CHRONICLE — Since the early morning of Thursday, February 24, these words from Georges Duhamel have taken on their full meaning, with the sad reality of war on the European continent. How distant Alpha, Delta, Omicron seem to us! How totally offbeat the campaign for the presidential election seems to us! Yes, the smell of the world has indeed changed.
2,500 km from Paris, the howl of sirens, the clanking of tanks, missile strikes, the exodus of populations, loss of human life, massive destruction, brutally bring us back to truths that we tend to forget. in ordinary times: peace is a fragile and rarely eternal good; the sword remains the axis of the world.
The invasion of Ukraine by the armies of Vladimir Putin poses a threat to the whole of the old continent as unpredictable as man. Once again, in the long history of humanity, the proof is made that dictatorships, because they have time, can construct long-term projects that they take the time to implement. Since the annexation of Crimea in 2014, the master of the Kremlin has been careful to ensure the food sovereignty of his country, so that the sanctions of the international community do not have an immediate effect on his people, and he patiently waited for the end of Covid and the Winter Olympics to launch its operation against Ukraine.
Faced with totalitarian regimes, democracies must know how to pay the price for their freedom and their security. And, from this point of view, what the French will not do for France, no one will do for them. “ The defense of France must be French (…). A country like France, if it happens to go to war, it has to be its war said General de Gaulle. This is all the more categorical as the American umbrella constitutes, less than ever, all-risk insurance for the European peoples, who must defend themselves. One cannot ask America to be the perpetual policeman of the world, and moreover it is quite clear that it no longer has the desire to do so.
The invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 is reminiscent of that of Czechoslovakia and the killing of the Prague Spring in August 1968, even if it was then a question of opposing the liberalization of the regime in the sphere of influence of the soviets, whereas today it is a question of extending it. Basically, Moscow did not accept the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the break-up of the Soviet empire. And, when a dictatorial power is unable to ensure a decent standard of living for its population, it then seeks to find favor in the eyes of its people by flaunting its military power through territorial conquests.
On the combat front, the heroic resistance of the Ukrainians to the Russian attacker, led by an admirable President Zelensky, greatly deserves to be saluted and supported. Even if the elementary rules of international law are flouted and trampled underfoot by the tyrant of the Kremlin, it is more necessary than ever to honor the right of peoples to self-determination.
Domestically, in these days of worry and uncertainty, because ” force remains more than ever necessary for nations that want to live », and so that France remains France, it is necessary to arm the nation morally and to endow our national defense with the means enabling it to ensure the integrity of our territory and the independence of our fatherland. There is no future for nations that fall asleep or abandon themselves.