France has made itself irrelevant on the world stage

There's an old joke about papal pronouncements on premarital sex: if you don't play the game, you don't make the rules. Something similar might be said about France's foreign policy.

- By BRET STEPHENS The New York Times

Last week, President Emmanuel Macron told a radio show that "countries should stop shipping weapons to Israel for use in Gaza." Though he insists he's committed to ensuring Israel's security, what he's really asking for is an arms embargo: you can't deny Israel weapons for potential use in one conflict while not also denying it those weapons for use in the others.

There was a time when such a call would have mattered. In the Jewish state's early years, France supplied it with some of its most significant weaponry, including advanced jets and, according to many accounts, vital support for its nascent nuclear weapons program.