I love how history often
rhymes.
Following the fall of the Bourbon monarchy during the French Revolution, one of the French Republican factions, the Girondins, sent
Edmond-Charles Genêt as envoy to the United States of America to foster support from the Americans to back France against Europe's monarchies. Genêt would recruit American privateers (French-authorized pirate ships) and volunteers based on the commonality that both the United States and France were republics fighting against the "tyranny of monarchy" and that the French Revolution was based on the American Revolutionary War.
However, the President of the United States George Washington was outraged when he heard of Genêt's actions because he was violating the country's Neutrality Proclamation that Washington declared months prior. When war was declared between Great Britain and France, Washington quickly hurried back from a funeral at Mount Vernon to Philadelphia to declare American neutrality in the conflict on the rationale that the United States could not afford another war as the nation was too young and the military too weak to fight against empires. Washington and Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson demanded Genêt to stop, but Genêt would constantly disobey them and ramp up hiring efforts.
Genêt's actions would ultimately do the impossible, in which he united the two rivals, the pro-French Republic Jefferson and the pro-Great Britain Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton, to unite and attempt to expel Genêt from the United States. The duo would then assist Washington in writing a 8000-word complaint Genêt to stop hampering American neutrality. Genêt refused and Washington, Jefferson, and Hamilton demanded France to recall Genêt. During this time, the Girondins were annihilated and a rival faction, the Montagnards, demanded Genêt to be recalled to execute him.
Genêt quickly panicked, and asked the United States government for political asylum. Funnily enough, it was the pro-British Cabinet member Hamilton that recommended Washington to accept Genêt as a political refugee to maintain that Americans are keen on forgiveness. In addition, following the execution of King Louis XVI, the United States decided that all agreements with France made during the Revolutionary War are now void because in essence, the French Republican government is not the same, nor a successor, nor as legitimate as the French monarchy that the Americans made deals with.
The United States soon grew closer with Great Britain with the Jay Treaty and France, now outraged, soon launched naval raids against American merchant vessels in retaliation of American support for Britain. The United States soon revived the United States Navy and collaborated with Great Britain against the French.
Four (EDIT: Six) years later, France would become a monarchy again under Napoleon Bonaparte.
Scene from HBO's
John Adams on the Genêt Affair
Now I wouldn't want to say that that Zelensky would probably be alive by the end of this like Genêt, but here I see Zelensky trying to rally American public opinion to pressure the United States to back Ukraine, of which it would most likely backfire like it did for Genêt. Rallying the idea that the United States and Ukraine are similar nations because of "democracy", "anti-authoritarianism," and "republic" would also most likely backfire as now the idea that Ukraine is a "corrupt dictatorship" is growing among Americans. Compare that to Republican France, which was a de-facto proto-Communist dictatorship that ultimately went back to monarchy, where the idea that America and France should support each other because of similar political foundations collapsed.
As we see Trump attempting to make America more neutral in its foreign affairs, Ukraine will obviously have nothing to gain from the Americans, just like the French did.
