After Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24 last year, although the leading position of Eastern European countries, mainly Poland, in EU security issues has become more and more obvious (the Polish president is standing in the middle of the first photo), Germany and France The leading position of the European Union has not been changed, and without a consensus between the two countries, it is difficult for the EU to take any substantive actions.
Conversely, if the two countries reach a consensus, it will be difficult for the opposition of other countries to prevent the EU from moving forward in accordance with the wishes of Germany and France.
The Russia-Ukraine War is no exception.
Nearly a year after the Russo-Ukraine war began, Germany and France appear to have reached a consensus position.
Give up the negotiation for now?
On the first day of the Munich Security Conference held from February 17 to 19, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, and French President Emmanuel Macron delivered speeches respectively, expressing their support for security. The meeting kicked off.
This year, Russian representatives were excluded from the invitation list, and the "Mu Security Conference" has rekindled a sense of confrontation that has not been seen since the end of the Cold War.
The speeches of Scholz and Macron also have their own representativeness.
More than a month ago, Scholz, who was condemned by European countries for his reluctance to "lose tanks to Ukraine", now instead calls on other countries to take practical actions to fulfill their respective commitments to export tanks to Ukraine. It is wise to prepare," proving Russian President Vladimir Putin "miscalculated" when he bet that the West's will to aid Ukraine would recede over time.
In his speech, Macron described Russia's invasion of Ukraine as "neo-colonial and imperialist", claiming that now is not the time for negotiations, and that only Ukraine's "counter-offensive" can bring about "credible negotiations."
In an interview published the next day after his speech, although Macron stated that he did not seek a regime change in Russia or a complete failure of Russia, he clearly stated that "I want Russia to be defeated in Ukraine."
French President Emmanuel Macron attends the Munich Security Conference in Germany, February 17, 2023.
(Reuters)
After a year of war between Russia and Ukraine, Scholz and Macron have clearly changed their original stance towards Russia: From the time when Russia sent troops to the Ukrainian border to the beginning of the war, the two once hoped to "persuade" Putin through communication and contacts .
Scholz and Macron's turn
During a meeting with Putin before the start of the war, Scholz reportedly assured Putin that Ukraine would not join NATO for "the next 30 years".
Apparently, Scholz believed at the time that by allaying Putin's doubts about "NATO's eastward expansion," he would be dissuaded from marching.
Later, Scholz, who had close contacts with the East German communists when he was young and regarded NATO as a representative of "imperialism", also continued to maintain communication with Putin, but the last phone call between the two was nearly three months ago. December 2nd of the "Winter Standoff".
Compared with Scholz, who is cautious in words and deeds and has a human flesh tape recorder ("Scholzomat" in the original German text), Macron's motivation to "peace the war with talks" is even more obvious. Putin communicated by telegram to defend; after Russia's military actions were not as ideal, he even claimed that the West should not allow Russia to be "humiliated" and should give Putin a "step down."
Until December last year, he still claimed that the West needed to consider providing security guarantees for Russia.
However, according to public information, Macron has not spoken to Putin since September last year.
Scholz met with U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris on the first day of the conference.
(Reuters)
Stepping into 2023, Scholz and Macron's tough turn towards Russia has become more and more obvious.
Macron was the first Western leader to decide to export "light tanks" to Ukraine, and later said that he "does not rule out" exporting fighter jets to Ukraine; and Scholz also further broke the practice of "not exporting weapons to the battlefield" and followed the United States to Ukraine exports Patriot missiles, Leopard 1 & 2 main battle tanks and other armaments.
In order to show his will to aid Ukraine, when Zelensky made a sudden visit to the UK on February 8, Macron immediately canceled the evening trip and urgently invited Zelensky to Paris for a while, and Scholz also left work and rushed to The gathering of Macron and Zelensky in Paris shows the efforts of the two to reverse their past image of "not doing enough to aid Ukraine".
At the Mu'an meeting, Scholz and Macron's statement of "preparing for a long-term battle" and "not negotiating" can be regarded as their latest declaration of their strategic shift.
Different from the "black and white" attitude popular in the United States and Eastern European countries, Germany and France have always had ambiguous and complex emotions towards Russia.
German-Russian, French-Russian Compassion
In Germany, its relations with Russia have been dominated by pacifism and historical memory.
On the one hand, after the defeat of Nazi Germany, the Germans believed that they "learned the value of peace" and believed that the idealism of war would eventually be eliminated by "trading" to close the relationship between countries.
From the "Oriental Policy" (Ostpolitik) in which West Germany began to befriend Eastern European socialist countries and import Soviet natural gas in the 1970s, to the "Eastern Policy" (Ostpolitik) that extended to the different relations between Germany and China in the era of former Chancellor Angela Merkel. Bring Change" (Wandel durch Handel), all have the shadow of this pacifism.
On the other hand, in people's concept classification, today's Russian Federation is the continuation of the Soviet Union, and Germany's regret for the Nazi German army's killing in the Soviet Union, after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, naturally transferred to Russia.
It is hard for the Germans to feel uneasy about German weapons firing on the Russians on the battlefield again.
(But in fact, Ukraine, which also belonged to the Soviet Union, had a higher proportion of the population in World War II deaths than Russia.)
In France, its relationship with Russia has always been influenced by different romantic cultural imaginations and geopolitical self-positioning.
As early as the Age of Enlightenment in the 18th century, French intellectuals were favored by the Russian tsars and nobles who regarded French as their favorite language, and Catherine the Great, who expanded Russian territory to Ukraine, was also generally favored by French thinkers. We regard it as a representative of "enlightened autocracy".
To this day, French intellectuals still have a difficult cultural relationship with Russia. For example, the memoirs of the Russian ambassador to France from 2008 to 2017 were written by the secrétaire perpétuel of the French Academy today; Jacques Chirac not only speaks fluent Russian, but also interpreted and translated the works of Alexander Pushkin, the representative of Russian romantic literature and known as the "father of Russian literature".
In 2006, Chirac presented Putin with the Légion d'honneur (Twitter@FrenchHist)
The intimacy of the French and Russian cultures, which they admire from afar, fits the geopolitical imagination of France's self-conceived "world power".
In the 1960s, under the leadership of Charles de Gaulle, France withdrew from NATO's joint military command, drove out non-French NATO troops in its territory, and established an independent nuclear deterrent capability in an attempt to compete with both the United States and the Soviet Union. Keep a distance.
In the political reality that France is actually only a member of the Trans-Pacific Alliance, France's desire for "independence from the United States" is often reflected in various political postures-the example of Macron's tenure is his desire for "European autonomy". The high-profile proposition, which he called "NATO brain death", and his high-profile action of inviting Putin to meet at the presidential residence of the Mediterranean castle before the 2019 G7 summit.
However, the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war has time and time again broken Scholz and Macron's fantasy of "returning to the negotiating table".
What happened to the war?
The initial failure of the Russian army, and even the shrinking of the front line to the Ukdonbass, had given Germany and France some hope for peace, but after the Russian army suffered a major setback in September last year, Putin actually threw the four Ukrainian states into Russia, announcing that there has been no war since World War II. Seen mobilization orders and so on, it seems that Putin has decided to fight on.
Since then, Macron has not spoken to Putin again, and Scholz also showed that he could not see room for negotiation after trying again in December last year.
Only Ukraine's victory on the battlefield can force Russia to return to the negotiating table, which has become the consensus of Shuo, Ma, and even Europe.
Many observers of international politics and the Russian-Ukrainian war situation also predicted that the Russo-Ukrainian war will not end in 2023.
But can Ukraine beat Russia on the battlefield?
Will Ukraine be able to drive Russia out of all of its territory (including Crimea)?
Mark Milley, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, said a few days ago that this is "very, very difficult."
Putin's recent actions also show that he has no intention of giving in in Ukraine.
At this moment, the Russian army failed to fully occupy the entire territory of the four Ukrainian states that were officially invested in Russia, but Putin further signed several decrees on February 17, further transferring the welfare, education, and examination systems of the Russian-controlled areas to Russian-controlled areas. system.
Under the background that the European countries cannot see the possibility of the end of the war, they can only try their best to continue to support Ukraine to the end.
As the first anniversary of Russia and Ukraine approaches, China will also propose a peace plan for this purpose.
Whether this will be a way out is still unknown.
But unless China's intervention can pressure Russia and Ukraine to make unprecedented concessions, the war in Europe can only continue indefinitely.
The Russo-Ukraine war will be one year old, has the expected Russian offensive started?
Many people believe that the offensive has been carried out on the two fronts of Vuhledar and Luhansk-Kharkov in the south, but the results have not been obvious so far.
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