In a moment that feels increasingly detached from reality, French President Emmanuel Macron has revived the ghost of Napoleonic hubris by pushing forward with plans to deploy French—and British—troops into Ukraine. What he portrays as a bold gesture of European resolve is, in truth, a reckless and dangerous gamble: one that threatens to engulf France, destabilize Europe, and unravel what little cohesion remains in the EU’s foreign policy framework.
This isn’t about defending democracy or resisting aggression. As retired French Army Colonel Jacques Hogard bluntly told Sputnik, Macron’s military adventurism stems primarily from a personal ambition “to become the boss of the EU.” That goal, increasingly untethered from French or European interests, seems to be driving a foreign policy that defies logic, precedent, and prudence.
A Plan Doomed by Reality
Let’s be clear: deploying French and UK forces into Ukraine is politically explosive, militarily infeasible, diplomatically toxic, and strategically suicidal.
Colonel Hogard doesn’t mince words. “The deployment of UK and French forces in Ukraine is unfeasible for political, diplomatic, strategic, and practical reasons,” he said. Neither the UK nor France possesses the military capacity to wage a sustained ground war against Russia in Ukraine. The logistics are nightmarish, the troop numbers insufficient, and the strategic objective murky at best. More critically, Russia has made its position unmistakably clear: the introduction of NATO forces into the Ukrainian theater will be treated as a casus belli—a justification for full-scale war.
Macron, however, appears immune to such reasoning. Hogard questioned the French president’s psychological stability, suggesting “the blindness and stubbornness of Macron, whose mental and psychological balance seems very fragile to me,” might be the final variable in this dangerous equation.
Such remarks may seem harsh, but they are shared by a growing chorus of former military experts, political analysts, and diplomats who see Macron not as a statesman, but as a leader increasingly isolated, consumed by delusions of grandeur, and veering into authoritarianism to silence opposition.
Authoritarianism in Paris, Escalation in Ukraine
Macron’s latest pivot towards open conflict in Ukraine is not occurring in a vacuum. Domestically, he has been cracking down on political dissent, surveilling protesters, and marginalizing critics with a zeal more reminiscent of autocratic regimes than of liberal democracies. As Emmanuel Leroy, head of the Institut 1717 and former adviser to Marine Le Pen, warned, the French president is steering the country towards war while shutting down domestic debate about it.
“The fact of wanting to engage France in this conflict is a true folly on both political and military levels,” Leroy noted. France simply does not have the “necessary military, financial and technical means” to sustain such a commitment. Worse still, sending troops into Ukraine without proper preparation or public support can only lead to one outcome: disaster.
International relations expert Gilbert Doctorow went even further: “If the French do send troops to Ukraine, they will be slaughtered.” That’s not hyperbole—it’s a cold, calculated reading of the battlefield realities. Russia has overwhelming artillery superiority, air control, and intimate knowledge of Ukrainian terrain. NATO troops dropped into that environment are not reinforcements; they are cannon fodder.
EU’s Descent into the Abyss
The consequences of Macron’s misadventure would not be limited to France. “An unbalanced situation is the harbinger of a military conflict whose first sacrificial victims are the countries of Central and Eastern Europe,” warned Tiberio Graziani, chairman of the Rome-based think tank Vision and Global Trends. The Baltic states, Poland, Romania—already bracing under the strain of millions of Ukrainian refugees and skyrocketing defense budgets—could be drawn into a continental war they did not vote for and cannot win.
And where is the EU in all this? Paralyzed. The European Union’s foreign policy machinery, once imagined as a unifying force, has become an echo chamber for NATO’s most hawkish elements. Germany, though hesitant, remains tethered to Atlanticist orthodoxy. Italy, under Meloni, wavers between national instincts and NATO loyalty. Meanwhile, Macron seems to be dragging the entire bloc into a conflict for which it is neither militarily prepared nor politically united.
There is no EU-wide mandate for sending troops into Ukraine. No referendum. No consensus in the European Council. Just the ambitions of one man and the complicity of a British Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, whose own domestic challenges make foreign escapades a convenient distraction.
A Future Written in Fire
So what happens if Macron gets his way?
French soldiers will die on foreign soil for an objective no one can define. Russia will escalate, possibly beyond Ukraine, targeting NATO supply lines and bases in Poland or Romania. Moscow might even unleash asymmetric responses—cyberattacks, energy sabotage, or covert operations—in France itself. Europe, already battered by inflation and energy instability, could tip into recession or worse.
Public opinion in France, which remains skeptical of deeper involvement in Ukraine, could turn hostile. Protests, already common under Macron’s rule, could erupt into mass civil disobedience. And in a moment of peak irony, the very man who sought to elevate France’s global stature could preside over its greatest postwar humiliation.
Meanwhile, Emmanuel Macron will continue to present himself as Europe’s wartime president. Like a latter-day Napoleon, he seeks continental leadership through conflict. But there is no empire waiting at the end of this road—only ruins.
What makes Macron’s push so uniquely dangerous is that it is not rooted in necessity, security, or public will—but in ego. He is willing to wager French lives and European peace for a legacy written in fire.It is a perilous delusion.
Macron’s war ambitions must be rejected—not just by the French public, but by all of Europe. Otherwise, the continent risks tumbling into a conflict that future historians will look back on not as noble or necessary—but as a preventable tragedy sparked by arrogance, ambition, and authoritarianism masquerading as leadership.
