Sénateur C. Malhuret’s speech at the French Senate, March 5, 2025
Translated by Richard Wodruff on X,
Europe is at critical turning point in its history. The American shield is slipping away, Ukraine risks being abandoned and Russia is being strengthened.
Washington has become the court of Neron. An incendiary emperor, surrounded by submissive courtesans and a buffoon on ketamine tasked with purging the civil servants.
This is a tragedy for the free world, but above all, it is a tragedy for the US.
Trump’s message is that being his ally serves no purpose, as he will not defend you, he will impose higher tariffs on you than on his enemies and he will threaten to seize your territories while supporting the dictature who invade you.
The so-called “king of the deal" is demonstrating that art of the deal for Trump consists in crushing himself in front of the strong. He believes he will intimidate China by capitulating in front of Putin, but Xi Jinping, witnessing such a collapse is undoubtedly accelerating preparations for the invasion of Taiwan.
Never in history has a President of the US capitulated in front of the enemy. Never before has one supported an aggressor against an ally. Never has one trampled on the American Constitution, issue so many illegal executive orders, dismissed judges who could oppose him, sacked the entire military leadership, weakened all counterpower and taken control of social media.
This is the beginning of the confiscation of democracy. Let us remember that it only took just one month, three weeks, and two days to bring down the Weimar Republic and its Constitution. I have faith of American democracy and the country The country is already protesting. In one month, Trump has done more damage to the US than in four years of his previous mandate.
We were at war with a dictator, we are now fighting against a dictator supported by a traitor. The US voted at the UN alongside Russia and North Korea. Two days later, in the Oval Office, the US President was giving moral and strategic lesson to the hero Zelinsky before dismissing him like a groom, ordering him to submit or resign.
Last night, Trump took another step into disgrace by halting the delivery of promised weapons to Ukrain.
What should we do in the face of this betrayal? The answer is simple, stand firm (“faire face”).
Ukraine’s defeat would be Europe’s defeat. The Baltic countries, 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.
What Putin wants is the end of the order established by the US and its allies 80 years ago whose first principle was the prohibition of acquiring territory by force. Today Americans vote in favor of the aggressors and against the victims, because Trump’s vision aligns with Putin’s a return to spheres of influence where big powers dictate the fate of smaller nations. I take Greenland, Panama and Canada, you take Ukraine, the Baltics, and Eastern Europe, he takes Taiwan and the South China Sea. In Mar-a-Lago golf oligarchs parties are called “diplomatic realism”.
We are therefore alone. But the claim that resisting Putin is impossible is false. Contrary to Kremlin propaganda, Russia is struggling. In three years, the so-called second-best army in the world has managed to gain only crumbs from a country three time less populated. With interest rates at 25%, the collapse of foreign exchange, Russia is on the brink. The American lifeline to Putin is the greatest strategic mistake ever made during a war.
The shock is severe, but it has a virtue, Europeans are emerging from denial. They have understood in one day in Munich that Ukraine’s survival and Europe’s future are in their hands and they have three imperatives: 1) Accelerate military aid to Ukraine to compensate for the American abandon. 2) Demand that any agreement includes the return of kidnapped children, prisoners and absolute security guaranteed. After Georgia and Minsk, we know what Putin’s agreements are worth. 3) At last, it will take the longest, we must rebuild the neglected Europe’s defense which has relied on the American umbrella since 1945.
F. Merz has just declared that Europe needs its own military alliance. This is an admission that France has been right for decades in advocating for a “strategic autonomy”. Massive investment will be needed.
But Europe’s true rearmament is its moral rearmament. We must convince public opinion in the face of war fatigue and fear and especially against Putin’s collaborators both the far right and the far left. They argue against European unity and European defense. They claim they want peace what neither they nor Trump say is that their peace is capitulation, peace of defeat, the replacement of Zelensky with a Ukrainian Pétain. The peace of collaborators who, for three years, have refused to support the Ukrainian army.
The public humiliation of Zelinsky and the series of reckless decisions taken over the past month, have finally stirred Americans into action. Poll numbers are plummeting, Republican representatives are being met with hostile crowds in their districts, even Fox News is becoming critical. The Trumpists control the executive branch, Congress, the Supreme Court, and social network, but in American history, the defenders of freedom have always prevailed.
The fate of Ukraine is decided in the trenches but it also depends on those in the US who fight for democracy, and here, on our ability to unite Europeans to find the means for our collective defense and to restore Europe as the great power it once has and hesitate to become again.
The task of our generation is to defeat the totalitarisms of the 21st century.
Vive l’Ukraine.
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