“This war is madness”

Speech by Thierry Baudet to Dutch Parliament, in a debate on the State of War in Europe, 14 March 2024

Mr Speaker,

Today we are discussing the State of War in Europe, which is nice.  A general debate on a big and very important topic in which we can hopefully zoom out and ask ourselves what we are actually doing.

The situation is urgent and incredibly dangerous. We are in danger of sleepwalking into a nuclear war. Our entire economy is sighing, creaking and nearly collapsing under the dramatic sanctions which, by the way, only help Russia economically. Hundreds of thousands of innocent boys and men have died a terrible death in the trenches of the Donbass. Having already sent our F16s, people are now speculating about sending Dutch soldiers.

How do we stop this disastrous escalation? How do we gain a perspective on peace? What is a realistic outcome of the current situation? How do we stop the bloodshed?

As far as I am concerned, these are the questions that should concern us all.

But I do not hear that anywhere. All I hear is war language, black-and-white thinking and tough, childishly naive fantasies of conquest. The seriousness of the situation we find ourselves in just does not seem to penetrate. Atomic war, and with it the total destruction of our world, is not unthinkable.  In the process, we are being completely misled. The story being told in the West is that it all started, out of nowhere, in February 2022. All of a sudden, the cruel and irrational dictator Vladimir Putin supposedly decided to invade - completely 'unprovoked', as they say, i.e. without any reason - the peaceful flower country of Ukraine. 

His ambition is said to be to bring back the Soviet Union of yesteryear, or rather to push on to Berlin and Amsterdam, and from there, as the prime minister put it the other day (to Nieuwsuur), use Europe as a 'launching pad' also to subject America to his lust for power. 

No one would be safe from the insane killing intent of this devil incarnate. In fact, he would have declared war on all of Western civilisation, all of humanity, all of the planet.

No sacrifice is therefore too great to stop him. Russia must be defeated and Putin must be removed from the throne, otherwise the world will never know peace, never know security, never be able to move forward with progress.

This is what is being heard all day, all over the Western world.

But Mr Speaker,

While you constantly hear talk of Kremlin propaganda, this fairy tale story about the Forces of Darkness and the Forces of Light is pure, unadulterated propaganda. NATO propaganda.

To my dismay - just as it was with Covid – this propaganda is being parroted by the entire mainstream press, across the board. By all columnists. By all the so-called 'security experts'. It is unbelievable but that is how one-sided the social debate really is, unfortunately.

Meanwhile, what are the facts? 

First of all, that the war definitely did not start in February 2022.

Nor did the war start in 2016, when the Association Agreement – remember that ? - was signed in defiance of the referendum result. 

No, the war was already in full swing in 2014, when the United States and the European Union conspired to oust Ukraine's then president – Viktor Yanukovych - and organised a violent revolution in Maidan Square (after which the CIA built no less than 12 military bases near the Russian border, installed several biolabs and helped organise bombing raids on the Eastern part of Ukraine).

I can still see MEPs Hans van Baalen and Guy Verhofstadt standing there, in that square. Imagine if Medvedev came here to whip up the peasants. Or if Xi Jingping went to the yellow vests in Paris, telling them to take power. 

Unimaginable in normal international relations. But the West just allows itself to do that and then is surprised that Russia gets angry. 

And no: that was not even the beginning either. 

The conflict was already in full swing when NATO declared in 2008 that Ukraine could join the alliance. 

Imagine Russia’s setting up a military alliance with Mexico - after Russia initiated a violent coup in Mexico. 

Surely everyone understands that is pure provocation? Surely the US would NEVER let that go over its head? 

Moreover, four years earlier, in 2004, the West organised a first 'colour revolution' in the country to help the Yushchenko couple, protégés of the US State Department, come to power.

So for at least 20 years, the NATO bloc has been trying to gain a foothold in Ukraine and to engage it in a struggle against Russia.

A battle which is naturally waged with slander and hate-mongering about Putin; an endless, otherwise also increasingly caricatural stream of bizarre allegations, but which actually stems from the geopolitical theorising of Halford Mackinder, Nicholas Spykman and, later, Zbigniew Brzezinski. 

The idea is that pitting Germany, the most powerful country in Western Europe, and Russia, the most powerful country in Eastern Europe, against each other is crucial for Atlantic - that is, for British and American - dominance on the world stage.

As long as Germany and Russia fight each other, in short, America can rule. 

See there the history of the Twentieth Century: the First and Second World Wars, the Cold War and now, the war in Ukraine.

So that's where it all comes from. That's why this is happening. A game for hegemony, a battle for planetary dominance.

Only: the world is changing. What might have worked before is not working now. 

The balance of power is shifting.  While the United States is in free fall economically, culturally, in terms of public health, crime and ethnic conflict, this dying sun is shining like a supernova inflamed by its global thirst for war. 

Even if one's focus is not the European but the Atlantic interest, one should still be against this war - as very many Ukrainians are, by the way. Indeed, there was a peace agreement after only a few weeks - until Boris Johnson travelled to Ukraine as America's errand boy to say the bloodshed must continue.

Zelensky has since called off his own re-election because he knows the Ukrainian people will not re-elect him.

Everyone is totally fed up - except the US war industry, the hawks at the State Department and their servants here in Western Europe.

Mr Speaker,

This war is unwinnable for the West. This war is accelerating the decline of the pax Americana. We risk sending our own sons and daughters to the front. This war is destroying our economy and prosperity and it carries with it the risk of nuclear war. It is not our war. It is madness.