Gilles-William Goldnadel is a lawyer and essayist. Every week, he deciphers the news for FigaroVox. He publishes
Manual of resistance to far-left fascism
(New editions of Passy, 2021).
Our republican sovereign, who fears neither contradictions nor magical thinking, took advantage of the Ukrainian drama to revive the myth of European sovereignty.
Myth to which he is particularly attached since his so-called Sorbonne speech of September 2017 for a "sovereign, united and democratic Europe".
It must be said that the crazy and terrible era we are going through is sadly fertile in boasting, flagging, antinomy and irenicism.
Let's start with boasting and flagging.
What did we not hear a fortnight ago, the day after the invasion of a sovereign European country by the post-Soviet dictator.
Europe was finally miraculously and definitively united!
A Europe of defense was to be put in place thanks to the German metamorphosis.
A common energy policy could boycott Russian gas.
Admittedly, in the aftermath of the aggression of Putin's Russia against a sovereign European nation, political Europe, in liaison with the United States, took energetic and salutary economic measures and some vague military projects.
European nations grouped in a structure dedicated to eternal peace, to happy globalism, to humanist “values” suddenly discovered that our history had suddenly “become tragic again”.
Gilles-William Goldnadel
Because these nations grouped in a structure dedicated to eternal peace, to happy globalism, to humanist “values” of blissful and gaping openness of their neutralized borders suddenly discovered through the mouth of our prolific president and historian that our history was suddenly
“ become tragic again
.
As if she had never ceased to be so for a single day.
These same nations anesthetized by the chloroform of their disarming union of its padded candor have, just as suddenly, discovered the need to militarily protect the sovereignty of a European sovereign nation-state against the violation of its sacred borders by foreign invasion.
It is a pity that within political Europe its associated nations did not regard their borders as equally inviolable and sacred and did not show equal concern for other invasive forms , which, for being less military and murderous, are more sneaky and ultimately also deadly.
On this, a fortnight after the attack, the representatives of the nations, sometimes banqueting merrily under the gold of Versailles at the invitation of a president who called himself pessimistic in French and at the same time optimistic in English, fell back a lot and on their union and their decisions.
In concrete terms, they proved incapable of adopting a common response to the energy question.
Germany and Italy, mainly, are unable to do without Russian gas.
We can never denounce enough the responsibility of ecological leftism in the destruction of the nuclear industry, however non-polluting.
In Germany first, returned to the age of ardently carbonizing coal and even, although to a lesser extent, in France where it was the main jewel.
Read alsoWind turbines: “France has lost its energy independence”
To a question posed on
France Inter
as to the relevance of having closed the Fessenheim plant, our Mr. Europe, Clément Beaune, had this laconic as well as definitive answer:
“We are not looking back”.
In this case, indeed, there is no need to take stock soon.
As for military affairs, our Europe without a common defence, until now emasculated by its congenital and exalted ideological pacifism, has been unable to find the means to define the Community investments necessary to coordinate and build pan-European industrial sectors.
It would seem that Germany has decided to increase its budget for tomorrow, by buying
made in the USA
.
But it is even more certain that France had reduced its own, hence the resignation of the Chief of Staff, General Pierre de Villiers.
For lack of ammunition, it could only support a high-intensity conflict for a week and align, in the country of Dassault, only a fleet of 150 planes in working order.
Read alsoCharles Michel: “The EU is experiencing a Copernican moment on defense”
So, cozy recklessness and deforming community wadding have demobilized France.
Finally, and contrary to the imprudent bravado of Ursula von der Leyen and the good omens of Nathalie Loiseau, our Europeans have obviously postponed Ukraine's accession to the Greek Calends.
In short, the mountain of boasting gave birth to a harmless mouse.
Nothing to brag about with a starry flag.
Let us end with contradiction and irenicism.
One cannot at the same time, even endowed with a great capacity for simultaneity, patriotically support French sovereignty by intoning the Marseillaise and militate for European sovereignty by singing Beethoven.
It's one or the other.
But in reality, it is useless to insist on this flagrant contradiction.
Because as I wrote this community sovereignty would it be possible, could not be desirable.
I don't believe the European empire is fit to defend me.
This is why I support the Europe of powerful and sovereign nation states.
Gilles-William Goldnadel
It is impossible, because there is no European people in this polyglot and disarmed whole which brings together, for better but often for worse, friendly but different nations with divergent interests.
It is even less desirable.
To understand this, I cannot recommend highly enough the edifying reading of the work of the eminent philosopher Yoram Hazony audaciously entitled
"The virtues of nationalism"
(Jean-Cyrille Godefroy editions, 2020) which I had the honor of preface.
In particular, it is explained there, beyond the patriotic feeling and the cultural affinities, that the Nation-State is the ideal dimensional structure to defend a people.
Between the too narrow tribe and the too broad empire.
That's why I don't believe the European empire is fit to defend me.
This is also why I support a Europe of powerful and sovereign nation states.