Martin Jay
Macron managed to cajole EU countries to agree to sending more money to Ukraine but many will ask whether his meddling comes with a much higher price.
Macron's meeting signals that most EU countries are reaching a point of desperation - even to the point of mulling the idea of ground troops into Ukraine. But is NATO losing its edge?
A recent meeting of over 20 EU member states in Paris, organised by French President Emmanuel Macron raised eyebrows for many reasons. True, he managed to cajole these EU countries to agree to sending more money to Ukraine but many will ask whether Macron's meddling comes with a much higher price. It is hardly a secret that he wants to create a fast track EU, which is made up of most EU countries - which excludes those who block big decisions like Hungary - who think of an EU which is stronger, which has its own army and can think independently of NATO. Last year he even went as far as organising a conference where all EU member states were invited, as well as the UK and Turkey, to test the waters as to the creation of a new, in formal EU-NATO pillar.
And now it is happening. Macron just recently held a meeting in Paris which agreed a higher level of funding to Ukraine with talks of even boots on the ground in Ukraine. The problem of course for NATO is that it has an identity crisis as more and more Americans and Europeans see it as a defence organisation which can only threaten and escalate in the Ukraine war - while being the leader of a proxy operation where not one NATO soldier can ever get killed - while not actually going the full nine yards. For over three years, with the war in Ukraine specifically going badly for the West in the last year, NATO's role becomes compromised and more opaque. The very fact that Macron took this recent initiative is testimony to this and Biden is surely worried about NATO's role now, as he throws his weight behind the Dutch Prime Minister's bid to take over its helm. The transition though from the bumbling, buffoonish Jens Stoltenberg to Mark Rutte will be seamless if it happens at all. Rutte will need to convince all 31 members of NATO and there are questions whether Hungary and Turkey will back the Dutchman's bid to run the outfit. European nations might want a new face, a fresh voice and might push for a woman to run NATO, throwing their weight behind Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas.
The point about Rutte is that he is a keen advocate of much bigger military spending which will be welcomed by Trump if he were to win the U.S. elections this year, just a matter of days after the NATO boss will take office. Rutte has really stepped up to the mark when it comes to sending military hardware to the Ukrainians.
The long-serving Dutch prime minister and one of Europe's longest-serving leaders, he has already committed to send Ukraine 24 of its F-16 fighters - the most of any country - and is helping train Ukrainian pilots. The Dutch military has also sent tanks, artillery systems, ammunition and Patriot air defence systems to Kiev over the past two years. According to Politico, the government itself has also pledged another $2.1 billion in military and humanitarian aid for Ukraine over the coming year.
Was all this part of Rutte's plan to put himself as the main candidate for Biden to support?
Furthermore, there is a rose-tinted view about the Dutch contributions which won't help NATO's image among its members when things heat up.
What is not pointed out by journalists is that the F16s are an older generation and will not be much of a match in a dogfight with their Russian counterparts. It's a token which is welcome but it may well blow up in Rutte's face when media run stories of these oldies being shot down by Russian anti-aircraft batteries.
And so Rutte is seen as America's man - will he simply be the accelerant to be thrown onto the fire which divides Europe from the U.S., as it becomes inevitable that the war in Ukraine becomes solely a European problem which doesn't take any more US tax dollars? Much will depend on elections in the UK, the EU itself and then in the U.S. If there is a clear vote which shows fatigue in the Ukraine war then none of this will matter.
But if NATO and Macron can keep the main lie alive - the narrative The Russians are coming - as Ukraine inevitably loses more ground and Russian troops advance, then there is scope for NATO to decline and for its top job to be more of a diplomatic one which keeps the U.S. relevant in the organisation while the Europeans move forward with their plan to override the EU's voting system and give Macron what he so badly craves: power. None of these scenarios though make NATO look good as the organisation's élan will take a beating the more Russia advances and the more western leaders try to fool a public with this beguiling fable that Putin will invade EU countries.