{"id":283446,"date":"2024-03-12T05:00:43","date_gmt":"2024-03-12T05:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=283446"},"modified":"2024-03-13T09:03:25","modified_gmt":"2024-03-13T09:03:25","slug":"macron-must-be-bluffing-or-trying-to-start-a-new-world-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=283446","title":{"rendered":"Macron must be bluffing \u2013 or trying to start a new world war"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hamish de Bretton-Gordon \u2013 The Telegraph March 11, 2024<\/strong><\/h1>\n

French president Emmanuel Macron has said\u00a0there are \u201cno limits\u201d<\/a>\u00a0to France\u2019s support for Ukraine, urging allies not to be \u201ccowards\u201d and implying that French soldiers could join the conflict directly in some circumstances. That would in effect mean the start of World War 3.<\/p>\n

The threat of nuclear war has hovered over the Ukrainian conflict since its outbreak. Just this weekend, we learned that the US was preparing for Russia using tactical nuclear weapons in late 2022 as Moscow repeatedly threatened escalation. Senior Russian generals, meanwhile, are musing on the prospects of a full scale conflict with the rest of Europe.<\/p>\n

The question must be whether Macron\u2019s approach will make this more or less likely. It is my view that if Putin prevails in Ukraine, war with Nato will follow rapidly. We must therefore ensure he does not. Macron\u2019s idea of looking at Nato boots on the ground is therefore the right one. If we\u2019re unwilling to consider this, we\u2019re handing critical initiative to Moscow.<\/p>\n

The issue is that the Kremlin may well not believe a word coming from the \u00c9lys\u00e9e. There is all too high a chance that Macron is simply sabre-rattling for his domestic audience in a horrifically callous attempt to boost his vote share. This interpretation is lent weight by his Jeckel and Hyde performances on Russia, switching between appeasement and aggression with public opinion. It\u2019s all but impossible to tell which mood he\u2019ll wake up in tomorrow.<\/p>\n

With this in mind, the first priority must be to ensure Ukraine prevails, holds the Russians, and then sends them back from whence they came.\u00a0 This is what Macron should focus on. Rather than muse on troop deployments that would be months away, he should focus on getting Kyiv ammunition \u2013 and lots of it. The Ukrainian Armed Forces could certainly do with more Storm Shadow and HIMARS long range precision missiles; Macron should try and persuade Germany to unlock its vast and hugely significant Taurus missiles stockpile, which could put a significant dent in Putin\u2019s war effort.<\/p>\n

Secondly, the Ukrainians need air superiority in order to enable their armoured formations to break through the Surovkin defensive line and get behind the numerous, but static Russians.\u00a0 This is how we broke through Saddam Hussein\u2019s defence line in 1991 and routed his massive and static army in 4 days. It was enabled by overwhelming air power.\u00a0 As a young tank commander back then, I did not see a single Iraqi jet in the air to constrain my movements.\u00a0 The F-16s are coming and will hopefully be in the air soon, but if Ukraine\u2019s air force is truly to change the balance it will need more.<\/p>\n

If Macron does want to put\u00a0boots on the ground<\/a>, however, the most useful thing he could do is send over military advisers. There is no shortage of fighting spirit in the Ukrainian soldiers but we must enable them to fight as combined armed manoeuvre formations. This will take training and tactical nous. At present, I hear individual and isolated tank battles are being fought, with the Challenger 2 being used as long-range artillery or to attack trenches alone.\u00a0 This did not work for tanks in the first engagements of WW1 and it won\u2019t work here. But when tanks were used in a combined arms fashion, with air power, infantry and artillery, they overwhelmed the Germans at the battle of Cambrai on 20 Nov 1917 and made the greatest gains of the war. We should give Ukraine the benefit of our expertise and training to enable this sort of success.<\/p>\n

So, President Macron: a little less of the high flying language, and a few more high flying jets, if you please. Some ammunition wouldn\u2019t go amiss either. You\u2019re right that Nato and Europe must be prepared to fight Russia as a last resort, but first we should exhaust the other options open to us.<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This article illustrates how elements in the Western MSM are now advocating a wider war with Russia, although of course, it doesn\u2019t say so openly. Instead the writer argues that if we want to avoid a wider conflict we must consider putting NATO \u201cboots on the ground\u201d in Ukraine <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[61,104,91],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-283446","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-Commentary","category-france","category-russia"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283446","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=283446"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283446\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":283503,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283446\/revisions\/283503"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=283446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=283446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=283446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}