
Few serious analysts believe Russia wants a broader war with Europe, but European leaders speak as if it’s only a matter of time. The risks of adopting that mindset are considerable.
Paris, Apr.3.– ‘France is not an island,’ Emmanuel Macron warned on social media on 20 February. ‘It’s about 1,500km from Strasbourg to Ukraine – that’s not very far.’ So first the Russians take the Donbass, and then Alsace? Macron’s alarmist rhetoric probably prompted a wry smile from his defence minister, Sébastien Lecornu. He, like most serious observers, discounts such a scenario: ‘Being a nuclear-armed power logically prevents us from being in the same position as a country without such weapons’.
His predecessor, Hervé Morin, asked in Le Journal du Dimanche on 9 March, ‘Do we really need to cause our fellow citizens disproportionate worry by telling them, in essence, that the ultimate threat to France’s borders is Russia?’
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