Claude Malhuret lays out the unvarnished urgency of the current moment.
“Mr. Prime Minister, ladies and gentlemen ministers, I will not talk to you about strategy tonight. I will talk to you about urgency. And the urgency today can be summed up in one simple sentence: If Ukraine loses the war, Europe will find itself in direct confrontation with Russia and under the worst possible conditions.
The conclusion is clear: Ukraine must not lose this war.
‘Worse than the executioner is his valet,’ said Mirabeau. [ French politician and orator, one of the greatest figures in the National Assembly that governed France during the early phases of the French Revolution. ]
Those who are not yet convinced that Trump is putin’s valet should reflect on the latest events: an American peace plan drafted in Moscow. Witkoff advising the Russians how best to maneuver his boss, an obsession with sidelining Europeans from negotiations, a near-total halt to economic and military aid, a new national security strategy implacable against Europe and complacent toward Russia.
Today, at best, Europe is alone, at worst, it faces two enemies: Russia and Trumpism.
Tomorrow, in history books, we will no longer say ‘Munich,’ we will say ‘Anchorage”.
We will no longer say ‘Daladier’ or ‘Chamberlain,’ we will say Trump, who is in the process of offering the Russians through betrayal what they are failing to conquer by arms—without forgetting, of course, to enrich his family and cronies in the process. In Europe, a president with such conflicts of interest would be immediately impeached.
The MAGA system is breaking all American values and forcing us to rethink all our strategic reflections, and worse still, to do so in uncertainty, at the mercy of daily changes in course based on the boss’s moods. The only continuity in this senseless policy is to repudiate, humiliate, and vassalise all allies.
Churchill said that there is only one thing worse than fighting alongside allies, and that is fighting without them.
Trump and his real estate developers masquerading as diplomats will realise this the day they find out, at their expense, on a crisis ground, that no power in the world can do without allies.
Everyone has known this since the defeat of Athens against Sparta.
putin’s strategic objective is not Ukraine, it is the return to Yalta. He announced it in Munich in 2007, saying that NATO must return to its 1997 borders.
Listen to Karaganov today: ‘The war will only end when we have defeated Europe.’ putin’s goal is not to take territory, it is to take revenge on the West and its right, to return to a world ruled by force—a Concert of Great Powers: Moscow, Washington, Beijing.
Alas, this is also Trump’s vision. For this, they must finish off NATO and the European Union. And the world of NATO and the EU, which seemed unshakeable, is revealing itself to be a colossus with feet of clay.
Europe is alone, and for three years, anaesthetised by three decades of tranquility, hampered by its divisions and the clumsiness of its procedures, weakened by its deindustrialisation, and terrorised by putin’s threats, it has barely managed to avoid the worst.
Thanks primarily to the heroism of the Ukrainians, it is time to regain control.
The European Union’s decision to definitively freeze Russian assets was the first urgency. Trump planned to kidnap them for the benefit of a Russia-USA front.
The aggressor would become a commercial partner, the victim a profit center, the mediator would keep 100 billion plus a 50% annuity on the profits, and the European ally, which holds the assets, would see them evaporate. This is the world according to Trump. The assets are therefore protected.
The second urgency is now to use them to arm Ukraine, something we have been discussing for three years without achieving anything. The United States has cut off all aid. They sell us the weapons we deliver to Ukraine. There is no more money. If the money is not unblocked in the coming weeks, Ukraine will lose the war. On December 18th in Berlin, France has a historic responsibility, Mr. Prime Minister, ladies and gentlemen ministers: to convince the Europeans to unblock these funds.
The third urgency is to rearm ourselves. In 2022, three years ago, the President of the Republic announced the entry into a war economy. Three years later, has anyone here seen any war economy? Europe’s GDP is 10 times greater than Russia’s, and we have been incapable of putting Ukraine on parity of armament with the aggressor. What we offer them is entry into the European Union in 2030 and guarantees once the war is over. Who can believe these promises when we are incapable of adequately supporting the aggressed Ukraine today? Who can believe in our rearmament, which requires re industrialisation, when in two years we have been unable to implement more than 10% of the Draghi report?
The increase in the military budget is good news. It follows a significant increase since 2017, which I commend, but it is a peacetime increase.
Allow me a quote: ‘Russia is maintaining a confrontation with Europe. It does not take the form of a classic war, but it is a form of war.’ This quote is from Sébastien Lecornu, Minister of the Armed Forces, in his book Verre [Glass]. And I fully share your diagnosis.
Mr. Prime Minister: We are at war.
In May 1940, while the British army was in disarray, Winston Churchill appointed an industrialist, Lord Beaverbrook, to head a new Ministry of Aircraft Production. His mission: to produce planes en masse. By August 1940, England was producing more planes than it was losing in combat. Churchill created an interministerial defense industry authority endowed with decision-making power to circumvent administrative blockages and entrust industrialists with the responsibility of producing quickly and well. And it worked, just as the same idea applied to the challenge of rebuilding Notre Dame worked. What we did for Notre Dame, we must do today for the security of our country. If we truly want to prepare for war—which is the best way to prevent it from happening—we must forget the peacetime procedures and the inertia of the last three years in Europe. And we must do it with leaders. The Macron-M. Starmer triumvirate works. If we want to sustainably mobilise all Europeans, we must associate with it the Prime Minister of the essential Poland.
The last urgency is the battle for public opinion, driven by the lackeys of putin: the far-right and the far-left. It is a miracle that it still resists and that polls confirm that support for Ukraine is not weakening. Pro-putin figures on both sides are attacking to condemn the Chief of Staff of the Armies’ remarks when he says that a war has never been won by soldiers at the front alone, but by the entire nation. They call themselves patriots, but they are Russian patriots, just as their ancestors were German patriots or USSR patriots.
The European Union was conceived for peace and prosperity, for the end of history. It was Fukuyama’s dream. Its alternative today is its vassalisation and its partition under the terms of a new Yalta, or its transformation into a sovereign power. It must urgently ensure its own security and succeed in imposing a peace plan favorable to Ukraine, as opposed to the plan of capitulation that would prepare for future Russian aggressions. Finally, it must denounce the inadmissible interference of Trump and the tech magnates in the internal affairs of the Union.
Trump is not eternal. He is starting to be defeated everywhere: popularity rating in freefall, elections lost in Virginia, New Jersey, Miami, MAGA dissidents, the Epstein affair that sticks to him like a plaster, Latinos who are leaving him en masse in the face of violent deportations, Mid-West farmers who are victims of tariffs. As soon as Republican elected officials understand that Trump is no longer making them win but making them lose, the ship will take on water from all sides. It is time to stop genuflecting and to encourage all those, increasingly numerous in the United States, who have the courage to stand up.
Ladies and gentlemen ministers, we will answer ‘yes’ to your question. Europe has the means to become the great power it was for centuries. All that remains is for it to have the will.”
Categories: Perspectives