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The spectacle unfolding in France is a showcase of political hubris and its disastrous consequences. President Emmanuel Macron, once hailed as the savior of France and the leader of a united Europe, has been reduced to a lame duck in his own palace. 

Macron's hand-picked prime minister, François Bayrou, has suffered a crushing defeat. Bayrou’s government was toppled in a no-confidence vote, losing 364–194 in the French parliament. Only Macron’s own centrist bloc and a fraction of the center-right Republicans offered support, while a broad coalition of the right-wing National Rally and the left-wing France Unbowed, which is backed by socialists, united to bring it down.

France has now lost four prime ministers in under two years. While mainstream pundits blame the country's deep political polarization, Macron himself exacerbated the crisis by foolishly calling snap elections in 2024, an act intended in part to contain the rise of the political right but which produced a fractured parliament and rendered the country increasingly ungovernable.

A year later, France is descending into chaos. The streets are simmering with the promise of strikes against Macron’s austerity measures, introduced as the nation's debt has reached €3.35 trillion and is predicted to hit 116 percent of economic output this year. With Macron’s approval ratings in the gutter (according to recent polls, only 19 percent were satisfied with his performance, while 48 percent expressed strong dissatisfaction), polls indicate the next election will deliver a resounding victory to his antagonists. The right-wing National Rally—which champions national sovereignty and opposes open-ended funding for the war in Ukraine—leads the field with 31.5 percent. They are followed by the anti-austerity, anti-war left-wing alliance at 23.5 percent. Macron’s own party, Ensemble (“Together”), polls at a mere 14 percent.

 Yet, from this position of profound domestic weakness, Macron has anointed himself Europe’s wartime leader. He has become the chief architect and most bellicose leader of a self-styled “coalition of the willing” for Ukraine, openly floating the possibility of deploying Western troops under the dubious guise of a post-peace “reassurance force.” In a surreal encapsulation of this disconnect, this very coalition convened in Paris just days before Macron’s own government was toppled in a vote of no confidence.

Macron emphasizes that French troops would not be sent on a combat mission—a move opposed by 68 percent of the French public. Polls show that 67 percent would support sending troops after a war, following a peace agreement with Moscow, to guarantee Ukraine’s security.

However, Moscow has unequivocally ruled out the presence of any NATO troops in Ukraine in any form. It is easy to dismiss this—as Western leaders often do—by saying Moscow has no say in the matter. But the very essence of a peace agreement is that it requires the adversary’s consent.

In the highly unlikely scenario that Russia accepted a NATO “reassurance force,” it would happen only after the West satisfied Russia’s core demands: de facto recognition of its territorial gains and a neutral, non-aligned Ukraine.

Since Macron shows no willingness to acquiesce to these terms, his proposed force would be treated by Moscow as a legitimate target. Yet the French president appears to be deliberately misleading the public about the true nature and feasibility of such a deployment.

This presents a dangerous and fundamental question: By what right does a leader who has lost the confidence of his own people commit his nation to an outlandish and risky military adventure that they explicitly reject?

Macron’s failure in foreign policy is not confined to Ukraine. On Gaza, his attempt to project influence has been feckless. His belated move toward recognition of a Palestinian state is so laden with unrealistic conditions—such as the disarmament and exclusion of Hamas—as to be practically meaningless, a classic gesture of empty diplomacy. 

The weakness of Macron’s position was epitomized by his foreign minister’s response to Israeli bullying. Unlike his predecessor Dominique de Villepin, who embodied proud independence, Jean-Noël Barrot responded with pathetic acquiescence. In a cringe-inducing retort, he avoided defending principle or international law, instead meekly listing concessions extracted from the Palestinian Authority—like ending “pay-for-slay” (itself a propagandistic term used by the Israeli government) and auditing textbooks—as if begging for approval. This was not the response of a sovereign nation, but of a U.S. vassal, proving Macron’s France has wholly abandoned any pretense of balanced, independent foreign policy.

Macron’s failure is not merely one of domestic and foreign policy, but of democratic legitimacy. In a healthy republic, a leader’s foreign policy is an extension of the national will, a consensus forged through debate and representative institutions. Macron possesses no such mandate. His party lacks a working majority to pass a budget, let alone to authorize acts of war. His constituents are rightfully more concerned with the cost of living and preserving their own social model than with pursuing a nebulous victory in the Donbas.

This disconnect is symptomatic of a broader, and disturbing, truth about the modern European project: Its leaders increasingly see themselves as accountable not to their electorates, but to a transnational consensus of elites. For Macron, playing the role of Churchill is a way to salvage his legacy and maintain relevance on the world stage after his domestic ambitions have crumbled—a common tactic of unpopular leaders.

But the people of France are not playing along. The rise of both the right-wing and left-wing opposition movements is a direct rebuke to this very agenda. Their skepticism of funneling billions more euros into a stalemated conflict, and their open desire for diplomacy and de-escalation, does not arise from Putinist propaganda; it is a rational, national-interest-based position shared by a growing plurality of French citizens. It is also a sentiment that finds echoes in the America First movement in the United States.

The irony is thick. The same think tanks, media outlets and “opinion leaders” that fret about democratic backsliding and the rise of “authoritarian” populists are championing a European president who ignores his parliament, defies public opinion, and beats the drums of war from a position of declining political authority.

Macron’s gambit is not statesmanship; it is a reckless attempt to distract from his own political ruin at home. And it is a reminder that a foreign policy divorced from the will of the people is not prudent statecraft. It is an invitation to disaster.