Full Speech
Ladies and Gentlemen Ministers,
Europe is at a critical juncture in its history. The American shield is slipping away, Ukraine is in danger of being abandoned, Russia strengthened.
Washington became the court of Nero, an incendiary emperor, submissive courtiers, and a jester on ketamine charged with purging the civil service.
This is a tragedy for the free world, but it is first and foremost a tragedy for the United States. Trump's message is that there is no point in being his ally since he will not defend you, that he will impose more tariffs on you than on his enemies and will threaten you with taking your territories while supporting the dictatorships that invade you.
The king of the deal is showing what the art of the deal is all about. He thinks he will intimidate China by lying down in front of Putin, but Xi Jinping, faced with such a shipwreck, is undoubtedly accelerating preparations for the invasion of Taiwan.
Never in history has a president of the United States capitulated to the enemy. Never has one supported an aggressor against an ally. Never has anyone trampled on the American Constitution, issued so many illegal decrees, dismissed the judges who could prevent it, fired the military staff in one fell swoop, weakened all checks and balances and taken control of social networks.
This is not an illiberal drift, it is the beginning of the confiscation of democracy. Let us remember that it took only one month, three weeks and two days to bring down the Weimar Republic and its Constitution.
I have confidence in the strength of American democracy and the country is already protesting. But in one month, Trump has done more harm to America than in the four years of his last presidency. We were at war with a dictator, now we are fighting against a dictator supported by a traitor.
Eight days ago, just as Trump was putting his hand behind Macron's back in the White House, the United States was voting at the UN with Russia and North Korea against the Europeans demanding the departure of Russian troops.
Two days later, in the Oval Office, the draft dodger gave moral and strategic lessons to war hero Zelensky before dismissing him like a groom and ordering him to submit or resign.
Last night, he took another step in infamy by stopping the delivery of weapons that had been promised. What to do in the face of this betrayal? The answer is simple: cope.
And first of all, not to make mistakes. The defeat of Ukraine would be the defeat of Europe. The Baltic States, Georgia and Moldova are already on the list. Putin's goal is to return to Yalta, where half of the continent was ceded to Stalin.
The countries of the South are waiting for the outcome of the conflict to decide whether they should continue to respect Europe or whether they are now free to trample on it.
What Putin wants is an end to the order put in place by the United States and its allies 80 years ago, with the first principle being the prohibition of acquiring territory by force.
This idea is at the very source of the UN, where today Americans vote for the aggressor and against the aggressed, because Trump's vision coincides with Putin's: a return to spheres of influence, with the great powers dictating the fate of small countries.
Greenland, Panama and Canada are mine, Ukraine, the Baltic States and Eastern Europe are yours, and Taiwan and the China Sea are yours.
In the evenings of the oligarchs of the Gulf of Mar-a-Lago, this is called "diplomatic realism".
So we are alone. But the narrative that Putin cannot be resisted is false. Contrary to the Kremlin's propaganda, Russia is in trouble. In three years, the so-called second largest army in the world has only managed to snatch crumbs from a country with a population three times smaller.
Interest rates at 25%, the collapse of foreign exchange and gold reserves, and the demographic collapse show that it is on the brink of the abyss. The U.S. push to Putin is the greatest strategic mistake ever made in a war.
The shock is violent, but it has a virtue. The Europeans are coming out of denial. They understood in one day in Munich that the survival of Ukraine and the future of Europe are in their hands and that they have three imperatives.
Accelerate military aid to Ukraine to compensate for the American abandonment, so that it holds, and of course to impose its presence and that of Europe in any negotiations.
It will be expensive. The taboo on the use of frozen Russian assets will have to be ended. It will be necessary to bypass Moscow's accomplices within Europe itself by a coalition of the willing countries alone, with of course the United Kingdom.
Secondly, to demand that any agreement be accompanied by the return of kidnapped children, prisoners and absolute security guarantees. After Budapest, Georgia and Minsk, we know what the agreements with Putin are worth. These guarantees require sufficient military force to prevent a new invasion.
Finally, and this is the most urgent, because it is what will take the longest, we should build the neglected European defence, in favour of the American umbrella since 1945 and scuttled since the fall of the Berlin Wall.
It is a Herculean task, but it is on its success or failure that the leaders of today's democratic Europe will be judged in the history books.
Friedrich Merz has just declared that Europe needs its own military alliance. This is to recognize that France has been right for decades in pleading for strategic autonomy.
It remains to be built. It will be necessary to invest massively, to strengthen the European Defence Fund outside the Maastricht debt criteria, to harmonise weapons and ammunition systems, to accelerate the entry into the Union of Ukraine, which is today the leading European army, to rethink the place and conditions of nuclear deterrence based on French and British capabilities, and to relaunch the anti-missile shield and satellite programmes.
The plan announced yesterday by Ursula von der Leyen is a very good starting point. And much more will be needed.
Europe will only become a military power again by becoming an industrial power again. In a word, the Draghi report will have to be applied. For good.
But the real rearmament of Europe is its moral rearmament.
We must convince the public in the face of the weariness and fear of war, and especially in the face of Putin's cronies, the far right and the far left.
Yesterday in the National Assembly, Prime Minister, they pleaded again before you, against European unity, against European defence.
They say they want peace. What neither they nor Trump are saying is that their peace is capitulation, the peace of defeat, the replacement of de Gaulle Zelensky by a Ukrainian Pétain under Putin's thumb.
The peace of the collaborators who have refused any help to the Ukrainians for three years.
Is this the end of the Atlantic Alliance? The risk is great. But in recent days, Zelensky's public humiliation and all the crazy decisions taken over the past month have finally made the Americans react.
The polls are falling. Republican elected officials are greeted by hostile crowds in their constituencies. Even Fox News is becoming critical.
The Trumpists are no longer in majesty. They control the executive, parliament, the Supreme Court and social networks.
But in American history, the supporters of freedom have always won. They are starting to raise their heads.
The fate of Ukraine is being played out in the trenches, but it also depends on those in the United States who want to defend democracy, and here on our ability to unite Europeans, to find the means of their common defence, and to make Europe the power it once was in history and which it is reluctant to become again.
Our parents defeated fascism and communism at the cost of all sacrifices.
The task of our generation is to defeat the totalitarianisms of the twenty-first century.
Last edited by Ryuu96 - 3 days ago
Currently Online 
Essay Pro