Emmanuel Macron is 39 and has served as the economic minister under Hollande for a year. He presided over an economy that looks rusted with a 10 percent unemployment rate. He won and his supporters are shouting that it's a victory for France. The defeat of the far-right candidate Le Pen will remain a thorn, for she polled almost 10 million votes and that is not a small number. Macron started by trying to showcase the French military as he went by in an open military jeep. But sadly for the last 150 years, France has lost every war it fought starting from the Invasion by Bismarck and capture of Paris in 1870.

Hitler routed the French inside 40 days and DienBien Phu in Indo-china and Algeria are defeats that cannot be wished away.

France and the EU

France has slowly slipped down after World war II and now it has tried to seek a global identity by becoming a vociferous member of the EU. But in the EU it is second to Germany which calls the shots. France remains an appendage. Macron has a tough task ahead as France is also gripped by an internal problem of terrorism engineered mostly by French-born Muslims. They number almost six million and many French men and women have a paranoid fear of them. Micron, however, does not fear the internal threat and feels that is the price for the benefits of the EU, which France must be ready to pay.

The terror he feels, is the price France must pay for open borders and "benefits' of being with the EU.

Germany and France

Most EU economies apart from Germany and France are in the doldrums. Macron is seeing things as a banker and he feels France will move ahead. Unfortunately for him, Germany is not going to play second fiddle to France and the French will have to accept German leadership.

Again Macron is trying to ignore the desire of millions of French who want to reclaim their national sovereignty and identity. The fact is the threats to ethnic and national identity are not receding but growing. Macron may have a tough time to accommodate these views with his vision of a united Europe. Macron is a product of liberal French thought.

He is looking at things through a prism of European unity. But unity cannot be found in inequality.

The future

The French economy is not the powerhouse of the EU. It is Germany that runs the Union. Take out Germany and the EU will collapse like a pack of cards. The French are a proud nation but somewhere down the line France has slipped and its army is no longer a force in the world. The French look defeated and jaded and during my recent visit, I noted a sense of despair. Nobody wants to talk about the past and millions are fearing that their lifestyle will be disrupted by terror. It won't go away and Macron won't be able to stem the tide against France losing its moorings. If he continues, France will decay further and that is not a happy thought.