Emmanuel Macron, President of France.
Image: XOSE BOUZAS / Hans Lucas / AFP
French President Emmanuel Macron failed to achieve his goals during his recent meeting with US President Donald Trump, who has "no sympathy" for Europe and believes that the European Union has not tried to achieve peace in Ukraine, French political philosopher Alain de Benoist told Sputnik.
Macron met with Trump at the White House on Monday, after which Macron said that he wanted a quick agreement in Ukraine with security guarantees for Kiev and also claimed that he had secured Trump's support for security guarantees that Europe intends to provide to Ukraine. At the same time, the Financial Times reported on Tuesday that the French president had failed to secure Trump's commitment to support the deployment of European troops to Ukraine after the conflict ends.
"Macron has obtained nothing that he wanted, and his meeting with Trump had all the appearance of them talking past each other. The American president has no sympathy for the Europeans, whom he believes are decadent people, incapable of taking a decision. He also knows that the European Union has never attempted to reach an end to the fighting or a negotiated political settlement, rather, it has thrown itself into a warmongering raising of the stakes which leads to nothing," De Benoist said.
Asked whether Washington and Paris agree on the issue of greater strategic autonomy for Europe, which Macron has been advocating for years, the expert said that this idea remains wishful thinking for now.
"The strategic autonomy of Europe is a nice prospect, but for now, it remains a dream. One cannot create a European army in a context of deindustrialisation, a latent financial crisis, unprecedented government debt, migrant flooding and isolation on the international stage," De Benoist said.
In January, The Telegraph newspaper reported that UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Macron had begun to discuss sending a peacekeeping force to Ukraine after any potential peace deal. Last week, The Washington Post reported, citing officials, that European countries were considering deploying a total of 25,000-30,000 military personnel to Ukraine, but not directly to the contact line.
The Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) estimated that the West could deploy some 100,000 troops in Ukraine under the guise of a peacekeeping force to restore its combat capability. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the deployment of peacekeepers was possible only with the consent of the parties to a given conflict.
Sputnik
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