Speech by Claude Malhuret on France’s Role in Preventing and Resolving International Crises
A new world is being born before our eyes, and we struggle to understand it.
The planet’s leading power, once the guarantor of the existing order, has become its chief challenger. It was our ally. Today, it is our adversary—perhaps tomorrow, our enemy. It was once a bulwark against dictatorships. Now, it seems poised to become one itself.
Our difficulty in comprehending this stems first from the incoherence of Trumpism: a simplistic doctrine, constantly undermined by contradictory actions.
Isolationism is proclaimed through tariffs and the crackdown on foreigners. Yet, no president has ever interfered so much. In one year, he ordered as many airstrikes as Biden did throughout his entire term: war against Israel, bombings in Iran, strikes in Nigeria, Somalia, Yemen, Syria, and Venezuela. He declares himself a president of peace, a Nobel Prize candidate, while threatening new interventions in Canada, Greenland, Cambodia, Cuba, Colombia, and Mexico. The only country from which he withdraws is Ukraine. Negotiations drag on, concessions to Putin and the abandonment of Europeans are so blatant that they lend credence to his claims about Krasnov, a Russian agent recruited in the 1990s and the subject of a kompromat.
The second absurdity is the total lack of perseverance in action. Trump boasts of ending wars in a year. Not one has actually ended. At best, fragile ceasefires; at worst, ongoing conflicts. Nowhere has a peace treaty been signed. The goal is not results, but good television images. Three quick turns, then he’s gone. His foreign policy is that of a four-year-old child who cries for a toy seen in a shop window, only to throw it into a trunk three days later after breaking off a leg.
Incomprehensible is the desire to dismantle the international system established by the United States since 1945—a system that Trumpists, in a paranoid delusion, interpret as a global conspiracy against their country. This is understandable, outside of a psychiatric hypothesis, as is the obsessive condemnation of everything done by his predecessors.
Equally incomprehensible is the attack on long-standing allies, while making overtures to dictators at war with the Western order. The contempt for international law in favor of what he calls his “personal morality.” The destruction of multilateralism and the withdrawal from dozens of institutions that gave the United States global influence, retreating behind their borders—from which they emerge only to drop a few bombs.
And finally, the worst: strengthening China’s credibility, the only credible rival today and the greatest threat to democracies. Authoritarian China emerges victorious from the tariff war. It appears to the world as a stabilizing power, facing a military and technological monster that strikes according to the whims of its president, only to lose interest in the chaos it has created.
This is where the United States stands in 2026.
For Europe, this situation is tragic. Its main ally has become an adversary, NATO is on the brink, one of its territories is under threat, there is a trade war, and the abandonment of Ukraine—all of which we struggle to compensate for. All this is compounded by moral lectures from an Appalachian genius, a vice president with the manners of a Rottweiler, who comes with the condescending air of fools to save us from ourselves and demands that we adopt the morality of his conservative bigotry.
This reality is known to all. The challenge is to interpret it.
Why is Trump willing to wipe his feet on Europe in Greenland? Why did Putin think he could invade Ukraine without consequence? Why do the Chinese flood Europe with their products, always finding a complacent entry point? Why is Europe, with a GDP comparable to that of the United States or China—and ten times that of Russia—treated as negligible?
Because Europe is neither a country, nor a power, nor even a confederation. It is energy-dependent on Russia, militarily dependent on the United States, and commercially dependent on China. Its historical missteps over the past thirty years have led it to fade from the world stage, like a face of sand at the edge of the sea.
Yet, its achievements are remarkable: peace among former enemies, free movement, a single market and currency, the protection of fundamental rights, and the most generous social policies. But it has failed to address three major challenges: ensuring its own security, creating an effective decision-making system, and embracing the great revolution of the 21st century—the technological, cognitive, and financial revolution.
If we fail to meet these challenges, the alternative will be simple: vassalization to our allies or submission to our enemies.
The solutions are well known. Rearmament, reindustrialization, and massive investments to become a military power. A federal leap, including the extension of qualified majority voting, to become a political power. And the implementation of the Draghi and Lagarde reports to regain economic and commercial strength.
Everyone knows this, yet nothing happens. Since 2022, the President of the Republic has declared that France and Europe are entering a war economy. Four years later, industrialists say the orders are not there. Ukraine, devastated by war, now produces 60% of its own military needs. We have made no quantitative or qualitative leap.
In economics, everyone knows that the great European project—the single market—falls far short of its 1993 objectives, and immense barriers remain. As for the technological revolution, we are light-years away from implementing the financial instruments needed to catch up with the United States and China.
Faced with the approaching danger, we have begun to react. Billions in aid to Ukraine have been approved to offset Trump’s betrayal. A coalition of volunteers has been formed to resist the blackmail of Putin’s accomplices within Europe. We have started implementing the Draghi report. But alas, we have not dared to seize frozen Russian assets. We have rejected Sky Shield, which could protect Ukrainian women and children dying daily under the bombs of a war criminal. Finally, two years after its publication, only 10% of the Draghi report has been implemented.
The threats to Greenland are a moment of truth. The anti-corruption instrument has been proposed. It is suited to the situation, as is the Arctic Endurance exercise. The risk is significant, but the opposite risk is even greater. This is the opportunity, if ever there was one, to take the initiative.
Trump is not eternal. His approval ratings sink daily. Americans, in Minneapolis and elsewhere, are rising up against the violence of a man whose dream of Caesarism increasingly resembles techno-fascism. Trump lacks the political means to carry out his threats. If he makes the mistake of sending troops, it will signal his impeachment—Republican leaders in Congress have just said so. If he backs down, it will signal to all Americans that the march toward autocracy can be stopped.
For Europeans, allowing the annexation of Greenland would mean we have accepted submission.
If Greenland were the first step in our resistance, and then our recovery, we know that many more will be needed.