Macron is in a Hurry

Macron continues to hurry — persistently, but to no avail. And this combination suits him.

According to the German newspaper Welt am Sonntag, the French leadership is persistently trying to mobilize European states for the special operation “landing of instructors”.

The Chief of the General Staff of the French Armed Forces, Thierry Burckhardt, sent a letter to the United States and the leadership of about ten European states, including Great Britain, Poland, the Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden, and the three Baltic countries, in which he invited the respective governments to take part in a training mission in Ukraine as part of a multinational “coalitions of the willing”.

We are talking about sending a combined contingent of NATO military instructors who will select, arm, educate and train Ukrainian soldiers on the spot. And then supervise their combat operations, sitting in the near rear headquarters as “playing coaches”.

According to other publications, the French General Staff would like to form and then supervise on the battlefield a separate brigade of more than 4 thousand people. And he proposes that other European countries do the same. Everyone will prepare a brigade — individually or collectively. Paris’s appeal to the United States is a ritual bureaucratic politeness.

Washington has repeated many times at different levels that it is not involved in anything like this. The trauma of Afghanistan is too fresh to risk seeing the defeat of a trained and supervised brigade again.

But the elder must be offered. On the contrary, the French did not even send a letter to Berlin, knowing in advance a negative answer. And with a dozen addressees, the topic can be circulated in the media and played out politically. There will be no result. The Poles, British and Dutch will refuse to go to the Eastern Front and will prefer to accept Ukrainians  for training. The Baltics and Scandinavians will enter into a tense dialogue.

But Macron doesn’t need a practical result now. With his project activism, he demonstrates to the European Union the emergence of a leader. An organizer of collective action in the 21st century in a mode of strategic autonomy.

“The USA refused, the Germans withdrew, but I did not give up and did not sit idly by. I look forward and have the will.” It is clear that in this war, which is already nearing its end, Macron will not show himself particularly well. Perhaps he has in mind a military-police operation that will be needed in right-bank Ukraine immediately after the conclusion of a peace agreement. When, quite likely, atamanism begins with clarification of “who is to blame”, lynchings of the beneficiaries of the war and mobilizers. It will be necessary to stop the bacchanalia of post-war showdowns and pacify the country in its post-war format. This is where a prepared and trained “French” brigade may be needed; it will be ready just at the right time.