Faced With Vladimir Putin, Europeans Must Not Give In to Submission.
To give in to blackmail once is to agree to give in to it a thousand times.
By launching his military offensive on Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Vladimir Putin made many strategic mistakes. He overestimated the Russian army and underestimated the love of the Ukrainians for their country while imagining that NATO and the West would be weak. His mistake is reflected in a war of attrition that has been going on for almost six months.
Vladimir Putin has, however, targeted the Achilles heel of Europeans and Westerners in general: purchasing power.
While he always emphasizes the resilience of the Russian people, who are used to having very little (and he is the first person responsible for this), Putin has understood the weakness of our societies, intoxicated by comfort, vacations, and social benefits, lulled by the certainty of peace that some have called the end of history.
The outcome of the war in Ukraine will of course depend on the forces present, the resistance of the front but also that of the rear. “Provided that the back holds out”, said the French Poilus during the war of 14-18. Provided that the conscience of the West does not forget us, even if only for the time of the vacations, think surely the Ukrainian fighters of the Donbas front!
On the one hand, the Russians, a people fed with propaganda, are used to deprivation and the indigence of daily life, supported by historical myths made and transmitted by the generations of the Great Patriotic War. On the other hand, forgetful Europeans, accustomed to well-heated apartments and villas, to the abundance of shelves and guaranteed low prices, to paid vacations and time off.
To be convinced of this, we need only observe the internal migrations in Europe towards the coasts in this summer of 2022, by train, plane, and car, despite the price of a liter of fuel, being higher than 2 euros. Tragic summer for the purchasing power, we say from morning to night on the news channels ... and yet!
The military say that the Russian war in Ukraine is gradually turning into a war of exhaustion. The winning side will be the one that will resist the longest rigors of the conflict, the one which will be the ablest to inflict deprivations to overcome the other side.
The most beautiful pages on the history of sacrifice were written by the French philosopher and historian Ernest Renan in the 19th century. It was, at the time and in fact, the supreme sacrifice of life. The one we are asked to make today is not the sacrifice of blood but the much less painful and much more relative sacrifice of our comfort, and even then, for a very limited time.
Faced with Vladimir Putin, we, the European people, have the choice between resistance and submission. The master of the Kremlin is counting on the discontent of the Europeans so that they will then put pressure on their governments to dry up the massive support to Ukraine. Putin knows that they are sensitive to the price of fuel.
Putin uses the weapon of terror against our opinions. Not the terror as we imagine it, with its scaffolds and its sordid prisons, but a much more muted terror ... the one that comes to strike the habits of life. The Putinian terror does not threaten our lives but rather our ways of life. It addresses our collective and individual egoisms. Vladimir Putin is betting that the weakness of the West on its way of life, which it cannot do without, will allow him to win this war of exhaustion that he intends to wage until he achieves his objectives in Ukraine.
Final Thoughts
So, wake up European peoples, remember that the nation is both an undivided heritage and a plebiscite of everyday life.
We are called to resistance because the choice is simple. Faced with an adversary who uses energy sources and food production as weapons of war by destination, there are only two ways. Resistance through effort or submission through cowardice.
Europe is a large solvent market. It is attractive thanks to its consumers, but it is also the continent of the weaknesses of democracy. Rich but weak! Experience shows that to give in once to blackmail is to accept to give in a thousand times. As we should not waste a crisis, let us take advantage of it.
This crisis invites us to deal with the issues of our energy sovereignty and our food production with reason. We must be as suspicious of external enemies as we are of their useful idiots, such as those who encourage us to disarm ourselves economically to give in to their ideological whims.
Some reading
The 3 Enemies Vladimir Putin Is Fighting With His War in Ukraine. Russian opponents, Ukraine, and the West.
In Hong Kong, Xi Jinping Presented Himself As the Third Man of Contemporary Chinese Imperialism. He wants to be considered the worthy successor of Mao and Deng Xiaoping.
A $750 Billion Reconstruction in 3 Stages for Ukraine, but Whose Financing Raises Questions. Ukraine is pushing for the use of Russian assets frozen by America and the EU.
The State-Based Structure of the Russian Economy Allows It To Resist, for the Moment … Vladimir Putin may be boasting, but the hardest part is yet to come for Russia.
I admire your skills as a writer and assume they are awesome in your native French. You know and I know that the American and European people are NOT going to make the sacrifices you correctly describe as required and that come January of next year US enthusiasm for the Ukraine will vanish in spite of the fobbish Lindsey Graham's pronouncements and whose positions on any subject are subject to the whims of his contributors. The open-ended pocketbook for Ukraine has become a campaign issue that will grow until the Republicans will be compelled to close it in January. However, look at the good result which will be a substantial increase in the price of your BTC holdings. Or, perhaps, you project the US and Europe crucified on the cross of Ukraine will benefit BTC.? Well.in any case the outlook for BTC is fantastic.