelude to the other economic war, the one that had to be waged against China, this time using Taiwan as a pretext.

Most panel analysts interpret each of the Russian responses to American provocations as evidence that Russia wants to reconstitute the Soviet empire. The role played by the United States is the blind spot in these analyses.

They thus fail to mention several facts that were quite decisive: the enlargement of NATO from 16 to 30 members, the creation of military bases in all Eastern European countries, the American refusal to include Russia into NATO, the withdrawal of the USA from the ABM Treaty in 2002, the promise made in 2008 to include Georgia and Ukraine into NATO (despite repeated warnings from Russian leaders and American experts), the installation of anti-missile shield systems in Poland and Romania, the financing and preparation of the Maidan coup d’état, the political control of the country by the Americans, the refusal to implement the Minsk agreements, the formation of Ukrainian soldiers, the arming and fortification of Ukraine, the installation of chemical laboratories, the US withdrawal in 2019 from the IMF treaty, the rejection of the Lavrov proposal for negotiations on security in Europe, and the broken promise of Biden made to Putin in December 2021 that he was not going to install nuclear weapons on Ukrainian soil. Early in January 2022, this promise was no longer on the table. In short, the proxy war was first and foremost a war between Russia and the United States and provoked by the United States.

Commentators have also ignored the role played by the United States in the continuation and amplification of this war. The negotiations were about to be concluded in April 2002 between Zelensky and Putin, when the US intervened to stop them, promising Ukraine that it would provide it with weapons so that the war could continue.

In short, I like to say and repeat that the United States lit the fuse, set the fire and then added fuel to the fire. None of this was mentioned in the analyzes offered on TV panels. It was as if the United States had never existed. Russia did not want to conquer Ukraine. It was favorable to the Minsk agreements for obvious reasons. An important Russian minority present in Ukraine could play a positive role in electing Ukrainian officials that would not be hostile to Moscow.

Many American politicians (Lindsay Graham, Mitt Romney, Adam Schiff and Anthony Blinken) saw in prolonging this proxy war a good way to weaken Russia without losing American soldiers. They followed the Road map suggested by the Rand Corporation (“Extending Russia”, 2019). There was also another advantage for the United States to use Ukraine as cannon fodder in order to weaken Russia without endangering the lives of Americans. The money invested in Ukraine was actually an investment in the military-industrial complex. Of course, at the same time, they reach a zero degree of empathy towards the Ukrainian people.

Macron is not De Gaulle and France is not an important player in the geopolitical landscape. The excitement created by his statement among French pundits expresses nostalgia and cannot be taken seriously.