During his visit to Bratislava, President Emmanuel Macron acknowledged that France should have paid more attention to Central and Eastern European nations, which warned about a belligerent Russia before Moscow’s forces invaded Ukraine. But while Macron did his homework regarding Russia, he still appears to have missed the memo on the Belarusian dictator.
Macron told a security forum there should be no division between “Old Europe” and “New Europe”, referring to enduring divergences between European Union western members and former communist bloc countries that joined in 2004. One point of disagreement had been the threat posed by Russia, which western European countries dismissed as Russophobia.
“Some said you had missed an opportunity to shut up. I think we also lost an opportunity to listen to you. This time is over,” Macron said to applause during a speech at the GLOBSEC think tank in the Slovak capital, Bratislava.
He was alluding to a remark in 2003 by then-French President Jacques Chirac, who said new EU members who sided with the United States and Britain in their decision to invade Iraq that year, opposed by some major western allies including France and Germany, had missed a “good opportunity to shut up”.
The remark served as a rude awakening to countries of Central and Eastern Europe who expected to be treated by “Old Europe” as equal partners and contributed to an enduring mistrust of Paris by the EU’s newest members that has re-emerged since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
In the aftermath of the invasion, eastern EU countries such as Poland criticized Macron for keeping communication channels open with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin or saying that Russia should not be “humiliated” in the course of international efforts to end the Ukraine conflict.
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Macron now has a chance to patch up relations with Central European countries. In Bratislava, he met with Slovak President Zuzana Čaputová, with talks focusing on the unrest in Kosovo and the war in Ukraine. He also met with prime ministers of several countries of Central European and Balkan countries, including Slovakia’s Ľudovít Ódor, Albania’s Edi Rama, the Czech Republic’s Petr Fiala, and North Macedonia’s Dimitrar Kovačevski. On Thursday, Macron will visit Chișinău to attend a summit of the European Political Community.
Europe ‘indispensable’ in NATO
On Wednesday, Macron also said Europe should build up its own defense industry and not only rely on the United States for protection while acknowledging the U.S. contribution in money and materiel had been crucial to forming a credible front against Russia.
“Let’s be grateful and say thank you to the United States. But is this administration here forever?” Macron said. “That’s why a European defense pillar in NATO is indispensable.”
The United States has presidential elections in November 2024 with former President Donald Trump likely to try to get back into the White House. During his tenure, he had said European nations should pay more for their own defense.
It might be surprising that Macron would agree on anything with Trump. It was in 2019, during Trump’s controversial presidency, that Macron said the NATO alliance was “experiencing brain death”.
On Wednesday, he referred to what he called a “severe sentence”, and said his words “underlined the divisions” that existed in NATO.
“Today I can say that Vladimir Putin has woken it up with the worst of electric shocks,” said the French President. “From the first days of the conflict, NATO ensured the security of its borders with great effectiveness. Article V has played its full role and I am convinced that it keeps Russia in check.”
Macron said Russia had suffered clear setbacks in the war, including Finland’s accession to NATO and losing legitimacy on the global stage.
He praised the Ukrainian ability “to resist and to deliver such concrete results” and chalked up much of Kyiv’s successes so far to “Ukrainian commitment and their ability to be strategic, smart, brave and perfectly well-organized.”
“War is far from over but one thing is clear: Ukraine won’t be conquered. We can see that what was supposed to be a ‘special operation’ is already a geopolitical failure,” Macron said.
The war’s end is not the only thing Macron believes is far off.
“I’m not sure we will have a consensus for full-fledged membership at the Vilnius [NATO] summit. Let’s be clear,” he said and called on NATO to provide Ukraine with full security guarantees.
Two steps forward, one step back
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While Macron appears to have made some progress in his understanding of the region of Central and Eastern Europe, he still has not come to terms with the notion that post-Soviet dictators cannot be appeased into becoming civilized leaders.
Macron said he believes sanctions imposed against Belarusian dictator Alyaksandr Lukashenka in the aftermath of the fraudulent 2020 election and a brutal crackdown he unleashed on the democratic opposition “pushed Belarus closer to Russia.”
While Macron acknowledged that “it was fake elections, and it’s not a state where rule of law is duly respected and the elections were not respected, and we were right to be tough,” he also said that “it was a country where, as a president and part of this administration wanted to join NATO and was very careful with Russia.”
“We put him in a situation to be trapped in the in the hands of the Russians,” the French president said.
“Today you have Russian deployments in Belarus, but Belarus is not part of this war and not deploying troops and soldiers and capacities in Ukraine,” added Macron.
The French President, therefore, advised against tougher sanctions against the Minsk regime, which he fears might result in an escalation. At the same time, he paradoxically believes Belarus must be pressured to stay out of the war, although he does not appear to offer a solution that would be an alternative to the sanctions.
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