France has a general election in 2 weeks. Macron’s main rival for the Presidency is France’s equivalent of Donald Trump — a xenophobic bigot who wants to Make France Great Again by doubling-down on all the things that are currently making France bad.
Typical of far-right European party leaders, Marine Le Pen has and embarrassing history of accepting Russian money and assistance, and lavishing praise on Putin in return. She’s backpedaling now, but she won’t fool those familiar with her political history.
While it’s true Macron has failed to wave a magic wand and prevent Putin from prosecuting his doomed war, there’s no reason to suspect that Le Pen’s “let’s suck Putin’s cock some more and hope he plays nice” approach would have yielded better results. A “peace in our time” strategy doesn’t work on Hitler.
The fact remains that multilateral institutions like NATO and the E.U. — which far-righties like Le Pen love to rail against — are the best means of protecting democracy, and containing and punishing bloody-minded dictators like Putin at a scale that will cause them to notice.
A Europe of uncoordinated and unallied nation-states would be easy pickings for Putin, and that is exactly why he’s bankrolled far-right Euroskeptics for years.
