On February 24, while Emmanuel Macron met Donald Trump in Washington, American diplomacy operated a turning point in New York. At the UN General Assembly, the United States opposed the resolution requiring the immediate withdrawal of Russian troops from the Ukrainian territory, recognizing the integrity of the latter and the sole responsibility of Russia in this conflict. In doing so, the former Héraut du Monde Libre ran alongside the worst dictatorships on the planet. And to leave no doubt, the country was voting on the same day, in the security council, a needy text of 83 words asking “urgently that it will be put an end to the conflict” without any mention of the Ukrainian borders or the Russian guilt.
According to the many experts and commentators, this reversal marks a change of time: finished the positions of principles, long live the balance of power. Back to realism. And Europe, a military and diplomatic dwarf, would be forced to follow the movement printed by the giants. Among these voices, there are those, without interest, admirers of dictators who make realism the alibi of their sad tropism. There are false geopolitologists, real propagandists as well as some disillusioned politicians who have become advisers from enemy countries. Their position is therefore not a surprise. More interesting are sincere analysts who see in withdrawal the only way to peace and claim that an agreement even infamous would spare many life. Two arguments that deserve to be studied with seriousness.
Afghanistan’s “Good Deal” …
Faced with a Donald Trump seeing international relations only from a transactional logic, it is true that Europe does not make the weight. No rare land, a growth at half mast, an army scattered. Nothing to offer that cannot convince the United States to invest in a peace process where it would have nothing to gain. Conversely, letting the United States negotiate directly with Russia would lead to lasting peace, each finding their account … one “Good Deal “ as the American president claimed? Recall that it was in identical terms that he evoked in 2020 the Doha agreement signed between the United States and the Taliban, which was to allow a withdrawal of the American troops from Afghanistan and the establishment of lasting peace. Five years later, the country has sunk. Sharia law is everywhere and after being erased from public spaces, women have lost the right to speak. Because they have never involved the population concerned, “good deal“only benefited tyrants. And the same causes will produce the same consequences in Ukraine. As has tried to explain it half-word Emmanuel Macron, without prior recognition of his territorial integrity, without involvement of the Ukrainian government and without downstream of European neighbors, any peace agreement is a white-hand given to the assassins.
In this regard, when Bashar el-Assad crosses the “red lines” fixed by Obama, the absence of consequences was interpreted as a weakness which gave free rein to the worst atrocities. And European procrastination in the face of Russian actions in Georgia and then in Crimea did not encourage Putin to cooperate. In truth, the whole paradox of this kind of chords is that they can only last condition to concern pacifist nations. Something that does not worry the United States, landlocked between two oceans, but should be taken seriously by Europeans concerned with real peace.
The remedy would be worse
The fact remains that the Ukrainians are bloodless and that every day of war carries its share of “unnecessary deaths”. It would therefore be, at the end of the ends, the desire to save lives which would legitimize itself to have the American decision. Is it not the ultimate argument, repeated ad nauseam By Trump, Musk and Vance? “Millions of deaths!”. Whatever exaggeration, saving lives sounds as obvious. And even unbearable concessions would represent a lesser evil. Except that here again, the remedy would be worse. Peace at all costs, to the detriment of national sovereignty, the rule of law and the protection of each, is the promise to live under the yoke of a dictatorship. Sentenced to life. For those who believe that life goes beyond simple survival, such a situation would be intolerable.
Hence a tragic alternative faced by Europeans. Accept the peace proposed by Trump. Which would amount to denying their principles to save lives. Or refuse it. And pay the high price to remain faithful to their ideal of a society that makes the individual an absolute. Alternative which is not one, since Europe cannot survive by renouncing what constitutes it. Because contrary to what the radical pacifists increase, ready for all the compromises, what is sacred in Europe, it is not only human life, but first and foremost the conditions of his emancipation. And like all sacred, he prohibits sacrilege – invading a sovereign country, committing war crimes and sharing the pieces – and authorizes sacrifice – fighting all those who threaten individual freedom and national sovereignty. This is why Europe has nothing to gain from starting a war but everything to lose not to defend itself.
Basically, what distinguishes him from the United States of Trump as from Putin’s Russia, and what neither of these two leaders can never understand is that this old continent is not limited to a low accounting where transactions and small arrangements constitute the basis of diplomacy. Europe is neither a market nor an army but an ideal, an horizon; Because it is the cradle and the avant-garde of a particular civilization where humans counts for everything. A blessing which is also a burden because it requires never bend against the negators of its values; under penalty of disappearing definitively. Hence a response to all Munich minds: accepting a negotiated peace without Ukraine and the rest of Europe is not the manifestation of realism but the expression of nihilism. A danger more deadly than war.
*Pierre Bentata is an economist and lecturer at the Aix-Marseille University law faculty. He has just published The winner’s curse (The observatory).
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