French President Macron is paging Machiavelli:‘To be free, one must be feared’

I had to do a double-take when I read the headline in this article:

‘To be free, one must be feared’

Here are a couple of excerpts from Machiavelli's "The Prince"

“it is much safer to be feared than loved because ...love is preserved by the link of obligation which, owing to the baseness of men, is broken at every opportunity for their advantage; but fear preserves you by a dread of punishment which never fails.”...

“All courses of action are risky, so prudence is not in avoiding danger (it's impossible), but calculating risk and acting decisively. Make mistakes of ambition and not mistakes of sloth. Develop the strength to do bold things, not the strength to suffer.”
― Niccolo Machiavelli