Mark Rutte, December 2025 : « We must be prepared for the scale of war our grandparents or great-grandparents endured. »
Illustration : Otto Dix, War - 1929-1932
In September 2023, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg stumbled in front of the European Parliament1: Putin, he openly said, has gone to war to prevent NATO from coming to his borders. Fortunately, the media silence has covered the embarrassing admission, allowing us to continue having heaps of editorials dealing with Russian imperialism, the Russian threat, Putin's hubris...
“Of course, NATO did not sign” the peace treaty proposal, Stoltenberg rejoiced, a treaty that would have guaranteed peace and stability in Europe in exchange for a written commitment (this time) that NATO would not expand “an inch” towards Russia. Of course! What would we have become without the prospect of NATO settling in Ukraine, 500 km from Moscow! Certainly, Ukraine would not have been devastated and the lives of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians (not to mention others) would have been spared, certainly the EU would not have been forced to slash its social security for the purchase of magnificent war materials, it could have quietly continued to lack “the moral strength to accept losing its children”2, certainly a gas five times cheaper could have been an advantage... but the expansion of the US-led military bloc is worth all these little inconveniences!
History does not begin on February 24, 2022.
In 1991, Gorbachev received the solemn promise that NATO would not "move an inch eastward" after the German reunification. Just a few months later, this solemn assurance joined the long and still open list of American deceptions. For the Soviet self-destruction was perceived by the United States as a military victory; not as the end of the war, the prospect of a peaceful world, but as a first step towards the total destruction of its main systemic rival, the only one at the time still able to challenge US hegemony.
In one of the first issues of NATO Alert, more than 20 years ago3, we described NATO's strategy of gradually encircling Russia. In retrospect, one is struck by the systematic and methodical way in which NATO placed its pieces one by one, from the decision to expand NATO made as early as 1993, to the unilateral withdrawal from various treaties that could hinder a nuclear attack, through the various 'color revolutions' all around Russia, transforming allies and natural partners into enemies. Far from being an unexpected consequence of "Russia's unprovoked aggression against Ukraine," the total war against Russia was conceived and prepared as early as the fall of the USSR.
It has undoubtedly never been a question of the Ukrainian regime achieving an improbable military victory against Russia, even if it has been led to believe so. NATO's objective was rather from the start to 'bleed' Russia, to weaken it as much as possible before direct war.
The deception of "military escalation for peace"
For several months, "Ukraine," but in reality NATO through the Ukrainian arm, has been launching deep attacks on Russia, bombing refineries and civilian logistics centers, launching thousands of drones on Saint Petersburg and Moscow... Last year, "Ukraine" destroyed a third of the Russian strategic aviation on the ground4, a fleet intended to prevent a nuclear attack, and our media that were raving did not grasp the extraordinary gravity of this 'feat': NATO is impudently targeting Russian strategic defense sites, with no possible equivalent response.
The targets, intelligence, weapons, even arms factories, are openly provided by NATO. Britain declares it is testing long-range missiles to help Ukraine bomb Moscow5... How long can Russia maintain the fiction of the Special Military Operation against only the Ukrainian regime, when it is facing the entirety of NATO?
Our media and politicians claim that escalations aim to force Russia to accept an 'unconditional' ceasefire. In a recent interview, the potential next French president, Raphaël Glucksmann, asserts: "We will have to talk to Vladimir Putin when we have sent the clear message that he will lose this war. We will have to talk to a defeated Vladimir Putin to negotiate his capitulation."
It is a joke: a nuclear power will not capitulate unless there is total war, and the time of naivety that led to the self-destruction of the USSR is definitely over.
In other words, the current escalation is not aimed at achieving peace, but at provoking war. NATO is increasing the escalation step by step, hoping that Russia will have no other option but to launch a new "unprovoked aggression."
Preparing minds
Western imperialism under U.S. leadership, of which NATO is the armed wing, needs war, and increasingly urgently as its global hegemony is threatened by the emergence of a multipolar world - the "Axis of Evil." Ukraine, Iran, Venezuela, and before that Syria are already elements of the same war; and Russia is a fundamental link in this "Axis of Evil," which must be broken to prevent the challenge to U.S. supremacy.
The alleged desire of Trump to leave NATO mainly serves to justify the insane increase in military spending in Europe: "America is abandoning us! We must rearm in the face of the Russian threat!" But this massive rearmament is actually a U.S. demand, expressed quite openly, and the Europeans are complying docilely6.
NATO wants war and is actively preparing for it. On paper, there is hardly any contest: NATO, even without U.S. support, has far more personnel, financial capacity, and military power. The only thing still lacking is "the moral strength to accept losing its children," but work is being done on that:
One way to harden the populations is to put boots on the ground in Ukraine. For months, a European coalition of volunteers has been developing plans to deploy a "reassurance force" in Ukraine after a ceasefire. These discussions have led nowhere as no truce is in sight. Therefore, a European reassurance force would not bring much to Ukraine. But deploying it now, before a hypothetical ceasefire, could benefit Europe by encouraging citizens to develop a mindset that would better prepare them for war.7.
The 'Coalition of Volunteers' would therefore have no effect on maintaining peace in Ukraine, but it would be a good way to awaken, with the first deaths among "ours," that warrior spirit that some seem to despair of its vanishing...
Understanding the war to oppose it
"We must not yield to Vladimir Putin, because every concession to a tyrant is an invitation to aggression," Glucksmann continued in his interview. Macron referred to him as "a ogre that needs to keep eating." And is it imaginable to negotiate with an ogre? This is clearly not possible! This way of thinking confines us to the only possible path, that of war; only the military defeat of the "monster at our gates" is conceivable. Mentioning fundamental notions such as the principle of mutual security has become suspect, indecent: a crime of pro-Russian propaganda.
This is not coincidental. If our leaders, our media, a part of public opinion "are marching towards war like sleepwalkers"8, the Atlantic high command and its 'spin doctors' have their eyes wide open.
The coming war may ultimately lead to the triumph of NATO, the capitulation of Russia, and its final dismantling - at least some are convinced of this. It will necessarily come at the cost of millions of deaths, destruction, and endless devastation, against which Gaza will appear a posteriori as a mere preparation of minds for horror - but as Madeleine Albright might have said, "the price is worth it."9...
The "Ukraine war" should never have happened: it would have been enough to recognize the legitimacy of Russia's security concerns, acknowledge the principle of mutual security, agree not to push NATO to the gates of Moscow, and accept Russia's peace treaty proposals. But "of course, NATO did not sign," that was not the plan.
It is essential that we move away from the narrative of "unprovoked invasion," "Russian imperialism," and "unyielding defense of International Law." An International Law that only applies to others, to the enemies of the Empire, is merely a crude disguise of the law of the strongest. This war has nothing to do with the fight for Freedom and Democracy against autocracy, and even less with the "defense of Ukraine" - which our "support" has contributed to leading to total devastation. It is not the result of a "fault of Putin," for which his "nationalist advisors" would be responsible: The current war - and the one into which we are gradually being drawn - is merely the result of a long-planned deliberate strategy by NATO.
Becoming aware of this is the first step to being able to oppose the coming war. Understanding and denouncing NATO's primary responsibility is the only possible path to peace.
1. See « Une invasion non provoquée » (in French)
2. The French Chief of Staff, Gen. Mandon, November 2025
3. NATO Alert No. 13, March 2004 (in French)
4. Opération « Spiderweb »
5. The Telegraph, June 20, 2026
6. See “OTAN 3.0” in this issue
7. The Economist, July 1, 2026
8. To revisit a usual (but debatable) description of the 'fortuitous' outbreak of the 14-18 war
9. See www.youtube.com/shorts/1T5JRVR53Eo, the interview where the Secretary of State coldly stated that 500,000 children died as a result of the U.S. embargo against Iraq, "the price is worth it."