Emmanuel Macron met U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday to plead the Ukrainian cause, with the French President seeing himself as the spokesman for a military deployment he is alone in defending.
His trip almost coincided with that of British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who is due to visit later this week. While the two European leaders are in agreement on the defence of Ukrainian interests against Russia, Europe as a whole is far from a consensus. In contrast, Trump said Putin was open to the idea of European peacekeepers on the Ukrainian border. This would be a matter for the duo to discuss, excluding Macron and Starmer.
Great domestic fanfare accompanied Macron’s position articulated in his recent speeches, but Trump isn’t listening. Since both presidents’ first terms of office in 2017 Macron has been careful to maintain the pretence of closeness and familiarity with Trump, even though there is little that brings the two men together. At the time of the Republican president’s re-election, Macron was keen not to add his voice to the chorus of condemnation that accompanied Trump’s victory in France.
Instead, and in place of politics, Macron embarked on a campaign of interpersonal familiarity, based on displaying smiles and knowing winks. But preserving the ‘special relationship’ he imagines he has with Trump, and—en même temps—defending Ukraine and reviving a moribund transatlantic alliance can only go so far…
Despite the affected tone of open camaraderie during the press conference, the real tension beneath the surface could not be concealed. For instance, Macron took Trump to task over the nature of European aid: donations (not loans), to the tune of 60%. This provoked a sarcastic pout from the American president, who emphasised that the United States fully intended to recover the money committed.
This peace cannot mean the capitulation of Ukraine. This peace cannot be a ceasefire without guarantees.
The French president announced that France is ready to deploy troops to Ukraine to participate in peacekeeping, as are certain European partners, once a peace agreement has been reached. But who does he mean by “certain European partners?” The vagueness is striking, as no conclusion to this effect was reached during the various summits in Paris organised by Macron in recent weeks. Starmer shares Macron’s desire to send troops to Ukraine, but last time we checked, the UK was not an EU member state.
Macron insisted on the need for a clear framework and a precise timetable. Speaking to Fox News, he explained that a “truce” could be established in the coming weeks—an opportunity to gauge Russia’s goodwill. But the truce would only make sense for the French president with “American support to ensure the credibility of the security guarantees.” “We want a quick peace but not a fragile agreement,” he stated during the press conference, referring to the risk of Europe finding itself in the same situation as after the invasion of Crimea and the Minsk agreements.
A proud Macron did also not hesitate to speak of reaching a “turning point” in the negotiations following his meeting with Trump. This is bizarre, considering that his counterpart seems to be ignoring the message the French president is so confident in having got across. In fact, according to the newspaper Les Échos, Trump had much more to say about the reconstruction of Notre-Dame de Paris than about American guarantees for peace in Ukraine. While the U.S. president is obviously super focused on making progress on his agreement with Zelensky regarding Ukrainian rare earths, Macron has decided to see the glass as half full, suggesting that
The very signing of this agreement is a de facto recognition of Ukrainian sovereignty.
Keir Starmer is due to visit the White House on Thursday, February 27th, where he will defend a position close to that of the French President. In the meantime, Macron is returning to Paris without any commitment obtained from his American counterpart.
