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Macron. Vive La Difference!

oscar
3 min readApr 17, 2023

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Photo by Jean-Philippe Delberghe on Unsplash

Yes, Macron is special.
He goes to Beijing and on April 6th, in an interview with reporters (as stated on a WSJ editorial of 4/9) says that ‘Europeans cannot resolve the crisis in Ukraine.’
And again — on the subject of Taiwan — ‘… the worst thing would be to think that we Europeans must become followers on this topic and take our cue from the US agenda and a Chinese overreaction.’
That prompted criticism that he was ingratiating himself and France to Xi Jinping and China.
Yes, but what are his motives?
We must admit that Macron is a very smart man.
What does he really want?
That he would like to be the leader of Europe has been clear. A public restating of it is always a good move.
His statements, however, send Putin the message that, ‘No, we don’t want to back up the Americans in Ukraine. We are Europe. If America hadn’t been so pushy, long ago I would’ve persuaded Putin to negotiate with Zelensky and we would’ve saved so many lives.
Sure, Ukraine would have had to give up some of their territory but look at how many lives would’ve been saved? We must be practical.’
Something like that.
Of course, he would want support from everywhere — no matter what the cost and inconvenience — if it were France being invaded.
We Americans need to remind Macron that we don’t want the French to follow us in anything.
We make plenty of mistakes so, please, don’t copy us.
I’m sure it’s wonderful to be French.
The ideal of freedom…

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oscar
oscar

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