Macron on tensions with Russia: “We continue sometimes to fight against an ideology or an organisation that no longer exists with a geopolitical logic that no longer exists and that has continued to fracture Europe.” ft.com/content/d8b962…
And on Nato: “Nobody can tell me that today’s Nato is a structure that, in its foundations, is still pertinent. It was founded to face down the Warsaw Pact. There is no more a Warsaw Pact.”
In other words, the partly confrontational policy of the West towards Russia is anachronistic.
Yet the "geopolitical logic" of today's more confrontational policy towards Russia has nothing to do with the Warsaw Pact or the Cold War. It's not true that the West is caught in anachronistic thinking.
Sanctions and the renewed focus of Nato on territorial defense was a response towards Russian aggression against Ukraine: Putin started a war of aggression against Ukraine and has annexed parts of the country, with over 13.000 people killed.
If anybody is caught in an anachronistic logic, in the logic of the Cold War, it is Putin, who hasn't accepted the new logic of win-win, of mutual beneficial globalisation.
The West, especially the US and Germany, spent more than two decades trying to overcome the Cold War logic, bringing Russia into the global frameworks of cooperation, ending decades of hostility.
Yet to no avail. For Putin, the west remained the enemy. Which makes sense from the standpoint of the ruling elite in Russia: Opening up to the West means democratisation, means the end of the privileges of the deeply corrupt ruling elites.
It is Putin who forced the unwilling (Georgia!) West into a renewed confrontation, not the West.
As long as Macron doesn't understand how we got where we are with Russia, he will rail against the current Russia policy.
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