InvestigationIn Germany and Italy, the supply of arms to Ukraine provokes more debate than in France. For the French, the priority given to the concept of peace between nations is not self-evident due, in particular, to the memory of the defeat of June 1940.
That no one, in France, any more than in Europe, is in favor of an armed conflict on the continent is obvious which, until recently, did not even need to be formulated. However, this general aspiration for peace has been on display again since the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, triggered on February 24, 2022: unanimously designated as soon as it was triggered as “unjustified”, it is perceived by the vast majority of the political class as a “crime” with an “anachronistic” dimension, upsetting a peace that we imagined acquired on European territory.
If the indignation against this war has given rise in France to countless calls and maneuvers – diplomatic, economic or political – with a view to putting an end to hostilities, the choice of the Head of State to provide strong military support to the Ukraine, with the delivery of defensive equipment but also complex armament systems, also seems to be the subject of a broad consensus. Of course, during the presidential campaign, there were some timid denunciations of the positions of each other.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon, in particular, had called at the beginning of March for distrust of “go to war”to the de-escalation and had claimed the figure of Jaurès – a position which had earned him, in return, the qualifier of “Munich” released by Yannick Jadot’s camp. But, almost two months and a re-election later, it is clear that Emmanuel Macron’s foreign policy raises few objections, in the political field as well as in public opinion.
This contradiction between calls for peace and the sending of offensive weapons may be all the more surprising since the same commitments arouse quite different resistance in neighboring European countries. Thus, in Italy, the government of Mario Draghi is divided on the question of the advisability of supplying arms to the Ukrainian army – the 5 Star Movement thus returning to the integral pacifism professed in its beginnings. In Germany, the questioning of military support for Ukraine in the name of pacifism has been expressed in the streets and in intellectual circles since the beginning of the conflict, and with all the more vigor since the government of Olaf Scholz now assumes a historic reversal of German armaments policy.
If the pacifist attitude – that which makes peace between nations a good that conditions all the others and which refuses any support, even indirect, for war – remains very much alive among our European neighbors, it seems to meet (at least currently ) a much lesser echo in France. For Maurice Vaïsse, professor emeritus of history of international relations at Sciences Po, there is nothing surprising in this: “We have the pacifism of its past, he explains. This historical background is essential to understand the current positions of each other in the face of the war in Ukraine. »
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