Europe with Headlights Off

Macron, who hypothesizes about sending French soldiers along with Ukrainian troops, is the same one who, a few days later, calls for an “Olympic truce” during the Olympic Games to be held in France at the height of summer. Along with Hidalgo, the mayor of Paris, who visits Kiev and spoils Ukrainian guests, as well as makes it clear to Russian and Belarusian athletes that their presence in Paris will not be welcomed. Despite instructions from the International Olympic Committee.

Macron has attempted to carry out the warmongering that recently infected him, under the newly created doctrine of strategic ambiguity. According to former prime minister and famous foreign minister (with Chirac) Dominique de Villepin, the only thing strategic is the “confusion” in Macron’s initiative. Provoked at home and abroad.

The Cartesian doubt that made Europe great has been replaced by incoherence and cacophony. The French president, who during his first mandate showed the route to other European leaders, has suddenly become a victim of this. For one season he represented a guiding star for governments and offices, combining clarity of mind and foresight. In the name of modern dynamism, but with the intention of not being crushed by the dictatorship of immediacy. This virtue was not enough for him to defuse the endless partisan warfare of the “yellow vests,” whereas a modest political and financial investment in favor of the suffering countryside would have sufficed. A mistake that undermined the winner’s image and ended a uniquely favorable situation.

Today, Macron wants to be the most aggressive of Russia’s adversaries, even though he has been the staunchest supporter of dialog with Moscow. Pascal Boniface has rightly written in these columns about the domestic political reasons for the Elysee Palace tenant’s turnaround. As his second term began without a real majority in parliament, with two governments changing in less than two years, and with guidelines that contradict the Macronian principles enunciated just seven years ago, Macron will have to face opposition from the radical right and left spontaneous and communist forces. Which in foreign policy, see Ukraine, stick to the “old” Macron and are the opposite of the helmeted Macron of recent weeks. The vote in the European elections in June promises to be a tough one for the French commander-in-chief.

And yet a backyard skirmish can’t explain everything. Because chaos and pirouettes are also a spectacle offered on the German political scene. Where the “no, no, no…” chancellor became, in the course of the war, the one who said “yes, yes, yes…” to lethal supplies to Kiev. Now Scholz has once again refused to supply long-range missiles. Meanwhile, the coalition that backs him is in trouble, parliament is in disarray, opinion polls are in favor – even in Germany – of the far right joining forces with the radical left to stop the war. Uncomfortable with many social democrats. Especially since the explosion of the Nord Stream pipeline has been confirmed as the result of Western sabotage. The government’s confused and embarrassing aphasia over a key event for Germany’s economy and for its own strategic autonomy is destined to be appreciated by voters even before the inquiry committees.

In an atmosphere of unsettling suspense that envelops everything and affects everyone. In apnea, leaders of the EU’s founding countries are waiting to see if they can avoid the adventurist onslaught, in which the governments of those countries – Poland, the Baltics, Great Britain – are thinking of gaining advantages from a semi-total conflict with Russia. For this reason, they are delaying every decision until the June 9 election, expecting to postpone it until the US presidential election in November.

With the certainty that it is the White House, with a new or old tenant, that will once again be in charge of European politics.

In the meantime, we’re operating on autopilot. In the meantime, we are playing the game of misunderstanding the Pope’s thoughts on the use of the white flag. In the meantime, we are hoping to avoid falling into the abyss by moving forward like sleepwalkers, pretending not to know that everyone is at risk of being a sleepwalker by their own inertia.

History is supposed to teach, see 1914. But so is the culture. “They expect the world to fall apart when they realize that their will is in vain,” Nietzsche wrote in 1880, quoting Schopenhauer, who was in turn quoted by Merimee. Respectively a Polish-German, a German of Polish origin and a Frenchman struggling with the evil of the century: European nihilism.