Vincent Desportes is a major general in the French Army and former director of the École de Guerre.
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Europe is up against the wall, that of its truth and that of its history.
She is playing her destiny in Ukraine.
In the aftermath of the fall of Avdivvka, the death of Navalny and the oratorical monstrosities of candidate Trump, everyone understood the formidable consequences of a Russian victory in Ukraine.
It must be prevented at all costs because it would break up Europe and lead to its political disappearance.
The fight is existential for what we are, we the sons of Athens, of Rome, of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, the heart of the West: behind the Russian forces, a cloak of barbaric obscurantism would soon be deployed towards our companies.
Let us have no doubt: this war is ours and the front of Donbass, that of our freedom.
There is no time to determine the causes of this war: let the historians struggle tomorrow over the distribution of responsibilities.
He has no regrets either.
We have the right to love Tolstoy, Chekhov and Tchaikovsky but not the right to let the Russian army advance: our fathers loved Beethoven, Mozart and Kant but fought against the German from Verdun to the Vercors.
It is not Russia that we are fighting, but a political project and the unacceptable return to the worst of our history.
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The mistake would be to believe that the flow of Western arms is the heart of the matter: it is only one of the elements of the solution.
The problem is first of all Europe's lack of strategy in this matter which nevertheless concerns it first and foremost.
It is therefore also that of the lack of a single will supported by clear signs of irreducible firmness.
These two deficiencies are hidden today under a disorderly competition in terms of arms and a political discourse that is more theoretical than resolute.
Let us have no doubt, the number one problem is that of strategy, the nature of which is to be the convergence of actions and desires towards a common ambition.
The latter is the necessary condition since strategy is, by retro-reasoning, a subjugation of means to ends.
Conversely
, a war without a clear purpose becomes, like the war in Ukraine, a war without end.
However, since the start of this conflict, due to divergent visions and interests, Europe has been unable to agree on what it expects.
She must decide.
In the medium term first, what new security architecture in Europe should be established, with, against, or without Russia?
In the short term, what military and political conditions must be created that would lead to favorable negotiations?
Because the end of this crisis will be political or it will not be.
It will inevitably be necessary to negotiate, as the Americans were forced to do with the North Koreans, the Viet Cong and the Taliban.
Without these common goals, without the urgent definition of these PGCD (highest common denominator), Europe will be incapable of building a strategy, and therefore of achieving an honorable exit from the crisis.
And since this war is European, since it could not be fought without us, because our existence is at stake, we have our say, loud and clear, as to its conduct and its ambitions.
General Vincent Desportes
For the moment, due to a lack of strategy, we are shipping weapons – Erratic arrival makes it difficult for Ukraine to build an operational strategy.
So, at Curiace, haphazardly, these materials go to the front to be destroyed one after the other, before they are replaced, without producing – far from it – the tactical effectiveness that their use, generally designed, would have allowed.
We distribute and use the materials without distinguishing the short-term need (to prevent any Russian breakthrough and therefore urgently deliver means of stopping and interdiction) and the imperative to reconstitute before the summer of 2025, a mass of maneuver from 70,000 to 100,000 men, experienced in multimodal combat, commanded by leaders trained in its use (armored and flying equipment to be delivered in large numbers, staff training in our major military schools).
Problem number two is that of demonstrating absolute will.
We must prove, through clear signs, an irreducible dissuasive firmness: empires only stop in the face of force.
This war is radical: we must oppose it with radical measures.
It’s up to each European country to define their own.
France, which plays on its rank and the credibility of its deterrence, could show its determination by first displaying a target of 3% of GDP for its defense spending, growth that it would fuel through a special tax or a large defense loan. .
It could give, lend or sell its best equipment including its Rafale planes, better able to compete with their adversaries than old F16s or Mirages.
It should go even further and restore national service: it would thus show that it understood the scale, nature, and sustainability of the threat.
It would thus reconnect with its concept of defense from the Cold War.
But all this would only make sense if Ukraine mobilized more.
We must push it because, otherwise, the mobilization of Europe would itself have neither meaning nor effect.
And since this war is European, since it could not be fought without us, because our existence is at stake, we have our say, loud and clear, as to its conduct and its ambitions.
Even if this requires twisting the arms of those in kyiv who need this firmness to leave the posture that imprisons them today.