Why Macron is alone for not ruling out Western troops going to Ukraine | DW Analysis

Emmanuel Macron has faced uneasy reactions from European allies after he refused to rule out sending Western ground troops to Ukraine. The French President made his remarks at a meeting of more than 20 European leaders in Paris. The conference was convened as a show of support for Ukraine against Russia's war of aggression. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky attended the gathering via video link. Ukraine is now largely on the defensive as it contends with slow Western arms deliveries and Russia's superior numbers on the battlefield. Here is the French President speaking on Monday. We are convinced that defeating Russia is essential to security and stability in Europe. We are determined to do whatever is necessary for as long as is necessary. And that is the key point for me this evening. The first part of our discussion was basically about doing more. And there was a broad consensus that together we should do even more, even faster. There is no consensus today on sending in troops on the ground in an official, accepted and endorsed way. But in dynamic terms, nothing should be ruled out. We will do everything necessary to ensure that Russia cannot win this war. The French President does seem to be out on a limb on this one. During his speech, allies including Britain, Spain, Poland, the Czech Republic and Germany all distanced themselves from the idea of committing ground troops to Ukraine, where the war has now entered its third year. Here is German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. We obviously discussed ways to arrange for the support. And after a very good debate, we decided that what was agreed from the outset also applies to the future, namely that there will be no ground troops, no soldiers on Ukrainian soil sent there by European countries or NATO states. So let's pick this up with Benjamin Tallis, who is a senior research fellow at the German Council on Foreign Relations. He is co-author, most recently, of Germany is Failing Ukraine and Europe, an article that's just appeared in the publication Foreign Policy. Welcome to DW. Thank you very much. Pleasure to be here. Emmanuel Macron, then, makes this bold statement. Why when it could be so easily and publicly contradicted? Well, while it looks like Macron's out on a limb in public, behind the scenes, I think it's a little more complex. I mean, let's be very clear. This is part of Operation Unblock Olaf. This is about a coordinated move by allies behind the scenes to try and get Germany moving in the right direction by widening the debate. Oh, really? So this is about... Because as we saw in the clips there, the German chancellor was quite undiplomatic. There was no hedging there, was there? No European troops, no boots on the ground. So this is a wider move to try to sort of push him towards that. I think so. And I mean, I think Olaf Scholz was fairly... He clearly understood he was the target of this. That's why he was perhaps so straight-talking. But what we see is Germany blocked in what it's doing because the chancellor still hasn't said even that Ukraine should win and is not supporting Ukraine to win at the moment. Except that we have these other comments from these other European states, not as unequivocal as Mr. Scholz, but all of them say, no plans to do this, which is what you tend to expect to hear when diplomats are saying no. No, indeed. I mean, they're being diplomatic. They're standing with Germany to an extent. But what it's done is widen the conversation about what could be in people's minds and what is possible, which makes some other steps look more reasonable along the way, sending tourists, for example. Does Europe actually have the capacity to help Ukraine more? Yes, it does. Absolutely. There's several things we could do. The Danish prime minister was very clear at the Munich security conference that all allies could send more. They have stocks they could send to Ukraine and should send them now. Second, we could seize Russian assets and actually make Russia pay for its own defeat rather than putting the whole burden on our taxpayers. And we could be stepping up our industrial production a lot more. And crucially, Olaf Scholz could say that Ukraine should win. Well, if we can do all that, if we can step up industrial production, why aren't we doing that then? It's a very good question. And that's one best addressed to the chancellery. Our best analysis of this suggests that Olaf Scholz is not keen on the kind of change to the world that would be brought about by a Ukrainian victory. He's hanging on to as much of the world of yesterday as possible. Really? So your analysis seems to be all aimed at Olaf Scholz. Olaf Scholz is holding everyone else back. Yeah. I mean, lest that be misunderstood, we do analyze other things as well. But in Germany, that is where the bloc is at the moment. It's where a lot of other allies see the bloc as being. There's many allies in the Baltic states and elsewhere who would like to go a lot further, a lot faster. So just to be clear, because over the last couple of months, one of the biggest issues for Ukraine has been the delivery of armaments. And everybody says, well, the orders have gone in. It's just difficult, unless we're on a wartime footing, to fulfill those. So you're saying that there could be a policy change, and that could actually change. Yes, we could move closer to a wartime footing, certainly. We could also stop exporting the 40 percent of shells that we produce within the European Union that go outside the bloc, and not to Ukraine. There's an awful lot of steps we could take, and trying to unblock that politically is the name of the game at the moment. You see, this all sounds very—forgive me for saying this—this all sounds very Trumpian. He wasn't a big fan of Germany and its defense policy. And we had Donald Trump's former national security adviser on the program yesterday, saying that he was sure that under a second Trump presidency, Mr. Trump would—or President Trump would take the U.S. out of NATO. Are European leaders, do you think, ready or indeed preparing for such a possibility? They're not ready for it, and they're not properly preparing for it. Should they be? They absolutely should be, yes. It's not a question of formal withdrawal from NATO, necessarily. NATO still has strong support in the U.S. Congress, but any kind of warfighting decision goes through the White House, and the sowing of the kind of uncertainty that Trump would undoubtedly bring renders our security guarantee uncertain. And it's that kind of uncertainty that Putin is really skilled at exploiting, especially when he detects weakness, and that's what we're signaling right now. Okay. So, amidst all this talk of Germany dragging its heels, two years ago we had Olaf Scholz announcing this Zeitunwende, this turning point in Germany's defense and security policy in response to Russia's invasion. There was talk of a massive increase in defense spending, improved defense capacity. So what have we seen two years on? We've seen Germany in basically as bad a geopolitical position as it was two years ago. The change hasn't gone far enough. It hasn't gone fast enough. It's seriously incomplete, even on the terms it was set out. And it's, I would say, dangerously inadequate, to be quite honest. Germany's trying to plug about a $450 billion hole in the funding for the Bundeswehr with a $100 billion fund, just for one thing. It's not sent Ukraine all it could. It's not actually helping to remove the biggest security threat we face in Europe. And there's still big questions about its energy policy and its economic model, because they're at serious geopolitical risk from dependence on China, among other things. So I don't think the Zeitenwende has happened to a significant extent. I think we now need a Zeitenwende, one that is actually chosen about whether Germany and its allies want to set the agenda for the world, or whether they're happy to be dictated to by dictators. OK. I'd like to get your perspective now on a related story, because as this policy discussion unfolds in Europe, NATO also saw a turning point in the last couple of days. Sweden now set to join the alliance. A short while ago, the Hungarian parliament approved the admission of Sweden to NATO. And so, with that process now— Hear from the U.S. Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, a welcome in the news, and then get your thoughts. Any moment now. Is that going to happen? Right. Well, we'll press on without Antony Blinken. Oh, Blinken, you missed it. Well done. What will Sweden bring to NATO that the alliance doesn't already have? Well, in territorial terms, it improves NATO's ability to control the Baltic Sea. Certainly, it brings a strong, well-equipped military. And it sends a very clear signal that the alliance is together, and that it's basically a good move for the free world, this one. The other thing it will bring is the ability now to deploy its troops alongside Canadian troops, for example, in Latvia, to augment the forward presence that is there, which helps to fulfill NATO's mission of deterring Russia, and deterring it by denying Russia access to alliance territory. OK. A short while ago, the Hungarian parliament approved the... Putin, no question. I mean, part of his bizarre rationale for the war was about NATO enlargement, which was never a credible one. But rather than stopping that, he's seen NATO enlarge to Finland and Sweden. And that surely should be a marker that his strategy is not working. So I think politically, it's extremely important. Militarily, it's very useful. And as an emotional boost for us in the free world, it's a good thing. So NATO is set now, would you say? There are no other bits on the edges looking to join? No. Ukraine should be in NATO. That's absolutely got to be a clear goal of the alliance. We need a stable security architecture in Europe. We don't need a consistent pressure point. That's not going to happen. It's not going to happen yet. But don't rule it out, because this is actually the only viable solution, really, for European security. Credible security guarantees are what Ukraine needs to reconstruct for refugees to return to a Ukraine with a future. And we need it for our security. So this is why Europeans really need to step up their act, properly share, not only share the burden, but shift the burden for European security to themselves, and have that institutionally expressed by an expansion of NATO. Well, our correspondent Bernd Riegert attended that conference of European leaders in Paris yesterday and joins us now. Welcome, Bernd. The unity that this conference was supposed to highlight didn't last very long, did it? No, it didn't. Emmanuel Macron, the president of France, got some very uneasy reactions from the peers that he sat at the same table yesterday in Elysee, Paris. And there's a conflict what was actually said and what was meant by the discussion. All major NATO allies, the US, the United Kingdom, and also Germany, said they will not send any ground troops. There's a consensus on that. But Emmanuel Macron said quite the opposite. He said, we are still discussing it. And it should be an option. And the German chancellor went even further and said that he cannot memorize that they at all talked about this subject. So there's a little bit of a dispute here. And diplomats say it's not very good for Ukraine because people don't need an intellectual discussions about troops on the ground or not. In the future, they need ammunition now. And this is a little bit of a distraction that is going on. And this is not a show of unity. And this is also maybe a signal to Russia that the Western allies now are fighting over words instead of fighting Russia. And in the last couple of hours, France has actually been backpedaling and clarifying the French president's remarks, which makes one wonder why he said them in the first place. Emmanuel Macron intended with his conference to take the lead in the European discussion on the defense strategy for Ukraine. He also wanted to showcase that he or European leaders should replace the United States when it comes to Ukraine aid, because there's the danger, of course, that after maybe Donald Trump gets back the presidency in the U.S., that then the U.S. will retreat from the support at all. So that was his purpose. And Macron loves to provoke with some intellectual challenges, I would say. He did that in the past, and he did it again. But his defense minister, Sébastien Lecornu, tried to water down the whole issue a little bit. He said, if you are looking into the eye of an enemy, you keep all your options. You don't say you exclude any options. That includes, of course, sending troops. You have to be aware that there has to be a kind of a strategic ambiguity. All right. Thanks for that, Bernd. Bernd Riegert in Strasbourg. So let's get a German perspective on the French president's comments from the deputy head of Germany's opposition CDU-CSU parliamentary group, Johann Wadephul. Johann Wadephul, welcome to DW. After President Macron's comments about those European boots on the ground in Ukraine, you said Paris and Berlin have become worlds apart. What did you mean? Well, normally we in Europe are used to common leadership from Paris and Berlin. And nowadays we do see that these two capitals are split in very important questions, not only when it comes to the future of the European Union, but also into really strategic aspects of our security. And we saw that yesterday evening in a very specific light. What really endangers our security? We would expect that the French president and the German chancellor use the same language when it comes to the Ukrainian war, when it comes to the question how and which means to defend Ukraine against the Russian aggressor. And yesterday we saw them diverted, and that's not good for European security. And I expect that the chancellor really is aware that it is his task to come in position together with President Macron. OK, so who spoke out of turn? Macron for suggesting the idea of keeping the option of European boots in Ukraine on the ground, or the German president for saying absolutely not? OK, the question of putting boots on the ground is a very specific new position we heard yesterday from Paris. And it's absolutely clear this is not a German position. This is not a position of other NATO members, because we don't want to come into a concrete war and contradictionary situation with Russia as states. But I think the question is more how to really come to a common position in Europe. And that is that is that is more than this evening, this evening from from yesterday. This is if you under underline and an agreement with Ukraine where Germany and France together assure Ukraine that we stand with them, that we support them as long as it takes. We expect from both leaders that they do this commonly together on the same place on the same day together with with Mr. Zelensky. OK, now you've called for a vote of no confidence in Chancellor Schultz. You've described his opposition to sending these Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine as a strategic miscalculation that could mark a negative turning point. What is it that you think that this decision will provoke? What do you think will happen because of it? I didn't. I think Chancellor Schultz underestimates the role Germany has to play, because President Macron is in one point absolutely correct. We have to create strategic ambiguity and we have to create in this way uncertainty for Russia. And this will you will only reach in this very situation of a war of attrition with union using every mean, every military mean we as countries do have. And Germany has the Taurus missiles and they can be deployed to Ukraine. And that would mean that would create a lot of uncertainty for Russia that would create more security for Ukraine. And for this very reason, it is very sad that the chancellor still refuses to do so. Well, let's pick up this apparent split with Mike Martin. He's a senior visiting research fellow in war studies at King's College London. Welcome back to DW, Mike. So we have Emmanuel Macron there, apparently in a minority of one on the issue of sending ground troops into Ukraine. Why is he open to it where everyone else is saying no? I'm not sure. And I do wonder whether in the next couple of days we might see something from the Elysee Palace that Emmanuel Macron misspoke or something else, because it's, you know, right from the beginning of this conflict, all of the sides have been trying very hard to make sure that there's no direct confrontation between Russian troops and troops of countries that belong to NATO for very good reasons, because that would bring us into a much wider conflict. So for Macron to say this today seems to fly in the face of all of that strategic positioning over the last two years. And yet the French president has been one of the most vocal European leaders on the issue of a European army and reducing reliance on the USA for defence. Recent pronouncements from Donald Trump, plus this war in Ukraine, indicate that he might actually have a point. I think actually Emmanuel Macron is quite erratic when it comes to foreign affairs. This was the president who felt that he could go to Moscow and cut a deal with Putin in the early stages. And then we had that quite embarrassing trip where nothing was achieved except to raise the profile of Putin. I think the election of President Trump is a huge worry for European security. But I think that underscores exactly why we don't want European nations dragged into a war with Russia at exactly the time, you know, later this year, where if President Trump gets elected and the American security blanket for Europe is withdrawn, that's exactly the position we don't want to find ourselves in. We being, of course, Europeans. Meanwhile, the German chancellor has ruled out sending Taurus missiles into Ukraine because he says their range would allow Ukraine to attack Russia directly and their use would require German troops bringing his country directly into conflict with Russia. How credible is his reasoning? So, you know, the first bit of his reasoning about escalating the conflict is something that we've heard many, many, many times before with many different weapon systems. And usually what happens is those weapons are delivered and the war doesn't escalate. Russia has nowhere to escalate. It's invaded a neighboring country and is committing war crimes there. The only escalation is to go nuclear. And that's very unlikely to happen, highly, highly unlikely to happen, because France, America and Britain also have nuclear weapons. And as for his conversation, as for his points about requiring German troops, there may well be something technically specific to the Taurus. But from what I understand, it's very similar to other types of cruise missile. The Taurus missile is a type of cruise missile that have already been donated to Ukraine by France and by Britain and by America. So again, I don't really understand that reasoning either. And a quick word about unconfirmed reports coming out of South Korea today, that North Korea has shipped millions of munitions to Russia since July, where we see Ukraine struggling to get its Western backers to do the same. How big is the mismatch of artillery and missile supplies at the moment? Oh, it's huge. The North Korean army really set up on the old Soviet model, which is very, very artillery heavy. And that is the big overmatch that North Korea has over South Korea. It has, you know, millions and millions of artillery shells, many of which I suspect are well past their sell by date. But shipping those, even if, you know, 10 percent of them fail and all the rest of it, there's still a vast overmatch between the Russian side who are benefiting from Iranian munitions and North Korean munitions and Ukraine, which is really waiting for the U.S. Congress to make its mind up on further weapons supplies. And of course, while the U.S. is dithering, European countries are trying to work out what to do, and they tend to follow the U.S.'s lead in these things. Clear as ever. Thank you so much for joining us again, Mike. Mike Martin from King's College London. Thank you, Phil.