Macron's move

What if "With Ukraine for as long as it takes" isn't good enough?

Macron and Zelensky at Elysée Palace, Feb. 16

Stanley Crouch used to say that in a democracy, you never know who the messenger will be. I did not have “Emmanuel Macron stiffens NATO’s spine” on my Ukraine War Bingo card, but one plays the hand one’s dealt. In the early days of the Ukraine war, France’s president was worried about the prospect of a united West humiliating Vladimir Putin. Lately he has decided the risk runs all the other way. The realization has changed him.

After a Feb. 26 meeting at Elysée Palace with representatives from most of the countries supporting Ukraine against the Russian invaders, Macron astonished just about everyone by saying nobody should rule out sending troops to Ukraine. What’s perhaps more surprising is that on March 5, more than a week later, Macron was still talking the same way. During a visit to Prague, he said, “We are surely approaching a moment for Europe in which it will be necessary not to be cowardly.” Later he gave a joint news conference with the Czech president, Petr Pavel. “Is this our war or is it not our war?” Macron said. “Can we look away in the belief that we can let things run their course? I don't believe so, and therefore I called for a strategic surge. And I fully stand behind that." If you understand French, the video is riveting.

Much of the response to Macron’s remarks has been European leaders reassuring their own populations that nobody’s loading up the troop transports for Donbas just yet. Not all European leaders, mind you: the closer you get to Ukraine, the likelier you are to find governments that are glad he spoke up. Estonian prime minister Kaja Kallas said, “Everything is on the table.” Lithuania’s foreign minister: “No option can be rejected.”

Macron’s new stance isn’t only rhetorical. In throwing his support behind a Czech plan to buy 800,000 artillery shells for Ukraine from largely non-EU sources, Macron has set aside a longstanding preference for military procurement to support EU industry. Every country plays a mix of self-interest and solidarity in these alliance games, but it’s worth noticing when a leader moves from the former toward the latter.

What’s going on? Basically, the war in Ukraine isn’t going well, and there’s less and less reason to think Ukraine will mark the end of the threat Putin poses. All of this came to a head in February.

On Feb. 7 Volodymyr Zelensky replaced Ukraine’s top general with a man who’s older, Soviet-trained, and seen to be more inclined to grinding, high-casualty ground combat. But the new commander’s first move was to pull Ukrainian troops out of Avdiivka, giving Russia its first high-profile advance in nine months.

Meanwhile the country Madeleine Albright used to call “the indispensable nation” — her own — has been looking awfully dispensable. The current president can no longer get Ukraine aid through Congress. The last one, who’s working on a comeback, doesn’t want to. Donald Trump’s threat to “let Russia do whatever the hell they want” to countries that don’t meet NATO’s 2% target for military funding was heard loud and clear in Europe.

Without US support, with Ukrainian forces in stalemate or worse, the West might have to rely on Putin’s tender mercy. Alexei Navalny’s death was a bitter reminder that there is no such thing. The last bit of bad news — for now — was a disjointed series of leaks from the US that suggested Russia is working on some sort of orbiting nuclear capability. All of these signals came to a head at the Munich Security Conference, on the heels of Navalny’s death, where Zelensky told people that Ukraine can’t win this thing by itself.

Times like this encourage people to do things they’re not used to, such as thinking seriously about how a situation might end. Peace talks? Dmitry Medvedev doesn’t sound interested. The Russian army advancing to Lviv and then… just stopping? Maybe, but if a Western-leaning Ukraine was too close to Russia, surely full-on NATO member states would be too close after Russia’s border shifts one country further west.

When the big invasion began in February 2022, most people assumed Ukraine would fall within days. Ukraine declined to cooperate, and there followed a period of irrational exuberance. Maybe Ukraine would send Putin packing, and the rest of the world wouldn’t have to exert itself unduly. It might even be a bonanza! This was the period when the Trudeau government was big on sending drone cameras and Pierre Poilievre was eager to suggest that Ukraine was a chance to “turn dollars for dictators into paycheques for our people.” (Seeing a calamity as a chance to cash in is on my list of things that are probably more charming in opposition than they would be in power.)

Since February it’s become clearer that no outcome chosen by Russia is a safe outcome for Europe. Since long before February, surely, but lately the reality has been harder to ignore. (Though some are inclined to try. For a general rebuttal to everything I write here, check out these guys.) And what Macron is suggesting is that Europe’s instincts (and Joe Biden’s, to the extent he’s even able to deliver what he wants any more) are, by and large, losers’ instincts.

Back to Macron’s Prague scrum. Who started this war? Putin. “Go ask him what his strategic limits are,” Macron said. “But if every day we explain what our limits are, against somebody who has none and who started this war, I can already tell you, that’s where the spirit of defeat lurks.” Restraint is a noble instinct, but it is hardly distributed symmetrically in this conflict, and already a year ago the Ukrainians were complaining that “the first answer the US gives to any request is no.” One of the requests back then was for F-16 fighters. They’re still months from active duty. A Russian wiretap revealed the German government is deeply divided over sending long-range cruise missiles. (I broadly agree with Macron that the stakes are high and the Western response must be escalated, but I don’t take him to be synonymous with virtue, and when he presents himself as NATO’s backbone, I think he’s responding in part to a perceived opportunity in the eternal French-German partnership/rivalry.)

I’m a great admirer of NATO, but the last time a Western coalition went all in on a major conflict, it was Afghanistan and that didn’t end well. In 2021 I wrote about what I saw on my first trip to Afghanistan, in 2007.

From 2001 to 2005, under a United Nations mandate, five Western countries had been in charge of reforming central institutions in Afghanistan. The British were supposed to shut down the opium and heroin trade. The Americans tried to build up an autonomous Afghan army. The Italians would get the courts running smoothly. The Japanese would disarm irregular militias. The Germans would train the police. By 2007 none of these tasks had been accomplished. Countries not named as leads on a file assumed their help wasn’t needed. Lead countries were suspicious of outside help. The Americans decided the Germans had done a lousy job training police, so they tried taking over; meanwhile the Afghan police, who didn’t get to sleep overnight in hardened military bases, were being slaughtered, dozens each week. Many used police checkpoints to shake down drivers at gunpoint; the trade became so lucrative that checkpoint-duty assignments were traded on a black market. You could get rich or die; might as well try at least to do a little of each.

Ukraine is very different from Afghanistan, but one discerns similar sharp limits on Western democracies’ ability to get their act together and to make the main thing the main thing. Meanwhile it’s as Macron says: Putin isn’t holding back. In that context, some Western leaders’ favourite refrains, like backing Ukraine “for as long as it takes,” are less and less satisfying: patience isn’t a virtue against an impatient opponent who has strategic advantage.

Canada of course has little influence over any of these debates. I now think Chrystia Freeland’s April budget will contain some sign of an increased military response to increasingly dangerous times. I hope I’m wrong when I expect any plan to backload most of its spending and effort to the later years of a long timeline, in the increasingly shaky assumption that there will still be time later.

I offer no certainty in any of this. Historically, any plan that depends on defeating Russia is really not a great plan. But like Macron, I’m not sure France and its allies have a lot of choice. I can’t imagine an equilibrium state where the world gets to stop worrying about Vladimir Putin. As Macron asked: Is this our war or is it not our war? I’d add: Are we sure we get a choice in the matter?