"French President Emmanuel Macron and chiefs of staff from countries willing to send troops to Ukraine will attempt on Tuesday to figure out the details of a potential peacekeeping force – including how many troops might be needed." - Laurent Geslin, "Macron assembles top generals in fresh push for Western troops in Ukraine" Euractiv, March 11, 2025.
"In April, Emmanuel Macron visited Beijing with every intention of reshaping the existing world order in France’s image. Amid an already controversial summit with Chinese President, Xi Jingping, Macron outlined his vision of Europe as a ‘third superpower’, a ‘strategically autonomous’ bloc independent of both America and China in a world of multipolar competition. Macron’s remarks that, in the face of a looming crisis in 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’ were particularly controversial. Indeed, while Macron demurred from a full break with Washington in favour of a Euro-American partnership in pursuit of a shared commitment to a ‘rules based’ world order, his words were taken by the Americans as a veritable declaration of independence by the Elysée.
France’s postwar approach to international politics has long been characterised by an intransigent attitude towards US leadership. Macron’s declaration that France, and Europe, should chart a course between Washington and Beijing could easily be seen as nothing more than a continuation of De Gaulle’s ‘neither Washington nor Moscow’ policy, assiduously followed by his Cold War successors. But Macron’s vision of Europe as a superpower in its own right is bolder than de Gaulle’s strategy of playing East and West against each other. His dream of a world of regional political blocs, implicitly organised around a hegemonic power, in which France would occupy the position of primus inter pares in a new, sovereign, and politically integrated Europe, is far bolder than Gaullist realpolitik. But where the so-called ‘Macron Doctrine’ and its blueprint for a multipolar world break with the Gaullist imaginary, they find another, largely forgotten, antecedent in the writings of the elusive philosopher-statesman Alexandre Kojève." - Angus Brown, "The Stalinist who wrote the playbook for French foreign policy" Engelsberg Ideas, May 31, 2023.
"Paradoxically, it was the dominance of the Western liberal world order that laid the ground for the return of civilizational states. The great economic and technological convergence forged by globalization did not lead toward a singular cosmopolitan order. It engendered instead a cultural divergence as prospering emerging nations, most notably China, once again attained the wherewithal to chart a path forward rooted in their own civilizational foundations. Economic and technological strength fosters, not diminishes, cultural and political self-assertion.
What exists today is thus an interdependence of plural identities, neither fully convergent nor divergent. One result of the cross-pollination of globalization has been the exacerbation of cleavages within civilizations. We see this not only in the liberal values cultivated by an autonomous Taiwan vis-a-vis mainland China. We see it as well in the battle of the unshrouded women against the ayatollahs in Iran. And we see it in the West itself in the long-simmering culture wars between conservative traditional values of family and religion and an ever-more liberalizing secular modernity that I once described as the Pope vs. Madonna (the pop singer.)
These cleavages notwithstanding, it is the geopolitical clash between the open civilization of the West and China that is the most dangerous and difficult to navigate. Never before in history have two civilizational realms challenged each other at the global level where the extent of their integration is itself the terrain of contestation." - Nathan Gardels, "The Clash Of ‘Civilizational States’" Noema, November 18, 2022.
"War is father of all, and king of all. He renders some gods, others men; he makes some slaves, others free." - Heraclitus.
War incubates a lot of things. It brings into being new religions, dynasties, and nations, consolidates regimes, expands empires, regenerates cultures and civilizations, elevates heroes, crowns kings, transfers wealth, and creates new boundaries. It is the most creative force available to societies and to men.
Who wages it, and to what ends is rarely a matter of popular opinion.
The war in Ukraine, brought about by decades-long policies engineered in Washington and Brussels, has served as the battleground for the forging of a more militaristic European Union, as it faces the wrath of a reborn Christian Russia.
So while Ukraine is being depopulated, enslaved, and stripped of its resources, the civilizations and empires competing for it have received new life.
Mainly on the defensive, Russia has been reacting to events instead of being pro-active. The fact that Putin has had to dedicate resources, political capital, and manpower to recover Russian territory on Russian speaking lands is a loss in itself because this should have been a matter of diplomacy and dialogue.
The U.S., NATO, and Europe were on the front foot from the start of the war, and even before the first shots were fired. Washington, under the sway of the neocons for over a generation now, captured the minds of Ukrainians, and primed them for war since the collapse of the Soviet Union. They set the stage, lit the fuse, and laughed as Ukraine burned, with brother killing brother.
Russia was initially slow to act against NATO aggression, but when it finally did it took the upper hand on the battlefield.
Now that it is winning comfortably and seeking to reclaim its territories, the engineers of the war in Washington and London want to postpone the war for 30 days.
They are playing stupid little games with lives far away.
Putin was right to express doubts about the Trump administration's ceasefire proposal.
If President Trump is serious about wanting peace he would propose a plan for a permanent ceasefire, the termination of all funds and military equipment to the thieves in Kiev, and an immediate end to all sanctions on Russia.
Anything less would be a continuation of the war that Ukraine is losing.
