You know, thinking you're Napoleon used to be one of the standard symbols for lunacy, back in the day: "In recent weeks, French President Emmanuel Macron has repeatedly refused to rule out Western troops being sent to Ukraine at some point to help Kiev in its fight against Moscow, which he described as an 'adversary' of Paris."
The last time France chose to make Moscow an "adversary", things wound up not turning out so well for France. Maybe, for Macron, threatening to fight Russia is intended to be a distraction from not actually fighting Muslim violence within France, itself.
He needs to find a way to ship the Muslim violence to Russia.
ReplyDeleteKill two birds with one stone, as they say.
Marine Le Pen is nipping at Macron's heels, so he's got to do something. Unfortunately, he's following the Joebama plan.
ReplyDeleteMacron probably figures that France is distant enough from the Russian border that somebody else can bear the weight. And if he can deflect attention away from his country's own internal problems, so much the better.
ReplyDeleteThe French military (and I exclude the Foreign Legion from this) hasn't fought in any major conflicts since Vietnam ("Indochina" to some) ... and they didn't do so well there. Ditto in Algeria.
ReplyDeleteTheir withdrawal from NATO meant a lot of, ummm, independent thinking. I recall seeing their mine marking kits at a NATO engineering school back when, and it was something to behold ... ... fancy and impractical. France has since rejoined NATO, but I doubt things have improved that much, NATO standards or not.
Lots of small actions, of course, but it seems their "Land" army has focused mostly on civil support, with the rise of terrorism and civil disorder in the past decade or two.
So if Macron is looking at Western troops deploying into Ukraine, I doubt they're going to be French. And I include the Foreign Legion in that.