If Trump wins in the upcoming elections and/or the Republicans are able to hold onto the House and continue blocking aid to Ukraine, would you be in favor of direct French intervention in Ukraine?
If so, how would that look like to you? Would you like to see French troops on the ground to prevent the capture of cities like Kyiv or Odessa? Full scale participation in offenses with combined arms? Or perhaps limited to air support for Ukraine?
An accompanying question: how does the French public generally feel about increased aid and possible intervention in Ukraine? Macron seems to be in favor but he is also on his last term.. so he might just be bold because he has nothing to lose. Besides France, and eventually Poland, I don't see other European powers directly intervening in Ukraine at this point.
@Picdelamirand-oil ;
@Amarante ;
@Bon Plan ;
@Herciv ;
@halloweene
The probability of Trump winning the election are very high. The probability of US leaving NATO are also high for several reasons. But mainly financial and several capabilty gaps identify (in the navy, in the USAF due to the F-35 and in the US Army for example the artillery) so that Trump would decide to leave but no one in the USA would disagree. They can only fight in one front.
In Europe more and more countries agree to not anymore rely on USA to defend Europe. That's a first point.
The second point is that no one can realy tell if Poutine want to invade a new part of Europe. But if he is succefull in Ukraine he will be more powerfull politically speaking, military speaking thanks to bigger human and commercial ressources and geopolically speaking since he would be the first agricultural producer able to influence all the prices all over the world.
The result is that Poutine has to be defeated in Ukrain only.
With that in mind, and taking account that ukrain offer a good resistance. Several level of aids can be proposed. For my part I think that where Ukrain need the most aid is in the air and in counterdrone. Russian are to quiet at a distance from 10 to hundreds kilometers from the front. That's where France can help.
At the first speach of Macron he was alone. But now all the east european countries have agreed with him on the strategy. Yo can also add Netherland, and all the Baltic countries. I have absolutly no worries about England, all over the centuries they have always engaged troops when the continent was on fire. Where I am worrying more is about Germany, Spain and Italy.
All that taken into count France can send a first contingent of 10000 to 15000 soldiers and give the signals to all the others to also send some soldiers. I think that in a first effort 40000 to 45000 very well equiped and trained soldiers could be send.
Then you have to take into account the leading capabilities. Only France and England have such real capacities. For NATO all over the last twenty years England and France have always been there to assist every other european nations when it was their turn to take the lead.
Then we have to speak in term of logistics. What have we to produce to sustained our forces ? Ammunition production is a real deterrence factor by itself, as fighter production or tanks or any other weapons production. In europe lots of these production capacity are lacking. Thanks to the hard ukrainians resistance we have had time to leverage theses capabilities. We have lost two years to take the good resolution in relying to much on the ukrainian resistance. But the capability gap is reducing more and more.
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