We did not believe in this scenario.
We did not believe that a war was going to start in a European and democratic country, Ukraine, attacked by Russia.
One could analyze the Russian invasion in all sorts of ways.
But one thing is striking: we no longer believed that wars were possible.
Candidly, we thought that in 2022, war would still be avoided.
Clashes in some more unstable regions, nothing more.
It felt like the only way to relate to her was by opening the history books.
End of the story
It has even been written and theorized that modernity makes any armed conflict practically impossible.
It was argued that after the Cold War, it was the “end of history”, the end of the great heartbreaks. We would now be divided on details.
We thought that democracy and liberalism would triumph everywhere.
However, we realize that this is false. The story is tragic, in the words of Raymond Aron.
On the one hand, democracies weaken from within.
On the other hand, totalitarian regimes are hardening and conquering. This is the case of Russia and China, which are now in communion.
Civilizations
The invasion in Ukraine should remind us that the power politicss, the politics of force, still exists.
That nations still have different values, histories and interests, which ultimately causes civilizational clashes.
Let us be clear, when Putin attacks Ukraine, it is first of all the freedom of the Western democracies which Ukraine claimed to be attacking.
There may be other reasons of course, including that Russia wishes to limit the American and European zone of influence in Ukraine and its neighbours.
But it is above all the free, democratic and European Ukraine that he bullies, and by the same token, the values that we defend.
After Georgia, Crimea and Ukraine, where will this new imperialism stop?