Emmanuel Macron is the first president of the Fifth Republic to have never served in the military, and it shows.
His bellicose declaration on Monday that the West might deploy ground troops to Ukraine has been roundly rejected by France’s allies. No chance, was the retort of Germany, Britain, Poland and others. Russia also warned that such a deployment would be very unwise.
Macron has never recovered the confidence of his armed forces
As a result, Macron has been left looking foolish and inexperienced, accused of war-mongering in order to boost his self-esteem after a bruising few weeks domestically. A dismissive editorial in today’s Le Figaro, the newspaper of choice for France’s military top brass, said of the president: ‘He draped himself in the cloak of a warlord confronting Putin, but he did so without troops or ammunition, in much the same way as he had, in a whim, summoned the anti-Daesh coalition to confront Hamas’.
It’s not the first time Macron has come over all martial. In July 2017, just a couple of months into his presidency, he donned a sailor’s overalls as he was lowered from a helicopter onto a nuclear submarine. A couple of weeks later he appeared to be channelling his inner Tom Cruise as he arrived at an air base in a pilot’s uniform. The French found his Top Gun turn hilarious but also a little troubling.
Assessing Macron’s behaviour, Dominique and François Gaulme, authors of the book, The Clothes of Power: A political history of men’s clothing, wrote: ‘There’s a very childlike side to it, the childlike omnipotence of the little Macron who dresses as he pleases because he’s the boss.’
Macron’s fancy dress phase was not only childish, but it was also provocative to a French military that was still angry at the way their popular chief, General Pierre de Villiers, had been forced to resign days earlier.
Macron has embarrassed and embittered his military
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28.02.2024
Emmanuel Macron is the first president of the Fifth Republic to have never served in the military, and it shows.
His bellicose declaration on Monday that the West might deploy ground troops to Ukraine has been roundly rejected by France’s allies. No chance, was the retort of Germany, Britain, Poland and others. Russia also warned that such a deployment would be very unwise.
Macron has never recovered the confidence of his armed forces
As a result,........
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