“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again,” the saying goes, “and expecting different results.” How else to describe French President Emmanuel Macron’s effort to end Russia’s invasion of Ukraine by constantly trying to reconnect with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin?
Apart from confirming the well-established fact that Putin is a malevolent and unscrupulous actor, there is little to be learned from the tape of a telephone conversation between Macron and Putin held four days before the invasion. The text was made public as part of a television documentary authorized by the Elysée, in the hope of bolstering Macron’s credentials as a global businessman.
Yet this is not the impression of the “Jupiterian” president of France. Putin, chastising Macron, is angry about the “coup” in Ukraine in 2014, in which “people were burned alive.” Instead of disputing the nonsense, Macron assured Putin that he “does [his] best to press” the Ukrainians and is trying to entice him to stay at the negotiating table with the prospect of a one-on-one meeting with President Biden in Geneva.
A transcript of a conversation between Macron and Putin four days before the invasion was released. AFP via Getty Images
The rest, as they say, is history. The puzzle, however, was Macron’s willingness to talk to Putin and be humiliated by him again and again, even after this apparently fruitless attempt. In fact, Macron recently mentioned a “hundred-hour” conversation he had with Putin since December.
For what purpose?
The most gracious way to understand Macron’s strategy is through the figure of his mentor, the philosopher Paul Ricoeur, from whom he borrowed his penchant for synthesizing seemingly irreconcilable positions and courses of action.
Macron’s own political movement, LREM, and his candidacy were a way to move beyond the political left and right. In 2017 and this year, he defeated populist candidates in the presidential election, while also being a destroyer of populism. He wants a state that protects workers while pushing, albeit with mixed results, to liberalize France’s rigid labor markets.
Putin spent most of the conversation talking about the “coup” in Ukraine in 2014. SPUTNIK/AFP via Getty Images The war in Ukraine is likely to require a political settlement. AP
The philosophy of “simultaneous” — “en même temps” — places France in the position of a supposedly impartial and reliable mediator in the current war and a major supplier of military equipment to Ukraine. Just as Macron spoke of the dangers of “humiliating Russia” in order to “build an exit ramp through diplomatic means,” the French-supplied Caesar howitzers were indeed changing the defense effort in Donbass.
Yet a statesman must not allow any theory, however sophisticated or elegant, to blind him to reality. To anyone not enamored of continental philosophy, it was obvious that Macron’s initial attempt to reach Putin through the high-profile Versailles summit in 2017 was a dead end. Instead of learning from an early mistake, the French leader insisted that everything happening in the West’s deteriorating relationship with Russia was a nail ready for his sledgehammer.
Eastern Europe is not a seminar room at the Sorbonne. There is no clever way to “get over” a confrontation with a bully trapped in his own ideological worldview, who seeks to restore Mother Russia, long humiliated by the West, to her rightful place by trampling on the freedom and self-determination of her neighbors. The only language bullies understand is that of hard, uncompromising force.
Yes, Russia’s war on Ukraine will end eventually, and it will probably involve a political settlement and maybe even a handshake with Putin. What Macron’s philosophy fails to understand is that the time for such an agreement will come only after the basic contours of that agreement have been decided on the battlefield.
Today, one and only one consideration should guide France’s actions, as well as those of its other Western allies: the better Ukraine does in the current war, the stronger it (and the collective West) will be at the negotiating table.
Dalibor Rohac is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, DC. Twitter: @DaliborRohac.
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