nolok t1_ja3ptcj wrote on February 26, 2023 at 4:53 PM

Reply to comment by slckening in Macron to visit China, seek Xi’s help to end Russia-Ukraine war by BastianMobile

Honest question: do you really believe Macron and his entire team, whose entire job is to think and consider those issues, are not at least as smart or competent as you in these matters? And the same thing for other leaders who talk about such matters?

If the answer is yes, then good for you I hope you achieve all you can be then. If not then maybe you can realize there are things that escape you, and notably secondary dialogue behind the public messaging?

China just changed ever so slightly some part of their position, and what they publicly call their "peace plan for Ukraine" , and now other countries are letting them know whether it changed anything or not in their view.

Same reason why zelensky said he was ready to talk with China about their peace plan, the idea was simply to make it clear their position was still Ukraine would be the main interlocutor, not "China negotiates between Russia and the US".

gc11117 t1_ja4s8j3 wrote on February 26, 2023 at 9:05 PM

Not who you're responding to, but I do think Macron and his team have displayed naiveté on matters such as this in the past. That's not to say his team isn't smart, but smart people can be wrong which is why Europe was so dependent on Russia at the outset of this war.

nolok t1_ja55e8j wrote on February 26, 2023 at 10:35 PM

If you're talking about the early month and even the couple weeks before, when he kept negotiating with Putin, he released calls showing it was Zelensky who asked him to do that.

After Bucha he wanted to stop and again Zelensky asked the communication channel to be kept open.

And France had and has very low dependancy on Russia and its resources, our nuclear maintenance issue was unrelated if extremely poorly timed.

gc11117 t1_ja561im wrote on February 26, 2023 at 10:40 PM

I'm talking about a wide swath of issues, to include statements about not wanting to humiliate putin.

acuntex t1_ja9w7lg wrote on February 27, 2023 at 10:23 PM

Sometimes in Diplomacy you have to publicly sxck dxck if you want to achieve your goal.

You make yourself look weak in order to give a strongman leader the cutscenes he needs for internal propagation, so he might agree to a diplomatic resolution where he will claim to be in control. Simple "alpha" manipulation, some might say women invented it (whoever has a wife knows what I'm talking about).

In the case of Macron it failed. And while I think it was wrong on the part of Macron to say "we shouldn't humiliate Putin" as Russia/Putin clearly deserves the humiliation they brought on themselves, I won't be the judge whether the weakness Macron publicly showed was Diplomacy or real.