The Internationalism

Internationalism No. 86, April 2026 Page 3 From the series European news The next half-century will be the age of nuclear weapons . This was the grim prediction with which Emmanuel Macron concluded his speech on nuclear deterrence, delivered on March 2 nd at the Île Longue submarine base. Standing before Le Téméraire , the nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine that carries a strike force equivalent to the sum of all the bombs dropped on Europe during the Second World War , the president announced a significant evolution in French nuclear doctrine. The emergence of new threats and the realignment of American priorities make it necessary, according to Macron, not only to strengthen deterrence by increasing the number of nuclear warheads, but also to rethink the deterrence strategy deep inside the European continent . His proposal is the gradual implementation o...

Internationalism No. 84, February 2026 Page 2 We have often reflected on the memorandum that Charles de Gaulle submitted to American President Dwight Eisenhower in September 1958, at the beginning of the Fifth Republic. Referring to the recent events of the Suez crisis of 1956 and the ongoing confrontation in the Taiwan Strait with Beijing’s bombardment of the Quemoy Islands, De Gaulle considered NATO’s organisation and area of responsibility limited to the North Atlantic to be insufficient. This strategic horizon was too narrow, as if what was happening in the Middle East or Africa did not immediately and directly concern Europe, and as if France’s indivisible responsibilities did not extend to Africa, the Indian Ocean, and the Pacific . The proposal was for a three-member directorate comprising France, the United States, and the United Kingdom. The directorate would have discussed and taken joint decisions on political issues concerning global sec...

Internationalism No. 82, December 2025 Page 16 Ultimately, what will become of the negotiations surrounding the conflict in Ukraine? It is impossible to say. War is a strange matryoshka doll, where each front contains its own conflicts, dividing alliances and bringing adversaries closer together. At the outset, Putin thought he could get it over with in a matter of weeks: a special military operation , as he called it. But he has become entangled in a long war of attrition; his military advantage no longer compensates for the weakness of his economy and his dependence on Xi's China. Beijing has finely balanced a sort of active neutrality. It has declared eternal friendship with Russia but is signalling that it could mute its support for Moscow in exchange for recognition of its vital interest in reunification with Taiwan. Europe has been caught off guard by the conflic...

Internationalism No. 78-79, August-September 2025 Pages 1 and 2 In current Anglo-Saxon vocabulary, appeasement stands for cowardly and illusory pacification, as exemplified by the Munich Agreement of 1938, which conceded to the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia without stopping the march towards world war. Were Shigeru Ishiba, Ursula von der Leyen, Emmanuel Macron, and Friedrich Merz really, as has been said, the Neville Chamberlains of the tariff war, accepting appeasement on the 15% tariff in an ignominious surrender to Donald Trump's blackmail? And has Trump really revealed himself in Anchorage, Alaska, to be an appeaser towards Vladimir Putin? Was it, finally, only the firmness of the Europeans at the Washington summit which convinced Trump to remain as one of the guarantors of Ukraine's security? The plague of television and social media diplomacy feeds on simplistic and propa...

Internationalism No. 73, March 2025 Page 16 Three years of war in Ukraine. Perhaps with a truce in sight, albeit in the heated climate of the European shock over the Atlantic crisis and the American about-face. Trump wants to make a deal with Putin without regard for Kyiv and the EU; doubts are spreading as to whether America can be trusted anymore. Friedrich Merz, the next head of the German government, has been heard uttering words that would previously have been unthinkable for an Atlanticist like him: We must become independent from the United States; Berlin must agree with London and Paris on the nuclear protection of Europe. It is uncertain whether NATO, in its present form, will be suitable for this “epochal break”, or whether new European structures will be needed. Perhaps the objective is a Europeanised NATO, a centre of gravity in the Old Continent that can contain or compensate for American oscillations and the unpredictable behaviour of its bull...

Internationalism No. 73, March 2025 Page 3 From the series European news On February 3rd, the new president of the European Council, António Costa, organised his first summit of the heads of State and government. It was an informal meeting dedicated to defence, with the aim of reaching a consensus on a synthesis that will be included in the new White Paper in April, and that will provide a basis for possible decisions at the official European Council in June. In the current context, however, it was also about “sending a signal to the president of the United States that the Europeans are prepared to increase military spending” [Handelsblatt, February 3rd]. British “reset” One unusual feature of the summit was the presence of Keir Starmer. For the first time since Brexit, a British prime minister was present at a meeting of the European Council. According to Le Monde, this could signal “the start of concrete negotiations on the topic of defence, against t...

Internationalism No. 73, March 2025 Page 2 In the past we used to say that anything that is exaggerated is irrelevant, and this was especially true for the hard facts of international politics. Now, with the rise of television and social media democracy and their misdeeds, one must accept that they inherently favour provocation and exaggeration as a communication style. This combines with the technical capability of the world wide web to give an immediate and universal audience to every narcissistic impulse to draw attention to oneself through provocative theatrical shows. If “the medium is the message” — as Marshall McLuhan argued about television, which transformed communication into the town square of a “global village” then we must consider how the combination of television with social media transforms interventions, impromptu or not, into global political facts. These interventions are carried out through a process of disintermediation — bypassing the fil...

Internationalism No. 33, November 2021 Page 3 From the series European News In a lawsuit brought by Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, the Constitutional Tribunal, which is composed of judges chosen by the government, ruled that fundamental parts of the EU Treaty are incompatible with the Constitution of the Republic of Poland. This ruling thus denies the primacy of European law over national law, undermining both the political assumption of continental integration and the supranational character of the EU . Vectors of Polish history We can shed light on this event if we consider the four field vectors that cross Poland: its traditional ethnic-religious nationalism, its marked Atlantic tropism, the objective attraction exerted by the European force field, and the looming threat of Russia. The general picture is global collisions: China’s irruption and the crisis in the world order have put pressure on Warsaw to define its st...

Internationalism No. 33, November 2021 Page 2 Fog of war is a military expression referring to the difficulty, during the course of battle, of knowing and calculating all factors at play as they unfold and interact. This image can be extended to the military-strategic and also to the political dimension of power relations: today a rearmaments race, regular parades of war devices, new alliances, political warnings and mutual ambiguities in Asia signal the agitated beginning of a long crescendo of tensions. A number of questions can help us understand the new characteristics of this contention. Should NATO extend its strategic aim to the confrontation with China? Jens Stoltenberg, the Alliance’s secretary general and a Norwegian — a fact which expresses an Atlanticism closely aligned with American positions — thinks so. He tells the Financial Times that China, even though it cannot be defined exclusively as an adversary , is having an impact on European ...