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France
Aug 27, 2024 In February, France’s President Macron went full hawk on Ukraine by declaring a potential willingness to deploy French troops in Ukraine and then abruptly disappeared from the radar. He went to the Védrine school of international relations, the French foreign minister (1997-2002). Macron appreciates the views of former Prime Minister de Villepin (2005-2007), famous for his strong stance against the war in Iraq and Western interventionism. He also takes inspiration from former President Sarközy (2007-2012), who supports the need to simultaneously build up the European Union, remain in NATO, and seek rapprochement and accommodation with Russia. Macron respects the alliance with the United States but also understands that France’s interests do not always align with Washington’s views. He wants France to play its own part in order to stay relevant on the world stage and remain engaged with Russia, China, and the ’Global South.” When the war in Ukraine started, Macron tried to play the mediator. He visited Putin in Moscow in early February 2022. Macron believed he had averted war after a phone call with the Kremlin. The next day, however, Putin called to tell him he would recognize the independence of the Donbas. In June, Macron warned the West against any aim to humiliate Russia, seemingly in contrast to the hard line of London and Washington. By late 2023 and early 2024, French intelligence had concluded that Ukraine was hopelessly losing the war. Macron had the June elections to the European Parliament on his calendar and little to show for his seven years in power. He lacked the parliamentary majority he enjoyed before. Macron needed something to campaign on for the European elections. Faced with the prospect of a direct clash with a NATO country, Macron believed Putin would be more open to negotiation. And "he believed a hawkish stance would also serve to neutralize Germany’s incentives to rearm” - with France in command, Berlin would feel less need to step up militarily against Russia. French officers warned the president that their forces were in no shape to take on the far larger and battle-hardened Russian military and that a small expeditionary force would likely be decimated without achieving much. Beyond Ukraine, however, assuming the role of the savior of Europe and the “Free World” would serve electoral purposes and help seal German Pandora’s box of rearmament. Macron continued hinting at direct French involvement until June 7, two days before the vote. In June’s European elections, however, Macron’s party suffered a rout. In July, it also lost the parliamentary elections, although that defeat was less severe than feared. The vast majority of the electorate is clearly opposed to sending troops to Ukraine. Already deeply unpopular and isolated, Macron will be unwilling to risk hundreds of French lives for such a distant war nobody wants. Also, German and American exhaustion with the war has already led to a sharp reduction in financial and military support for Kyiv. France has so far proved unwilling to replace them. In late June, Macron promised he would not send French troops to Ukraine for the foreseeable future. Macron’s diplomatic scheme achieved little, as Moscow remained un-phased. And Macron’s core foreign policy principles only partially align with the Biden administration’s focus on the liberal international order. Macron knows full well what Washington likes to hear and throws around the right rhetoric to garner its support but France remains an independent-minded ally with distinct interests. (Source: Responsible Statecraft - U.S.)
by Motin, who holds a Ph.D. in political science, currently a non-resident Kelly Fellow at the Pacific Forum and a researcher at the Center for International and Strategic Studies, author of Bandwagoning in International Relations: China, Russia, and Their Neighbors (Vernon Press, 2024).
Russia
Aug 27, 2024 Russia’s most formidable challenge has been finding ways to credibly deter the West from continuing to aid and supply Ukraine. Just under 30 months ago, the day the invasion commenced, Russian President Putin warned that anyone who interferes will suffer consequences like you have never seen. Putin’s latest scheme to dissuade further Western involvement in the Ukraine war was to threaten to arm the West’s adversaries in retaliation. Russia lacks the capacity to make good on it without running a red pen through other parts of its global portfolio of military, economic, and political interests. Russia is running out of Western enemies that can be armed without negatively impacting its own interests. The limitations point to a set of expectations and norms that, though never codified and largely unspoken, nevertheless has a real disciplining effect on its participants. Just as the Kremlin was reportedly getting ready to arm the Houthi rebels in Yemen against the United States, Washington coordinated a diplomatic push with Saudi Arabia to stay Moscow’s hand. Russia and North Korea signed a defense pact in June, but there is no evidence to date that the Russians are planning to send any major weapons shipments to North Korea. It’s so far been the other way around, with the DPRK shipping millions of artillery shells to Russia. There has not been anything approximating a comparable exchange of weapons between Moscow and Pyongyang. Any large-scale effort to arm the DPRK could prove fatal to Russia’s relations with South Korea, which have not completely tanked following the 2022 Ukraine invasion despite the ROK’s tight-knit partnership with Washington and obvious susceptibility to U.S. interests. Beijing, too, would be left unsmiling by the destabilizing effects that large Russian arms infusions into North Korea could exercise throughout the region, and the China relationship is one Russia can ill afford to complicate. Turning to the Middle East, Iran emerges as an obvious candidate for Russia’s generosity - it is, after all, a U.S. adversary locked in a bitter struggle with one of America’s closest allies, Israel. But here, too, the Kremlin finds itself navigating. Part of Russia’s complex Middle East strategy following its intervention in the Syrian civil war has been to support a stable, partner-level relationship with Israel. Both Putin and his Israeli counterpart Bibi Netanyahu regard cordial ties between their two countries as a personal achievement, and they have been remarkably loath to jettison this relationship even as the Ukraine war and 2023 Gaza War have found them on different sides of the barricade. Though Moscow has recurrently needled Israel over its conduct in Gaza, these kinds of rhetorical pinpricks are one thing; supplying Israel’s avowed Iranian enemy with major weapons systems is quite another, and, so far, not a bridge Putin has been willing to cross. Smaller potential players remain in Latin America and parts of Africa, but in these cases, the impact of such provisions is likely to be far too small to carry the punitive effect that is Russia’s raison d'être for pursuing this arms transfer policy in the first place. (Source: Responsible Statecraft – U.S.)
by Episkopos, a Eurasia Research Fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, an Adjunct Professor of History at Marymount University.
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