French President Emmanuel Macron says the West must give Russia security guarantees as part of a peace settlement regarding its invasion of Ukraine.

This is, to use the technical term, a crock.

Macron needs to stop parroting the barbarian chieftain’s claims of security risks and, instead, say explicitly what security threats actually face the barbarian. He cannot because none exist that are unrelated to the barbarian’s invasion of Ukraine.

Ukraine needs security guarantees (which Macron so kindly conceded along with his “must give”), and those guarantees must be real, not the sham/con job that was the Budapest Memorandum that was centered on Ukraine.

The Russian barbarian, on the other hand, will receive his security guarantee in the form of his removal of his hordes from Ukraine—all of Ukraine. From that moment risks to, threats against, the barbarian will virtually cease to exist.

The reason for expanding NATO, for bringing into any sort of Western alliance nations bordering on the Russian Federation, is wholly defensive—to increase the security of those nations against the barbarian’s expansionism, an acquisitiveness empirically demonstrated by his denial of Ukraine as an actual nation followed by his invasion of that nation. When the barbarian leaves off from his expansionist policy, risks and threats regarding him will cease to exist entirely.

Russia has, after all, exactly nothing (which is to say nada, zilch, zip, zero) which anyone in the West wants that can’t be gotten far more cheaply through threat-free, peaceful, mutually beneficial free trade exchanges.

Even one so enlightened as Macron knows this.