The awakening of European consciousness in the face of imperial nihilism

The cross-analysis by Françoise Thom and Laure Mandeville illuminates a brutal reality: Europe is not facing a simple diplomatic crisis, but a system that has erected the subversion and destruction of the liberal order as a reason of State. Putin’s trajectory, rooted in the ruts of Bolshevism, uses chaos as a weapon of internal stabilization and external expansion. Faced with this “total war” that targets our institutions, values, and cohesion, the diagnosis is unequivocal: the West can no longer afford the luxury of relativism or strategic amnesia.

The prospects for Europe now require a break with complacency. To assert its sovereignty, the continent must give itself the means for real autonomy, going beyond the merely military dimension to invest in the field of hybrid warfare and institutional memory. The Kremlin’s perseverance in seeking to expel American influence to establish Russian hegemony must be met by a “vertebrate” Europe, capable of defending its model of civilization against oligarchic entrism and predation.
Asserting European sovereignty today means:
Rebuilding strategic expertise capable of understanding Russian policy over the long term, so as not to be surprised by its metamorphoses.

Protecting democratic institutions against the phenomenon of “auto-Putinization” and the drift toward political tribalism that weakens the rule of law.

Reaffirming the primacy of universal values (truth, justice, freedom) in the face of cynicism that reduces human relations to a mere “art of the deal.” In short, Ukrainian resistance has proven that the independent will of a free people can thwart the calculations of autocrats. Europe must now draw on this same moral clarity to build its own institutional framework and become once again the guarantor of security on its soil, at the risk of seeing its destiny dictated by those who prosper only in the collapse of others.[03]