Making Sense of Macron’s Hint at Troops in Ukraine

French President Emmanuel Macron surprised fellow European leaders this week with his suggestion that some European countries might send troops to Ukraine to prevent Russia from winning its war of aggression there. Taken at face value, Macron’s remarks—made at a newly created European Union-Ukraine summit in Paris—put him immediately at the more forward-leaning end of the spectrum of Western leaders. Even U.S. President Joe Biden, who raised eyebrows with his apparent call for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s ouster in a speech in Warsaw in March 2022, has been careful since the start of the war to rule out sending U.S. troops and to calibrate U.S. military aid to Ukraine to avoid any possible appearance of inviting direct confrontation with Russia.

Perhaps Macron meant what he said, and the rubber of strategic autonomy is finally hitting the road of European security. Perhaps France is finally ready to take up the empty mantle of European leadership to do what it takes to ensure Russia is stopped before it presents Europe with a far-reaching strategic defeat and risk to its long-term security. Keeping future options open—and Putin guessing—could be a way to signal to the Kremlin that Europe is taking deterrence seriously. Indeed, Macron said after the summit that all his comments about deterring Russia were carefully thought out.

But Macron may have had other objectives. Infamous in Europe for rushing ahead with radical lone-wolf proposals, his intention may have been just to move the debate forward. In his comments, he bemoaned some countries’ tendency to initially reject most proposals for Ukrainian support before eventually acquiescing. This was one of several thinly veiled digs at German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who this week once again ruled out supplying Ukraine with Taurus long-range missiles, mirroring last year’s painful debate over Leopard tanks and F-16s—despite widespread domestic German support for increasing military aid for Ukraine.

If Macron really was serious about the possibility of European troops on the ground, his approach left much to be desired. He should, for one, have coordinated with at least a few key allies. While he may have succeeded in grabbing headlines, he has in the process alienated fellow European leaders: His suggestion was shot down not only by the Kremlin but by various NATO allies within the first 24 hours.

If Macron were serious, he might also have chosen to be much clearer about scenarios in which European troops might be moved to Ukraine and perhaps outlined a concrete French role. Ukraine’s economic reconstruction—or joint manufacturing sites of Ukrainian and European defense firms—might in the future well require European troops to secure them. Similarly, the European Union’s military training mission for Ukraine, which is currently hosted on EU soil, might be moved to Ukrainian territory. So far, however, these steps have been widely rejected by European leaders, who will have to be convinced behind the scenes or even forced into action by a country like France leading by example. To this end, public chiding and Macron-style grandstanding will do little good.

Perhaps Macron had other motives. In the halls of NATO headquarters in Brussels and in a number of European capitals in recent months, complaints about French inaction have grown louder. Indeed, there is a gaping gulf between France’s meager support for Ukraine and its aspirations to play a leadership role on the continent. According to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy’s Ukraine Support Tracker, France ranks 22nd among the EU’s 27 members in terms of aid commitments to Ukraine as a share of GDP. Whereas Germany this month committed another 7.1 billion euros ($7.7 billion) to Ukraine, a recent bilateral security agreement between France and Ukraine promises French military assistance of only “up to” 3 billion euros—which puts France in the range of much smaller European countries, such as the Netherlands with its pledge of more than 2 billion euros. A more cynical observer might see Macron’s comments as an attempt to distract from his country’s failure to make anything close to the contributions of other large European powers—precisely at a moment when the situation on the ground in Ukraine has grown desperate and dire and despite the fact that France is the most capable and well-equipped military power on the continent.

A more charitable reading of Macron’s comments is that, faced with the looming U.S. election and a potential vacuum created by the United States’ failure to provide leadership, he intended to mentally prepare Europeans for the potential imperative of mustering their own troops to contain the Russian threat. This makes sense not only given Europe’s return to conquest and war but also against the backdrop of U.S. politics: NATO’s leading power now has a presidential candidate inviting Russia to invade European allies and a Congress that cannot separate domestic politics from urgent and critical U.S. national security interests. Even if Biden stays in power, Washington’s rejection of NATO membership for Ukraine remains unlikely to change in the near term. No matter what happens, Europeans must think through the security and defense implications of offering Ukraine EU membership in several years’ time. So perhaps Macron was offering a longer-term perspective.

However, long-term perspectives are not missing from the debate. At the Munich Security Conference this month, there were endless panel discussions focused on European security in five or 10 years but that what Europe really needs right now is short-term action that impacts Russia’s war. In the short term, even though European arms production is increasing, Ukraine has only received one-third of the 1 million artillery shells it was promised by the EU. In fact, it was Paris that initially blocked the procurement of shells from outside the EU to make up for the shortfall, making critics wonder whether French industrial policy is more important to Macron than whether Ukraine loses or wins. Only at this week’s summit did he appear to have changed his mind.

Without fast action, Ukraine is going to lose the war. Precious few people in Western capitals are focused on the very real possibility that if the U.S. House of Representatives fails to act on the lagging aid bill and European powers don’t do more—not in 10 years but now—NATO leaders could gather at their summit in Washington in July as Russian troops make steady progress across Ukraine, capture more Ukrainian cities, and call into question NATO’s capabilities and will.

“Nothing that came out of that dinner will help Ukraine,” a frustrated senior U.S. official told us in reference to Macron’s remarks. If France wants to lead on European security, it should focus less on trial-ballooning the idea of troops on the ground and more on working with the existing Ukraine Defense Contact Group to send more military support to Ukraine, including French weapons and materiel. Before it’s too late.