Two of Donald Trump’s top national security aides will hold talks in Paris on Thursday with European politicians and security advisers, as the US and Europe search for common ground on ending the Ukraine war and averting an Iran conflict.
The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, and special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, are expected to hear concerns about Russia amid so-far fruitless US attempts to arrange a ceasefire three years after Russia invaded its neighbour.
Rubio and Witkoff will meet the French president, Emmanuel Macron, as well as British and German figures, including the UK foreign secretary, David Lammy.
I do hope Macron channels de Gaulle (1966) at the meeting, and in any policy he enacts and pushes the EU to adopt as a result. To those unfamiliar: France pulled out of the NATO command structure from 1966 to 2009 because they didn’t trust the US to simply use it as an extension of the US military. And I do mean “they should kick us out”, not that they should leave themselves at this point.
France looked at the Iraq invasion and went “wow I want in on that”?
They criticized it. Don’t you remember the whole “freedom fries” nonsense?
…what? They pointedly refused to participate in 2003…?
2009 was after 2001 when NATO invaded Iraq.
Yes, I know how numbers work, and that they can be sorted.
Why don’t you do a quick dive into Wikipedia and give me a bullet-point summary of what France has done militarily in Iraq since 2009. I should tell you that I know the answer, and I just double checked it for good measure. I’ll wait.
What I meant was France looked at the NATO invasion of Iraq under lies of WMDs. Then they joined NATO knowing these things are done.
But after a small search I see that France was a large contributor to the NATO invasion of Afghanistan since 2001 so they were eager to officially join in on the invasion squad