LV 250 (free): Enchanted interlude and strategic disenchantment | Should we win the war or prevent it? | Lorgnette: Iran’s dilemma

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Lettre de La Vigie, dated 2 October 2024

Enchanted interlude and strategic disenchantment

During the Olympic and Paralympic Games, France showed the world that it knew how to organise major international and popular events in a sumptuous setting, without any security hiccups. However, the term ‘enchanted interlude’ is surprising: why should day-to-day security be an interlude rather than a permanent feature? How can we ensure safety for all?

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Should we win the war or prevent it?

The war is back: everyone can see it, and the Vigie is constantly analysing it. In recent months, while high-intensity words have taken centre stage, the issue of deterrence has also come back with a vengeance. But is current nuclear regulation enough?

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Lorgnette: Iran’s dilemma

Iran has been accumulating setbacks for some time. Until now, it had managed to operate in the Near and Middle East thanks to a network of allies that enabled it to balance the Saudi opposition on the one hand and the Israeli challenge on the other. The Shiite networks in Iraq, the Syrian support point, the Lebanese Hezbollah and the Yemeni Houthis were all effective relays for an influential policy in the region. Despite everything, things were changing. The Abraham Accords had launched an Israeli-Arab reconciliation (LV 217). Teheran responded by reconciling with Riyadh (LV 226).

The attack on 7 October turned the situation upside down by forcing Israel to react and re-establish its conventional deterrent, both in Gaza and against Hezbollah (note). Iran, which was challenged this summer (assassination of the head of Hamas in Teheran), must react but not too forcefully, as it is prey to a domestic fragility that must not be overlooked. On the other hand, it cannot allow the blows dealt by Israel (assassination in Teheran, attack by Hezbollah) to go unanswered. This is the reason for today’s missile strike.

The escalation continues and no one knows where it will lead. The fact remains that Iran is on its own in the region.

To read the appendix to this issue, LV 250 bis, Ten years of La Vigie, click here

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LV 241 : Raids in the Middle East and the threshold of disuasion | NATO’s decoupling | Lorgnette: 7 years on

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Letter from La Vigie, dated 1st May 2024

Raids in the Middle East and the threshold of disuasion

The reciprocal attack by Iran and Israel in April was the first direct aggression against the Hebrew state for decades: a threshold of escalation has been crossed. But it pits two powers on the nuclear threshold against each other: does the classic grammar of deterrence still apply?

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NATO’s decoupling

The entry of the first Russian troops into Ukraine prompted NATO member states to support the invaded country. European voices then proclaimed that the Alliance was being strengthened, as evidenced by the accession of Sweden and Finland. However, decoupling mechanisms (not just transatlantic) are at work, threatening the Alliance’s very survival.

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Lorgnette: 7 years on

7 years after the 1st speech at the Sorbonne (LV 107), 3 pages of text later, where does France and Europe stand? A list of successes, still implacable observations, progress to be made, incentives to build the European pillar of the Alliance, to implement common strategies, to apply the strategic compass, to rethink energy and agricultural policies, to use France’s nuclear weapons to protect Europe…

There’s nothing fundamentally new here, apart from the fact that we can guess at the impact of farmers’ protests against rising energy prices. We have already dealt with these issues in a previous issue (LV 237), which gives this speech a surprising tone. Can we keep repeating the same observations and the same proposals, betting on our listeners’ amnesia? Some of the German press echoed this perplexity, while French columnists did not hesitate to evoke a “strategic rupture”… Europe is thus at a turning point in the face of uninhibited powers, the risk of falling behind, and the battle of the imagination. “I have come to talk to you about Europe”, he said 7 years ago.

What if we were now to take action?

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LV 223 (free) : What the war in Gaza tells us | Paper from Armenia | Lorgnette: the fall of Icarus

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Letter from La Vigie, dated 1st November 2023

The Hamourabbi code (source)

What the war in Gaza (or Sukkot) tells us

To go beyond considerations on the ground about the war in Sukkot (Gaza), we will first try to determine the war aims of each side, before asking ourselves what this war says, a further stage in a re-primitivisation of the contemporary act of war.

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Paper from Armenia

The theatres of war and the ways in which they are waged may change, but the invariants of strategy can be observed in all theatres, and there is a high price to pay for neglecting them, whatever the mode of action chosen. Armenia has bitterly rediscovered them because it did not respect them.

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Lorgnette: the fall of Icarus

If you fly too close to the sun, you risk burning your wings and falling into the abyss…

This is what the various dignitaries of the Chinese Communist Party or officials of the State apparatus experience on a regular basis, and when they fall from grace for whatever reason – which is never made public – they are invariably accused of “acts of corruption” and stripped of their professional positions and social standing.

However, the Chinese regime has done particularly well this year, dismissing its foreign affairs and defence ministers one after the other and making them disappear both literally and figuratively (damnatio memoriae by removing all references to them from government websites). The first, Qin Gang, has been missing since 25 June, the second, Li Shangfu, since 29 August. They had been sworn in in March of the same year.

These ruthless purges, while reminiscent of Mao, have rarely been so close to Xi Jingping’s entourage, and are both Stalinist in their implacability and Orwellian in their radicalism.

Still, it’s good to live in the West.

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LV 210: There is no magic weapon | Will the rear end hold ? | Lorgnette : Israeli-Palestinian peace process

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Letter from La Vigie, dated 1st FEB 2023

There is no magic weapon

The recent decision by the Europeans and Americans to supply tanks to Ukraine was intended as a show of unity in favour of Kiev. The difficulties in achieving this, and the relief that resulted, show that the issue remains fragile. Above all, it is based on an illusion: that arms alone can change the course of the war, whether by their quality or their quantity. Beyond that, a concern is surreptitiously emerging: is it still about winning or is it now about not losing?

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Will the rear end hold?

If the fortunes of the weapons mainly decide the fate of a war, it is essential to also worry about the rear: if the combatants develop a certain and indispensable self-sufficiency, this is the result of the efforts made by the rear. The war in Ukraine shows us, however, that the notion of the rear is not as simple as one might think, and that the rear can also have a certain geographical depth.

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Lorgnette: Israeli-Palestinian peace process

Recent events in Palestine have once again put the Palestinian question at the heart of the news. While it is likely that everyone will do their best to ignore it, it is important to note that it is still there because no solution has been found. The Abraham Accords promoted by D. Trump explicitly ignored it, organising a peace between Israel and certain Arab countries while agreeing to ignore the Palestinian question. Without going back to the triggering element of this week’s incidents, let us observe that the lukewarmness of international reactions is justified by the assumption that there is a peace process that is taking its course. This is obviously false.

It should be remembered that this is not (despite the use by some of the word terrorism equated with jihadism) a religious issue but a question of national liberation – and therefore of the freedom of peoples to self-determination – and of the political control of a population and of territories by an occupier. This is the original objective of the peace process. That it is obviously not working means that there is no peace. But who draws the conclusions? The EU looks the other way, as it is so quick to agitate for values. It is a sign of its hypocrisy and thus loses its credit.

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