Macron and Rutte are striving to get NATO and Europe more involved in the Ukraine war because of their spineless toadying to Trump.
President-elect Donald Trump seems willing to find a peaceful resolution to the three-year war in Ukraine. The horrible irony, however, is that the conflict may be entering its most dangerous phase with only weeks before Trump moves into the White House.
The danger is heightened because of European lackeys. Tragically, it is weak and unscrupulous European politicians bending over backward to please Trump, who could ignite the proxy war against Russia into a full-blown conflagration.
Step up French President Emmanuel Macron and former Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte as Europe’s two most abject – and treacherous – politicians.
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Both are posturing as “Trump whisperers” – that is, as the European figures that will work best with the new American president. Or, in other words, the two European politicians who will be most toadying and obsequious in trying to win Trump’s favor.
We saw this when Macron invited Trump to join other world leaders to attend the reopening of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris last week. The French leader posed with Trump and Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky in a separate parley – as if Macron was speaking for the whole of Europe. It seems Macron is pandering to Trump by offering European troops to bolster his peace initiative.
Days later, Macron was in Warsaw to push his idea of sending European troops as “peacekeepers” to Ukraine – if Trump manages to negotiate a much-touted peace deal between Moscow and Kiev. Macron says that Europe must be part of any settlement and not just leave it to Washington. This is aimed at ingratiating with Trump, who is always trying to transact cost savings for America.
Earlier this year, the French leader sparked controversy and alarm by calling for large numbers of NATO troops to deploy in Ukraine. Special forces from France and other members of the alliance are already in Ukraine covertly fighting against Russian forces, but Macron advocated that troop brigades deploy openly.
Such a move would turn the proxy conflict against Russia into an open war between nuclear-armed powers. When Macron announced his idea, there was push-back from other European leaders who saw it as a reckless escalation.
Now Macron is at it again, but this time calling European NATO troops “peacekeepers” who will supposedly enforce Trump’s potential peace deal.
Trump’s peace initiative for Ukraine is unlikely to gain traction despite his appointment of retired General Keith Kellogg as an envoy for the task. Trump seems to be genuinely concerned about preventing an escalation of the war. He has been scathing of the Joe Biden administration’s permission for Ukraine to launch long-range missile strikes inside Russia with American and NATO weapons.
Nevertheless, according to reports, Trump’s ideas for achieving peace are superficial and ignorant about the depth of Russia’s historic security stipulations. Moscow will not accept a “frozen conflict” as Trump’s team is proposing. The Kremlin has repeatedly stated it will continue its military operation until the NATO-Kiev regime is defeated and dismantled.
The idea of a Cold War-style partition of Ukraine with NATO troops on one side facing Russian soldiers on the other – even if they are called “peacekeepers” – is a non-starter. That would in effect mean the retrenchment of the anti-Russian Kiev regime, with all its odious Nazi affiliations, as a NATO protectorate, which would threaten Russia’s security into perpetuity. That is exactly why Russia launched its special military operation in February 2022.
Instead of achieving peace, Trump may end up exacerbating the proxy war if he insists on promoting a half-baked “resolution” that does not address the real causes of the war – NATO’s expansionism.
The danger is all the more increased because of Macron, whose creepy and craven desire is to be seen as Trump’s best European friend. The deeply unpopular French leader is unscrupulously offering European troops as a gift to please Trump’s transactional predilections.
In so doing, Macron is unleashing the gates of hell in Europe.
The other treacherous lackey in Europe is Mark Rutte who became the NATO secretary general in October.
Rutte gave his first major public speech as head of the alliance last week. It was a chilling call for war with Russia. What was particularly chilling was the cynical and deceptive claims made by the former Dutch prime minister. The speech was a lie-filled tirade accusing Russian President Vladimir Putin of “trying to crush our freedom and way of life.”
Rutte urged all European nations to spend far more on their military to get ready for war with Russia. He said that European governments were not spending enough even though they have collectively forked out an estimated total of $600 billion in additional military spending over that last decade. How much more money do warmongers want? And yet Rutte had the weird nerve in his speech to comment that “defense” (that is, war) was a moral imperative and “not like illicit drugs or pornography.” Therein speaks a war-addicted pervert.
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With the sincerity of a concentration camp kapo, Rutte said Europeans need to invest more in NATO military to “defend security and democracy.” He brazenly urged cutting state spending on social welfare, pensions and public services, and redirecting funds to the military – all in the name of going to war with Russia.
In a subsequent interview for the BBC, headlined “NATO must switch to a wartime mindset, warns secretary general,” Rutte lavished praise on Trump for getting Europe to allocate more of its state finances to military spending. He said Trump was “totally right” to insist on bigger NATO budgets.
Macron and Rutte are striving to get NATO and Europe more involved in the Ukraine war because of their spineless toadying to Trump. The irony is that Trump’s instincts are to bring the conflict in Ukraine to an end, but the European lackeys are so pathetic in their servility, that they are making the danger of all-out war all the more imminent.
The views of individual contributors do not necessarily represent those of the Strategic Culture Foundation.
