Three things in life are certain: death, taxes and Emmanuel Macron’s off-the-cuff comments causing an international storm.
From the man who brought you ‘NATO is brain dead’ and ‘Europe must not be a vassal over Taiwan’, the latest hit instalment came out just this last week.
Following a Paris conference to shore up European support for Ukraine, Macron was asked for his view on sending ground troops to Ukraine. He answered by saying that there was no consensus on the matter but that nothing ‘nothing should be ruled out’.
This led to various leaders from different countries saying that, no, they were in fact ruling it out. The most unhelpful response was from Chancellor Olaf Scholz who used his opposition to having troops on the ground to then justify why he wasn’t sending the Taurus missiles to Ukraine, arguing that German soldiers would have to be there to assist with targeting. In the process, Scholz gave away the fact that British and French soldiers must be doing that very thing for the Storm Shadow/Scalp missiles they had already provided. The information was not exactly surprising but accidentally revealing secret information is at best farcical and at worst dangerous.
Nonetheless, it’s true that we have witnessed an open display of disunity among Ukraine’s supporters. This is precisely the kind of rancour and internal disputes that Moscow loves to see and which it tries so hard to foster. On that basis, some have argued that Macron’s comments played into Putin’s hands and damaged Europe’s position on Ukraine.
Yet this is entirely backwards. In spite of how some have portrayed the incident, Macron’s comments did not actually commit anyone to anything. Refusing to rule something out is very different from saying that you will do it and is even further removed from committing others to that course of action.
In that regard, there was no obligation on any of Ukraine’s other allies to come out and give a definitive position on whether they might, at some future point, order their soldiers into Ukraine. The answer given by Macron, that of strategic ambiguity, was not simply an interesting bit of positioning by France, it was the absolute best answer that any leader could have given in the current circumstances and is the response that all leaders should be giving. Those who have chosen not to do so are the only ones who are at fault.
To underline why Macron’s answer was the best one, we need to zoom out a bit and remind ourselves of the broader Russian approach to war.
From the very beginning of this conflict, and arguably even before, the West’s main military powers have been dominated by a fear of escalation. This ranges from a concern to be accounted for in strategic planning in London all the way to a debilitating paranoia in Washington and Berlin.
Putin knows this weakness and ruthlessly exploits it. He never ceases to invoke the possibility of nuclear armageddon because he knows that many in Europe and the US will be stopped in their tracks by such threats. Yet there is a gap between the threshold at which Russia will issue threats and the threshold at which they would actually have a real reason to escalate.
Take for instance NATO expansion. In Russian rhetoric this has become a major source of contention and is often used as a justification for Russian aggression against its neighbours, including in the case of Ukraine. However, when faced with two nearby countries actually joining NATO – Finland and Sweden – Moscow has done nothing.
And while NATO troops are not in any frontline operations, it is certain that they are in Ukraine training the Ukrainian forces and directly assisting Ukraine in carrying out its defence. Again, this has not led to any actual reprisal.
The reason Russia does not consistently follow up on its threats is twofold. First, in many instances we are dealing with issues that are not actually vital elements on Russian national security. The idea Russia would plunge the world into flames because another country has joined NATO was never serious and should never have been taken seriously.
Second, the West has its own nuclear arsenal. For Russia to seriously escalate the war in Ukraine would not be free of consequences for Russia itself. They therefore have important incentives to prevent this scenario and have acted in a way that is consistent with that viewpoint. In short, deterrence works.
It is this dynamic that Macron was making use of when he answered the question on whether there could be a ground-based intervention in Ukraine. He did not say they definitely would launch such an attack, but he did suggest to Moscow that it was possible, that there were red lines that should not be crossed. After years of Russia using its threats to force the West onto the backfoot, here at last was a Western leader turning the same card back onto Putin. From a position of strength and confidence, Russia was being invited to doubt, to question whether they really were certain that NATO would never strike back.
To sow this doubt in the minds of Russian officials working throughout the country’s civilian and military apparatus is undoubtedly the right approach and an essential foundation of any strategy to deter Russian aggression. That some Western leaders still remain too captured by fear to be able to use this approach themselves and thus completely undermined Macron’s attempt within a matter of hours is irrelevant to the question of whether Macron was right to try. Not only was Macron’s stance correct but the rest of the Ukraine’s supporters should learn from it and start pushing more red lines and more ambiguity. As long as practical military assistance to Ukraine remains slow, it is only logical to force Russia into a position where they are reluctant, fearful even, of advancing too far, too fast.
At a minimum, a coalition of the willing, perhaps including countries like France, Britain, Estonia or Poland, should guarantee the security of the city of Kyiv itself and the Western Ukrainian territories that border EU/NATO states. Putin should be left in no doubt that a second attempt to seize control of Ukraine’s capital would not be tolerated.
Would these countries actually follow through on such a threat? We couldn’t truly know. But then neither could the Russians – and that’s the point.