Speaking at two separate events in Slovakia and Moldova last week, French President Emmanuel Macron continued to push for the closer involvement of European forces in the war in Ukraine and further hikes in EU military spending.
Speaking at Globsec 2023 in Bratislava, capital of Slovakia, on May 31, Macron called on his NATO allies “to offer tangible and credible security guarantees to Ukraine” to support its role of “protecting Europe.” Macron added, “We have to build something between the security provided to Israel and full-fledged membership.”
Israel has a defensive pact with the US similar to NATO’s article 5. It has access not only to billions of dollars in US government funding, but also to the US F-35 fighter jet program as well as other advanced weaponry. Any agreement of this kind between the NATO powers and Ukraine would transform the alliance’s proxy war against Russia into an open conflict.
After calling for more material aid “to help Ukraine today with all means to carry out an effective counter-offensive,” Macron also stressed that the escalation of the European powers’ drastic rearmament would continue unabated. He continued, “It is up to us Europeans to in the future have our own ability to defend ourselves. … A Europe of defence, a European pillar within NATO, is indispensable. It’s the only way to be credible … in the long term.”
The next day, in Moldova, Macron called for even closer integration of Ukraine to the orbit of European imperialism, speaking at the second summit of the Euopean Political Community. Warning that Europe is “entering a very political phase,” Macron called on the EU “to anchor the Western Balkan states, Ukraine and Moldova in the European space.” He concluded: “It is necessary to accept that we have an enlarged, geopolitical union and that some of its members decide to have a much more community-based policy.”
The summit was attended by 45 European leaders, including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who also met with the French president for private talks at the summit. In his own remarks at the summit, the Ukrainian president called all European countries bordering Russia, including Ukraine, to join the NATO alliance.
In a further indication of the political crisis engulfing Europe, Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz gave a joint statement calling for fresh elections in Kosovo after violent clashes between NATO forces and ethnic Serbs there.
They also organized a meeting between Serbian president Alexandre Vucic and his Kosovan counterpart, Vjosa Osmani, after which Vucic and Osmani pledged to de-escalate tensions. The ongoing conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the Nagorno-Karabakh region is due to be discussed at the next pan-European summit on October 5 in Granada, Spain.
That the summit took place in Moldova is highly significant for NATO’s war on Russia in Ukraine. The former Soviet republic of just 2.6 million people borders the contested micro-state of Transnistria, where Russia still has a military base. Despite its constitutional commitment to neutrality, the pro-EU government of President Maia Sandu has placed Moldova on a war footing, lining up with NATO’s war in Ukraine. It is now seeking admission to the political union.
Macron’s statements at the two summits are a deepening of European imperialism’s involvement in the NATO-Russia war in Ukraine amid a mounting, objectively revolutionary crisis at home. The deepening involvement of the European powers in the war is not limited to their desire for a share of the spoils of an imperialist carve-up of resource-rich Russia. The war also serves to provide a pretext for repression of domestic opposition in France and across Europe.
Macron’s presidency has survived mass protests by millions of workers and youth against his pension cuts only thanks to police repression and the collaboration of the union bureaucracies with the state to suffocate strikes. Fully 62 percent of the population want to bring the economy to a halt to defeat Macron and his widely-despised pension cuts. Massive anti-government protests have also broken out in Greece, Germany, the UK and Italy in recent months.
European leaders know very well that as wages stagnate and inflation continues to rock the working class across Europe, mass struggles are on the agenda. They aim to justify their attacks on the working class and the police repression required to force the cuts through as necessary “sacrifices” for the war effort.
The drive to war and austerity goes hand-in-hand with the whitewashing of neo-fascist groups and the historical legitimization of fascism by the ruling class. This emerged in Macron’s reprimanding of French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne at a cabinet meeting, after she described the far-right National Rally of Marine Le Pen as the “heriters of Pétain,” France’s Nazi-collaborationist dictator. She added that the far right possesses “a dangerous ideology.”
Borne’s comments would normally have passed as unremarkable comments of an elected politician criticizing her electoral rivals. However, Macron attacked Borne over these remarks, apparently saying that it was no longer possible to make “moral arguments” against fascism the basis of criticisms of the far right. This reflects the rapid shift to the right that is taking place amid the escalation of the war with Russia.
During his presidency, Macron and his fascistic interior minister Gérald Darmanin have built a police state and systematically assaulted democratic rights through far-right legislation like the Islamophobic anti-Separatism law. Macron previously remarked that Marshal Pétain was a “a fine soldier.”
The promotion of the far right is a pan-European policy of the ruling class. While the media and political establishment promote Le Pen in France, the AfD in Germany, European leaders welcomed far-right Italian Prime Minister Georgia Meloni with open arms to the European summit in Moldova. This refutes their claims to be fighting a war for “democracy and freedom” in Ukraine.
