How can we preserve peace, which is now under threat?
What has just happened in Moldova and Georgia, on the occasion of the presidential election in one case and a legislative ballot in the other, should alarm us.
Added to the proven interference in Europe and the United States and, of course, the illegitimate war in Ukraine, these are Russian aggressions, hybrid or open, that are frankly attacking Western democracies. China is lying in wait, adding fuel to the fire with its support for Putin's war and its all-out espionage. Wars are flaring up all over the world. The fait accompli and the use of force are once again making a brutal comeback. They are drawing closer.
Europeans, so proud of the peace they have regained after centuries of strife, have allowed themselves to be blinded and manipulated by a coalition of autocrats, which now includes a number of rogue states intent on putting an end to an international order founded on the rule of law.
Unwilling to wage war- which is a very wise thing to do -, let alone provoke it but lulled into a strategic comfort that they believed to be immutable, Europeans have shown and continue to show a culpable weakness towards those who openly claim to be their enemies. Russia, of course, but also its ‘clients’ in Korea, Syria, Venezuela, Africa and even Iran. They model their behaviour far too closely on that of the Americans, who are a long way from the battlefield and have other legitimate concerns.
This attitude of ‘not wanting escalation’ reserves the use of it for our adversaries, certainly provokes it and is gradually leading the West towards increasingly inevitable open conflict. Once again, Europe finds itself at the heart of a confrontation that it does not want, but which is being forced upon it.
Already Ukraine, which we have refused to protect and which we are preventing from winning its war of independence by limiting its resources, but also Moldova, which we are supporting ‘in the European way’, i.e. with a few loans and a lot of good words, and even more recently Georgia, whose population is rebelling under European flags... They have all paid the price of our weakness.
If we carry on like this, we'll be the next to pay the price.
History teaches us the immutable rule of relations between powers: only the balance of power protects. Only strength deters. Europeans seem to be waking up, albeit late, but they have not yet really ‘sounded the alarm’. The arrival of North Korea on the Ukrainian front marks a very dangerous internationalisation of this horrible war.
The seriousness of the international situation seems all too easy to underestimate, when we can all see how wars and atrocities are multiplying all around us.
Rearmament, the relocation and protection of sovereign activities, and countering the ever-increasing number of subversive activities have been the hallmarks of the European Union in recent years. It is making efforts, and minds are changing, but at the pace of its Member States, which are reluctant to alarm divided public opinion. But these efforts are not enough.
Europeans must dissuade Russia from going any further, without being afraid of its rhetoric, by taking the risk of sending it a strong and clear message that we will no longer allow indiscriminate missiles to continue, on our borders, to kill children and civilians, to rape and torture, and barbarism to raze towns and villages to the ground. Are we ready to take decisive action, for example, to establish a no-fly zone over Ukraine and to reinforce the Moldovan police and army with our own troops?
It is only on these conditions that we will be able to put an end to this bloody conflict and persuade any other potential aggressor, in Europe or in the Pacific, that we will not allow democracy to be destroyed and freedoms to be rolled back.
There is still time to win the extension of the peace we want by preparing for the worst - the war we don't want.
