Matra888

When Claude Malhuret speaks, you know you're not going to get the usual political spin. This is a man—a doctor, a former head of Doctors Without Borders, and a French politician—who has seen the world from the front lines and knows the difference between comforting lies and painful truths. He is here to give us a necessary, perhaps even brutal, wake-up call about the most serious challenges facing Europe. He’s cutting through the noise to tell us exactly what we need to hear, not what we might want to hear. 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. 1/3