Published: 14 February 2023
Last updated: 5 March 2024
Westerners who seek only to be left in peace are courting an even more deadly war, writes BERNARD-HENRI LÉVY.
That fear that couldn’t care less, like the one from 1940, that following generations might inherit an even more deadly war, provided that we, here, might taste just five more minutes, or five years, of a terrorised peace, that peace that groaned yesteryear, “Why die for Danzig?” and today cries “Why die for Donbass?”
That is the fear that Putin wishes to inspire and capitalise on.
Paris and London, he carelessly lets drop, are just a click away for a Poseidon missile.
Putin has failed at everything, except inspiring fear.
He was defeated in Kyiv, Kharkiv, Lyman, Mykolaiv, Kherson, in short, in every theatre where he has faced Ukrainian valour. But he may win this war of fear.
Putin’s threats. Putin’s dirty bombs.
The vast party of those who are afraid and who, from Right to Left and from the extreme Left to the extreme Right, are ready, because of it, to compromise and dishonour, could become, if we’re not vigilant, the largest party in France.
That skilfully distilled fear, growing; this carnival of sweat and panic on a background of collapsology; this transformation of free spirits into curled up creatures shrivelled by anxiety is becoming Russia’s master army and Ukraine’s principal enemy.
READ MORE
Who’s Afraid of Vladimir Putin? (Bernard-Henri Levy, Tablet)
Westerners who seek only to be left in peace are courting an even more deadly war
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