Macron has managed to build a little mini-coalition - France, the Baltic States, Czech Republic, even Poland - that is, FM Sikorski supports it but PM Tusk says no way.

It's becoming not a coalition of the willing but of the insignificant. The Baltic States have tiny armies; Czech Republic hardly a huge military power. Sikorski doesn't speak for the Polish government it seems (and is an arch neocon, married to American arch-neocon Anne Applebaum).

We've been hearing stories about how much stronger NATO has become because of the Ukraine war but I think it's gotten weaker. European armies have been massively depleted. The chaotic and decayed state of European arms industry has been exposed in the most brutal way. And beyond that is the specter of Trump being re-elected.

Trump is talking about ending the Ukraine war in a day and calling out what he describes as free-loading by European partners in NATO. EU states are saying he intends to pull the US out of NATO but he's never said that. Without the Americans, the whole Ukraine enterprise is lost and they're worried they may be left hanging out to dry.

In essence, European hawks are pushing for more escalation with Russia but want the US to pay for it. The Europeans don't want to spend more because it creates a domestic polical problem; they've heavily invested in their welfare states and know European publics don't want to see cuts in that spending. If you're a European NATO member and have the US paying for everything so you can keep your NATO spending at .5 or 1%, that leaves 2% you can allocate to other programs.

And they worry that if they do increase spending to the point they can defend themselves, the US will say "you don't need us anymore so we can reduce our presence in Europe." Because they know that however much they spend on defense, they cannot match the Russians on their own. And if the Americans do pull back, Europe will have no choice but to come to some kind of understanding with the Russians, which is the one thing they don't want to do.

American spending on NATO isn't just arms and troops, the US has a massive presence in Europe, there's all these NGOs funded by the US. And they're very lucrative for the people who work on them; it's a very easy life, you write articles for journals, do all kinds of studies with pre-determined outcomes about how dangerous Russia is and earn a nice, big, comfortable salary. So large segments of the US political class benefit from the NATO grift.

On analysts saying Macron could achieve his goal by Ukraine inviting NATO forces to replace Ukrainian troops on the Belarus border or in auxiliary rear positions, to free those troops up to serve on the battle lines, this would be legal under international law but politically unwise. It would serve as confirmation of Putin's rationale for launching the SMO and would make the global majority even more sympathetic to Russia's point of view because whatever legal justification is given, they will rightly perceive it as an escalation by the West.

And the Russians could say it doesn't matter to us what role they're playing, these are NATO troops clearly there for a military purpose so they're a legitimate target. And how does the West respond, do they escalate into an actual shooting war with the Russians? How do they justify these moves when the body bags start returning to these countries?

The price of Macron doing this to distract from internal problems is that it's convincing even more people in France that he's a dangerous, reckless and irresponsible president. If you look at French polling and commentary in French media, even his former political allies are appalled.