Europe’s Self-Destruction - Jacques Baud
The Insider and His Verdict: Biography and an Inconvenient Truth
An analysis from inside the security architecture—beyond morality, beyond narratives, grounded in treaties, power, and strategic reality.
Jacques Baud — a man who knows intelligence services, peacekeeping operations, and geopolitical analysis from firsthand experience.
Born in 1955, he holds a Master’s degree in Econometrics and a postgraduate qualification in International Security and International Relations.
He served as an analyst at the Warsaw Pact desk of the Swiss Intelligence Service and later as an army colonel—credentials that place him among the elite of strategic observers.
During the 1990s and 2000s, he worked for the United Nations, helped establish the first multidimensional UN intelligence center for peacekeeping missions, and led programs on demining and small-arms control.
He later moved on to international institutions, including participation in NATO-related missions in the context of Ukraine.
Baud is the author of numerous books and analyses on intelligence, terrorism, asymmetric warfare, information warfare, and geopolitical conflict.
💬 “True power lies not in the noise of weapons, but in the quiet knowledge no one wants to hear.”His experience—from the Cold War through UN peacekeeping missions to the current conflict in Ukraine—positions him at a rare intersection of classical intelligence analysis, strategic thinking, and geopolitical critique.
The Moment of Strategic Truth: A Crack in the Western Narrative
A single conversation was enough to expose how fragile Europe’s geopolitical self-image had become.
The text opens immediately with a scene of global significance: the summit between the President of the United States and Vladimir Putin. The world holds its breath. What matters is not the photograph or the official statement, but the message carried between the lines: a possible change of course. A crack in the Western narrative.
Remarkably, both sides assessed the meeting positively. Moscow interpreted it as recognition of its role as an equal power; Washington saw it as a diplomatic breakthrough and a release valve. Yet it was precisely this apparent normality, this delicate hint of détente, that carried explosive potential for Europe.
This very moment laid bare Europe’s strategic emptiness. While Washington and Moscow soberly weighed interests, Europe revealed how stability, dialogue, and de-escalation were no longer conceived as political options, but as threats. The crack in the Western narrative was therefore not a diplomatic detail, but an existential shock: it showed that Europe’s power does not rest on its own strategy, but on the maintenance of a fragile narrative structure—one that begins to collapse the moment it deviates from the logic of confrontation.
The European Shock: Elite Hysteria in the Face of Their Own Failure
What began as diplomatic normality turned into a threat to Europe’s self-image.
The echo from Europe was not one of relief, but of panic.
The shock ran deep—a moment when political elites sensed that their own narrative might begin to unravel. Hysteria erupted across the capitals. The reactions were reflexive, not because facts had changed, but because the mere possibility of direct dialogue threatened a painstakingly constructed geopolitical storyline.
According to Colonel Baud’s analysis, this storyline rested on three supposedly immutable dogmas:
- Russia must be demonized.
- Diplomacy is a sign of weakness.
- Confrontation is the only option.
The true trigger of this hysteria was not Russia, but the sudden prospect of losing control. A direct dialogue between Washington and Moscow threatened to render Europe’s role as moral amplifier and geopolitical agenda-setter obsolete. What could have been accepted as diplomatic normality was therefore perceived as a danger—not to security, but to political self-staging.
In that moment, the deeper fear of the elites became visible: peace would have raised questions they could not answer. Questions about Minsk, about missed diplomacy, about their own responsibility. The hysteria was thus not a sign of resolve, but a defensive reflex—an attempt to stabilize a crumbling narrative with volume, rather than subject it to reality.
Baud’s Core Critique: Strategy Driven by Wishful Thinking
Here, European strategy fractures at the gap between desire and reality.
The consequences of this doctrinal posture are laid bare by Baud’s precise statement, which strikes at the heart of Europe’s strategic crisis:
💬 “As a result, Western states lose themselves in concepts that make neither sense nor structure—and end up fighting phantom wars. … When we adapt our strategies to our wishes rather than to realities on the ground, we do not solve problems—we prolong them.”Baud makes clear that Europe’s strategy is no longer anchored in real power relations, historical experience, or verifiable data, but in politically desired outcomes. Decisions are constructed backwards: first comes the moral objective, only then the search for arguments, models, and threat scenarios to justify it.
This inversion of strategic logic inevitably produces “phantom wars”—conflicts that can neither be won nor resolved, because they do not emerge from sober analysis but from projection. Europe is thus not fighting real adversaries, but the discrepancy between self-image and reality—and pays the price in instability, escalation, and political paralysis.
The Desperate Act: Blocking De-escalation
A chapter about the fear of peace and the loss of narrative control.
Several European heads of state and government felt sidelined and isolated. Their response: frantic plans to fly to Washington the very same day. The goal was not to negotiate substance, but to obstruct Trump’s diplomatic initiative.
The symbolic gesture—the demand that Zelenskyy must accompany them—was not a diplomatic maneuver, but a psychological projection: the hope that, in his presence, the U.S. president would not act independently, would not de-escalate.
This assumption revealed Europe’s true weakness. The continent is not dependent on Russia or Ukraine, but on the fear of its own political class—fear of losing control over the geopolitical narrative.
The desperate attempt to block de-escalation marked a historic low point in European foreign policy. Instead of using its own room for maneuver, Europe exposed its complete dependence on the continuation of escalation—not as a means of security, but as the glue holding together a political self-image that would collapse without confrontation and an enemy figure.
The Card House in Brussels: A Projection Collapses
For the first time, the focus shifts inward—toward Europe’s own center of power.
At this point, Jacques Baud proceeds with surgical clarity. He dismantles the long-standing claim by European politicians and media that Russia and China are “card houses”—unstable systems on the verge of collapse.
The diplomatic realignment between Washington and Moscow now proves otherwise: this image was a projection. The real, fragile card house does not stand in Moscow or Beijing, but at the heart of European power—in Brussels.
The true cause of failure is clear: Europe did not stumble because Russia grew stronger, but because it entangled itself in a web of strategic dependencies:
- Dependence on American security (NATO doctrine).
- Dependence on Russian energy (historically entrenched).
- Dependence on political narratives that never withstood sober scrutiny.
- Dependence on a foreign policy lacking any independent contours.
When these dependencies were exposed by a single diplomatic moment, Europe’s self-image began to erode. The card house in Brussels started to wobble because it was never built on strategic autonomy, but on the illusion of permanent external control: security outsourced, energy instrumentalized, thinking delegated. The moment this construction was laid bare, all that remained of Europe’s claimed agency was an echo of explanations—without a strategy of its own.
Strategic Emptiness: Why the West Fights “Phantom Wars”
Where objectives are absent, escalation becomes a substitute for strategy.
Baud underscores that Russia’s structural stability and the diplomatic realignment of the Global South were not threats at all—they functioned instead as a mirror, exposing Europe’s strategic emptiness.
The continent has reached a geopolitical endpoint defined by a triple weakness:
- A lack of strategic autonomy.
- An absence of moral authority.
- A complete loss of economic independence.
This emptiness compels the West to keep conflicts artificially alive. “Phantom wars” emerge where genuine strategic goals are missing but political narratives must be sustained. They do not resolve problems; they stabilize a self-image that loses legitimacy without permanent confrontation.
Within this logic, war becomes a stand-in for strategy. Escalation compensates for lost autonomy, moral rhetoric replaces political substance, and sanctions simulate agency where none exists. The West does not fight to win or to make peace—it fights to avoid acknowledging its own strategic void.
The West’s Fundamental Cognitive Failure
A section on the systematic unlearning of historical causality.
It is precisely here that Baud delivers the quotation that exposes the core of the strategic betrayal—a fundamental flaw in Western warfare and conflict analysis.
💬 “Russians understand conflicts in a holistic way. … In the West, we focus on moment X and try to guess how it might develop. … The idea that the path to a solution lies in understanding how a conflict emerged is completely foreign to the West.”Baud’s analysis is explosive because it shows that Europe’s weakness was not created by external actors, but by its own political architecture and its failure to understand conflicts as integrated processes.
This cognitive deficit is not academic—it has direct political consequences. Those who view conflicts in isolation, without analyzing their origins, escalation dynamics, and treaty histories, are structurally incapable of de-escalation. Decisions are no longer understood as part of a process, but as isolated reactions—driven by media cycles, moral impulses, and short-term domestic pressures.
Within this framework, Europe becomes blind to its own chains of causation. By ignoring the roots of conflicts, it inevitably fails to achieve any sustainable solution. The result is a politics of permanent present tense: loud, morally charged, and strategically hollow—incapable of linking past, present, and future into a coherent foreign policy.
The Real Earthquake: The Collapse of an Illusion
The real shock did not lie in the summit itself, but in Europe’s reaction to it.
The true tremor of that week was not the meeting itself, but the stark contrast in international responses. While the United States viewed it as a window for de-escalation and Russia as an act of recognition, the rest of the world—the Global South—saw nothing more than normalcy.
Only Europe reacted fundamentally differently. The sense of losing control was so intense because an entire political illusion collapsed at once—an act of self-deception resting on several pillars:
- The illusion of diplomatic strength.
- The illusion of moral leadership.
- The illusion of being able to control Russia.
- The illusion of steering American policy by clinging unconditionally to Washington.
The moment a U.S. president and Vladimir Putin spoke calmly with one another, this self-deception burst.
That instant functioned like a seismic stress test for Europe’s political structure. When it became clear that the world continued to turn without European outrage, it was exposed how deeply Europe’s self-image rested on illusion rather than real agency. The real earthquake was therefore not a diplomatic event, but the realization that Europe’s influence derived less from substance than from the assumption of indispensability—an assumption disproven in a single moment of quiet normality.
Conclusion: The Crisis of Strategic Sovereignty
Here, Europe’s predicament condenses into a question of its own capacity to act.
This is precisely where the core of the geopolitical shock lies: the reality of world politics and Europe’s self-image are finally pulling apart.
Jacques Baud poses the decisive question—one that demands reflection:
💬 “What does it say about Europe’s substance that a single, relaxed conversation can shake the entire architectural foundation of European politics?”Baud’s final thesis:
Europe is not facing an external threat from Russia or China—it is facing a profound internal crisis of its own strategic sovereignty.
This crisis is the result of a long retreat from independent strategic thinking. Europe has gradually outsourced its security, energy, and foreign-policy decisions, thereby losing the ability to respond sovereignly to global upheavals. What is now experienced as shock is, in reality, the logical consequence of years of self-disempowerment.
Baud’s conclusion is therefore unequivocal: without a return to sober interest-based analysis, legal reliability, and genuine strategic autonomy, Europe will remain a reactive actor. The world has not turned against Europe—Europe has ceased to see itself as a sovereign shaper of world politics.
The Illusion of Strength: From “Civilizational Giant” to Junior Partner
A chapter on the confusion of moral aspiration with real power.
Jacques Baud’s analysis is unsparing here. He distills Europe’s reality to its core: the European card house is not at risk of collapse because of external enemies, but because of internal misjudgments, strategic overconfidence, and the loss of realpolitik grounding.
The central finding:
- Europe fails not because others grew stronger, but because it deceived itself.
Outwardly, the continent continues to present itself as a civilizational giant—anchored in values, norms, and moral claims. In practice, however, Europe operates as a junior partner, adopting foreign strategies, executing decisions made elsewhere, and commenting on developments rather than shaping them. The illusion of strength thus replaces genuine agency.
It is precisely this discrepancy that renders Europe’s position so fragile. A polity that feels morally superior yet remains strategically dependent inevitably loses influence. Baud’s diagnosis shows that Europe’s decline is not a sudden rupture, but the result of a long-cultivated confusion of rhetoric with power.
Baud’s Diagnosis: The Role of Media and “Experts”
Analysis gives way to ideology, and dissent is rebranded as deviation.
Baud locates the weakness directly within decision-making processes and the dominant narrative: the EU barely makes any independent foreign-policy decisions anymore. It is fully embedded in the NATO agenda, whose parameters are set in Washington.
The continent dreams of strategic autonomy while, diplomatically, economically, and militarily, it reflexively adopts U.S. directives.
💬 “Our media and ‘experts’ quite literally pushed Ukraine into this conflict—by denying it any negotiating option while simultaneously making it believe that Russia was an opponent it could defeat.”In this system, media and self-appointed experts no longer function as a corrective, but as amplifiers of political wishful thinking. Instead of openly analyzing risks, power relations, and diplomatic alternatives, they reproduce simplified narratives that frame any deviation from the logic of escalation as moral betrayal.
This shifts responsibility. Political misjudgments appear inevitable, while critical voices are marginalized or discredited. Baud’s diagnosis is therefore fundamental: it is not Russia or external threats that have narrowed Europe’s room for maneuver, but a media–political complex that replaces analysis with ideology—and in doing so actively produces Europe’s strategic self-disempowerment.
Political Infantilism: The Origin of Strategic Weakness
Strategic immaturity becomes a structural feature of political decision-making.
The EU thus acts as a stage on which the leading roles are played by others. For Baud, the root of this strategic disempowerment lies in a form of “political infantilism” that increasingly shapes Europe’s decisions.
It is a childlike, impulsive, and morally truncated mode of thinking that ignores the real consequences of political action.
This political infantilism manifests itself in the refusal to assume responsibility for long-term outcomes. Decisions are made to secure moral approval or to satisfy short-term domestic pressures, not to build stable security structures. Strategy is replaced by posture, analysis by indignation.
For Baud, this behavior lies at the very core of Europe’s weakness. An actor that emotionalizes conflicts instead of thinking them through inevitably loses agency. Europe thus appears not as a sovereign shaper of events, but as an immature participant in a power game whose rules are set by others.
A Continent Without a Compass: The Evidence of Infantilism
Concrete political decisions make the abstract diagnosis tangible.
The lack of strategic independence is not a short-term failure, but the result of a long process of unlearning political self-responsibility. Europe has grown accustomed to delegating core security and foreign-policy questions and rationalizing decisions as “alliance loyalty,” rather than formulating them on the basis of its own interests.
As a result, strategy loses its formative character and is reduced to mere adaptation. For Baud, this is the decisive point: an actor without its own strategic will is not neutral, but externally directed. Europe’s problem is therefore not a lack of power, but the deliberate refusal to think about and exercise it independently.
This lack of strategic autonomy manifests itself in two stark patterns:
1. Foreign-Policy Dependence: The Reflexive Automatism
The EU follows Washington’s directives almost automatically—whether in military interventions, Middle East policy, or sanctions regimes—even when these steps contradict its own interests. This pattern is so entrenched that it functions as an automatism.
2. Energy-Policy Self-Destruction: An Act of Self-Mutilation
The most drastic consequence of this infantilism is the abrupt break with Russian energy supplies. Baud does not diagnose this as a carefully considered strategic move, but as an act of ideological self-mutilation.
The consequence for Germany:
- The loss of affordable energy as the foundation of industrial competitiveness.
Instead of correcting this misstep strategically, the political class attempted to reframe it morally. Foreseeable outcomes—rising production costs, tendencies toward deindustrialization, and growing social strain—were not recognized as warning signs, but presented as necessary sacrifices for a supposedly higher moral mission.
For Baud, this behavior is the clearest proof of Europe’s loss of direction. A continent that sacrifices fundamental interests to signal moral posture has ceased to shape politics. It now merely manages its own losses—and calls this principle.
The Destructive Dichotomy: Morality versus Method
Here, moral self-certainty and strategic analysis collide head-on.
Baud identifies the core problem with precision: European capitals have stopped analyzing the world and have begun moralizing it instead.
This is where Baud’s quotation crystallizes the strategic gap between East and West—and serves as a decisive concluding argument:
💬 “As a likely consequence of Vladimir Putin’s professional background, decisions—unlike in Europe—are made through a methodical analysis of facts and in cooperation with the intelligence services.”The EU no longer thinks in terms of geopolitical interests, but in moral labels—good versus evil, democracy versus autocracy.
- Conclusion: This black-and-white dichotomy destroys any form of diplomatic reality. A continent that seeks to act globally while viewing the world exclusively through moral filters is blind—and has lost its compass.
This shift from method to morality explains why European policy has become both increasingly ineffective and prone to escalation. When analysis is replaced by value judgments, the capacity to understand adversaries, weigh interests, and manage conflicts disappears. For Baud, this is the true destructive force: a foreign policy that feels morally superior but is methodologically hollow produces no solutions—it reproduces blindness and accelerates its own loss of relevance.
The Dangerous Contradiction: Hysterical Morality vs. Hard Reality (BRICS vs. EU)
The Global South becomes a mirror of Europe’s strategic disorientation.
Jacques Baud confronts Europe with the unvarnished reality of the Global South. This contrast exposes Europe’s strategic blindness:
- BRICS: pragmatic realpolitik.
- EU: moral self-affirmation.
This opposition reveals a fundamental asymmetry in political thinking. While much of the world understands power as something that must be organized, negotiated, and secured, Europe treats power primarily as a moral problem. Interests are not defined—they are moralized.
The result is a foreign policy aimed less at effectiveness than at self-confirmation. Decisions serve to affirm values rather than to shape real power relations. Strategy is replaced by symbolic politics, and geopolitical dynamics are misread as moral deviations.
This intellectual framework leaves Europe incapable of navigating a multipolar world. While the Global South is building the future, Europe is fighting historical ghosts.
The Disinformation Spiral
A closed narrative replaces open analysis.
Baud’s quotation places a finger directly on the wound of the Western conflict narrative and provides a concrete example from the Ukraine debate:
💬 “As in all conflicts, Ukraine became the stage for unrestrained disinformation. … From the very beginning, the Western narrative revolved around the idea that ‘Russia cannot win this war and must not win it.’”This narrative created a sealed information space in which dissenting analyses were systematically excluded. Military realities, diplomatic options, and historical contexts had no place, because they would have endangered the central dogma: the belief in an inevitable Western victory.
For Baud, this disinformation spiral is not merely a media failure, but a strategic risk. Policies built on false premises lose the capacity for course correction. The longer the narrative is maintained, the higher the cost of confronting reality—and the greater the temptation to conceal mistakes through further escalation.
The Final Diagnosis: Europe – From Actor to Geopolitical Misunderstanding
The accumulation of false assumptions culminates in strategic irrelevance.
In this contradiction, Jacques Baud identifies the real danger. He states it unambiguously:
The European Union is on the verge of becoming a global security risk—not because of its strength, but because of its profound weakness.
This weakness manifests itself in:
- Moral activism
- Economic self-destruction
- Foreign-policy submission
A continent without its own vision, without clearly defined interests, and without a strategic compass—yet one that simultaneously presents itself as a moral beacon—is not a partner, but a potential destabilizer. It becomes unpredictable.
The final verdict: Europe no longer understands the world, yet still seeks to lecture it. It fails to grasp conflicts and nevertheless intensifies them. It does not recognize its own weakness and still postures as strong.
💬 “Europe is no longer a geopolitical actor; it has become a geopolitical misunderstanding.”For Baud, this is the core danger. An actor that fails to recognize its own limitations does not act cautiously, but erratically. Europe’s moral self-elevation combined with strategic emptiness produces behavior that is perceived internationally not as leadership, but as instability. In this condition, Europe ceases to be an ordering force in world politics and becomes a source of uncertainty—one that exacerbates conflicts because it neither understands nor controls them.
Conclusion by Colonel Jacques Baud: The Balance Sheet of Self-Destruction
A diagnosis without polemics, but with final clarity.
Baud’s concluding assessment is marked by unvarnished clarity and names the painful truth. Europe’s decline is not the result of external threats—neither from Moscow nor from Beijing—but the consequence of self-inflicted strategic misjudgments deeply embedded in the continent’s political culture.
The causes of this degradation can be distilled to a single core issue:
- Self-deception instead of strategic self-awareness.
Europe refuses to undertake a realistic assessment of its own interests and replaces it with moral self-righteousness. In realpolitik, this posture does not generate influence—it produces blindness. Geopolitical complexity is reduced to simplistic dichotomies, diplomatic nuance disappears, and the capacity to understand how conflicts emerge is lost.
From this emerges a form of strategic naivety that is not accidental, but systemic. Analysis is displaced by ideology, dissent is branded as disloyalty. In such an environment, politics forgets how to distinguish between risk, interest, and feasibility.
In parallel, Europe remains trapped in structural dependence. While speaking of strategic autonomy, the continent reflexively adopts directives from Washington—militarily, diplomatically, and narratively. For Baud, this refusal to emancipate is the core of self-destruction: as long as responsibility is outsourced, sovereignty remains an illusion.
The Diagnosis: The Panicked House of Cards
A continent no longer acts strategically, but instinctively.
Jacques Baud’s analysis is more than an indictment; it is a ruthless diagnosis. It reveals how a continent that for centuries stood at the unquestioned center of global diplomacy has been reduced to a panicked house of cards.
The true tragedy lies in the fact that this house of cards is not toppled by invasion, but can collapse at any moment under the weight of its own moral arrogance.
Europe has not merely shifted from geopolitical actor to spectator; as Baud warns, through political infantilism and the denial of hard reality it has become a potential global security risk.
This is the final warning of a man who knows the mechanics of conflict from the inside: without a radical break from moral delusion and a return to pragmatic realpolitik, Europe’s decline is only a matter of time.
This diagnosis therefore marks not an endpoint, but a turning point. It explains why European policy does not merely fail, but increasingly appears irrational. Those who systematically deny reality do not respond to its return with adaptation, but with panic. The “panicked house of cards” is thus not a rhetorical image, but an accurate description of a continent that senses its own erosion—yet remains incapable of changing course.
The Roots of Betrayal: Minsk as a Deception Maneuver
The conflict did not begin with war, but with a breach of contract.
To understand Europe’s panic and Moscow’s uncompromising stance, one must return to the political foundations of the conflict. Jacques Baud has emphasized for years that this conflict did not begin with Russian aggression, but with a Western breach of agreement.
The Minsk Agreements were conceived as a security stabilizer, not as a tactical instrument. Their purpose was to freeze the internal Ukrainian conflict, protect the civilian population in the Donbas, and enable a political settlement within Ukraine. Within this architecture, Russia was not cast as an aggressor, but as a guarantor.
For Baud, this is precisely where the later rupture originated. Minsk was not treated in the West as a binding framework, but as a temporary façade. What was officially presented as a peace process functioned in practice as delay, rearmament, and strategic preparation—a deception whose consequences permanently destroyed trust in Western diplomacy.
The Central Betrayal: The Minsk Agreement
A peace mechanism is politically hollowed out.
The Minsk Agreement was not a simple geopolitical deal, but a security mechanism designed to protect the civilian population in the Donbas.
Its core elements were clearly defined and fundamentally challenged the prevailing European posture:
- First: the protection of the Russian-speaking population—their culture, language, religious rights, and political autonomy.
- Second: an internal Ukrainian solution. The issue was domestic and was meant to remain so. Russia, France, and Germany were to act solely as guarantors.
Kyiv implemented none of these provisions. Instead, Ukraine actively engaged the Donbas region militarily, with the tacit consent of Western governments.
Instead of initiating the contractually agreed political steps, Minsk was effectively frozen. Autonomy arrangements were withheld, dialogue was refused, and military means replaced political solutions. For Baud, this paralysis was not an oversight, but the result of deliberate political choices that systematically undermined the agreement’s core.
The real betrayal lay in publicly declaring Minsk the foundation for peace while rendering it meaningless in practice. This dual strategy not only destroyed the last realistic chance for de-escalation, but sent Moscow an unmistakable signal: Western commitments were no longer a reliable basis. From Baud’s perspective, the path to escalation was thereby set.
The Revelation of the Guarantor Powers
What is openly admitted retroactively destroys all credibility.
The decisive and shocking point in Baud’s analysis is the later, explicit confirmation by Angela Merkel and François Hollande:
💬 “Minsk was not intended as a peace agreement, but was meant to buy Ukraine time to rearm militarily.”The guarantor powers therefore never intended to honor the agreement. They used Minsk as a political deception maneuver and as a diplomatic façade for military buildup.
- For Moscow, this constituted an unprecedented breach of trust.
- For the people of the Donbas, it resulted in years of humanitarian catastrophe.
From Baud’s perspective, this disclosure marked the final rupture of diplomatic trust. When guarantor powers openly admit to having deliberately instrumentalized a framework of international law, diplomacy is reduced to mere tactics and treaty obligations become optional. For Moscow, this did not simply mean the failure of an agreement, but the end of any expectation that Western commitments could be relied upon.
At the same time, the deception further worsened conditions on the ground. Continued violence in the Donbas, the absence of political solutions, and creeping militarization produced a protracted humanitarian crisis whose responsibility was systematically deflected. Baud’s conclusion is unequivocal: the revelation by the guarantor powers transformed Minsk, in retrospect, from a failed peace process into the deliberate opening act of a long-term escalation.
Holistic Thinking versus Opportunistic Deception
Two fundamentally different conceptions of history and responsibility.
This diplomatic betrayal once again illuminates the fundamental difference in strategic thinking that Baud has emphasized throughout his analysis:
💬 “The way Russians understand conflicts is holistic. … In other words, they see the processes that develop and lead to a particular situation.”From Moscow’s perspective, this agreement was not merely the breach of a single treaty, but part of a long-term process of deception that irreversibly destroyed trust in Western commitments.
For Russia, this produces a coherent chain of causality. Treaties are not isolated episodes, but components of a continuous security architecture. When one element of that architecture is deliberately undermined, the credibility of the entire system collapses. In this logic, Minsk did not simply “fail”—it became part of a cumulative process of deception.
By contrast stands a Western practice that treats agreements situationally and opportunistically. For Baud, it is precisely this contrast that explains the depth of today’s rupture: while Moscow thinks in long-term processes, the West acts tactically in the moment. What appears in Europe as flexible policy is perceived in Moscow as systematic unreliability—with far-reaching consequences for security and stability.
The Chronology of Deception: Eight Years of Blockade
Stagnation on the surface, escalation beneath.
The revelation that Minsk had been conceived as a deception maneuver resulted in an eight-year stalemate that made the conflict unavoidable.
- Eight years of waiting: Russia demanded implementation of the agreement. OSCE reports consistently indicated that attacks in the Donbas originated from Kyiv. Russian proposals were systematically ignored.
- Eight years of rearmament: In parallel, the West built up Ukraine’s armed forces with massive financial, military, and strategic support.
From Baud’s perspective, these eight years were not a phase of diplomatic stagnation, but a period of deliberate delay. While the peace narrative was formally maintained, a military reality solidified on the ground—one that made any political solution increasingly unlikely.
The blockade operated on two levels. It deprived the civilian population in the Donbas of any effective protection, while simultaneously signaling to Moscow that agreements applied only as long as they aligned with Western interests. In this logic, the shift from diplomatic deception to open escalation was not a rupture, but the consistent continuation of a strategy pursued for years.
Baud’s Thesis: An Act of Self-Defense
An interpretation that challenges the Western origin narrative.
It was this chronic, systematic blockade—combined with the rearmament of the opposing side—that ultimately set Russia in motion. Here, Jacques Baud formulates the central and controversial counter-thesis to the prevailing Western narrative:
The Russian intervention was not an act of imperial ambition or territorial appetite, but an act of self-defense, triggered by the real danger of an impending massacre in the Donbas.
For Baud, this assessment does not stem from political sympathy, but from the logic of events. Eight years of diplomatic blockade, documented attacks on the civilian population, and the ongoing militarization of Ukraine created a situation in which further waiting was assessed in Moscow as an unacceptable security risk.
From this perspective, the intervention was not a sudden escalation, but the outcome of a prolonged decision-making process. It marked the moment when Russia concluded that contractual mechanisms had failed and that the protection of the Donbas population could only be enforced through military means—an interpretation that fundamentally challenges the Western narrative.
The First Lie: The Budapest Memorandum
The beginning of false expectations without legal substance.
To grasp the full scope of the betrayal embodied in Minsk, one must uncover the first lie in the history of this conflict: the Budapest Memorandum.
Since 2022, this document has been frequently cited by Western politicians—but rarely represented accurately.
- The 1994 deal: Ukraine relinquished its nuclear arsenal—the third largest in the world—in exchange for security assurances.
- The reality of those assurances: They had nothing to do with NATO membership or a military defense obligation. They were limited to political commitments (respect for territorial integrity, no economic coercion).
- The decisive point: The memorandum was not legally binding. It was a political promise, not a legal shield.
Even the U.S. State Department publicly clarified that the Budapest Memorandum carries “no legal obligation.”
For Baud, this marks the origin of a systematic misinterpretation. A political assurance was retroactively reframed as a security guarantee in order to legitimize later political decisions. This reinterpretation not only obscured the legal reality, but laid the groundwork for false expectations—neither contractually secured nor strategically backed. It is a pattern that would later reappear in far more consequential form with Minsk.
Conclusion of the Deception
What began as non-binding ended in the erosion of international law.
Precisely because Budapest was legally non-binding, a second, binding agreement was required. And that second document—the legally enforceable security mechanism—was the Minsk Agreement.
The violation of the Minsk Agreement therefore represents not merely a breach of contract, but the systematic destruction of the only legally binding protection mechanism that existed after the first, non-binding lie of Budapest.
For Baud, this point is central. Minsk was not an optional diplomatic paper, but the sole legally robust framework that existed after the non-binding Budapest Memorandum. Its disregard did not simply break a treaty—it hollowed out the very principle of a reliable security architecture.
This fundamentally shifts responsibility. What was later portrayed as “unprovoked escalation” appears, in this logic, as the consequence of a systematic breach of law and trust. The deception did not consist of a single act, but of the deliberate dismantling of the very mechanisms designed to prevent war.
The Only Genuine Treaty: The Suspension of International Law
The final legal anchor is deliberately severed.
The logical chain of deception is completed by the 1997 Friendship Treaty. This agreement represented the central attempt to close the gaps left by the non-binding Budapest Memorandum.
- Core clause: The treaty guaranteed Ukraine’s territorial integrity and the inviolability of its borders.
- The decisive condition: Russia’s guarantees applied only on the condition that Ukraine fully protected the rights of its ethnic groups—particularly the Russian-speaking population.
This treaty therefore constituted the only genuinely binding framework that legally secured the territorial order between Russia and Ukraine. Unlike Budapest, it was not a political assurance, but a legally effective agreement that clearly defined rights and obligations and tied them to explicit conditions.
For Baud, this is the decisive point. With the subsequent disregard and eventual termination of this treaty, it was not merely a bilateral agreement that came to an end—the foundation of applicable international law itself was undermined. At that moment, the territorial order lost its legal protection, and the conflict definitively entered a zone of political arbitrariness.
The Legal Vacuum
Law is replaced by political assertion.
After the Maidan in 2014, Kyiv openly breached this treaty by revoking the official status of the Russian language and disregarding autonomy rights.
The decisive—and largely overlooked—act, however, was Kyiv’s unilateral termination of the treaty in 2019.
💬 “With this act, Ukraine destroyed the only valid agreement that had provided international legal protection for its territorial borders.”The termination of the treaty created a legal no-man’s-land. The existing international legal safeguards of Ukraine’s borders were not replaced by a new agreement, but simply eliminated. For the first time since 1997, there was no binding legal framework on which the territorial order could rest.
For Baud, this vacuum is crucial to understanding the escalation. Without a valid treaty, security was no longer guaranteed by law, but asserted politically. In such an environment, appeals to international law lose their substance—not because the law is ignored, but because it had previously been systematically dismantled.
The Chain Reaction: The Strategic Outcome of Double Betrayal
One breach of trust amplifies the next.
From Russia’s perspective, this produced a systematic sequence of treaty violations—a double betrayal that led to catastrophe:
- 1994 (Budapest): Political assurances without legal binding force.
- 1997 (Friendship Treaty): Legally binding guarantees unilaterally terminated by Kyiv.
- 2014–2021 (Minsk): A binding peace agreement ignored by the European guarantor powers.
- 2022: The uncontrolled risk of an impending massacre in the Donbas.
For Moscow, this sequence does not represent a loose collection of political mistakes, but a closed strategic experience. Each breach reinforced the previous one; each act of disregard confirmed the assumption that Western commitments are situational and revocable. From this perspective, trust did not erode step by step—it collapsed cumulatively, taking the entire security architecture with it.
Baud emphasizes that it was precisely this chain reaction that radically narrowed Russia’s room for maneuver. When political assurances remain non-binding, legally binding treaties are terminated, and even peace agreements function as deception, security ceases to be negotiable. In this logic, the conflict was not triggered—it was rendered inevitable, the end point of a long series of strategic breaches of trust.
Baud’s Final Thesis: Legalism vs. Opportunism
Two incompatible logics collide without restraint.
The Western miscalculation was a moment of hubris: it assumed that Russia would show unlimited patience, treat treaties as optional, and allow minorities to be sacrificed without consequence.
Baud distills this pattern to its clearest formulation:
💬 “Russia acts in an extremely legalistic manner, while the West acts in an extremely opportunistic one.”When these two diametrically opposed systems collided, the war did not emerge as a spontaneous decision, but as the tragically consistent outcome of a long political chain reaction and a total collapse of trust in Western diplomacy.
For Baud, this contrast is the key to understanding the escalation. While Russia views treaties as binding security guarantees, the West treats them as flexible instruments of political expediency. What is regarded in Western capitals as tactical adaptability is perceived in Moscow as systematic legal uncertainty.
The collision of these two logics ultimately made the conflict unavoidable. Legalism and opportunism could not coexist without detonating the entire security architecture. For Baud, the war was therefore not an abrupt rupture, but the logical consequence of a diplomacy that had squandered trust and abandoned binding commitment.
The Logic of Escalation: History as an Unbroken Line
The past becomes the explanation of the present.
Today’s European panic and ideological hardening are the result of a strategic blindness incapable of interpreting the past three decades from Moscow’s perspective.
For Baud, history is not a loose archive of isolated decisions, but a continuous line of political experience. Those who ignore this line fail to understand why red lines emerge, why patience has limits, and why certain actions are perceived in Moscow not as escalation, but as consequence.
Europe’s blindness to this historical continuity causes every new stage of escalation to be experienced as a surprise. In reality, it is the product of an unbroken causal chain built over many years—visible to those who understand history as a process, and invisible to those who view it only episodically.
The Two Ways of Thinking:
Episodes collide with historical continuity.
The fundamental divergence lies in historical perception:
- The West: episodic thinking.
- Russia: a coherent historical line.
Western policy treats key decisions as separate, disconnected events. Treaties, commitments, and strategic choices are viewed in isolation and reinterpreted when convenient, without accounting for their long-term impact or their place within a broader security architecture.
For Moscow, by contrast, these events form an unbroken chain. Since 1994, promises, breaches of contract, and strategic shifts have been read as a single, continuous process. In this logic, there are no “new beginnings,” only continuations—a difference in thinking that explains why Europe reacts with surprise while Russia speaks of consequence.
For Baud, this discrepancy in perception is central. It explains why dialogue so often fails: the two sides are not speaking about the same history. As long as Europe fragments the past into episodes and Russia understands it as a line, escalation remains more likely than understanding.
The Unbroken Causal Chain: A 30-Year Betrayal
Three decades of political decisions converge into a single consequence.
For Russian military strategists and security analysts, the sequence of events forms a clear, unbroken chronology — a mathematically coherent causal chain that leads directly to the conflict of 2022:
- 1994 (Budapest): Political assurances without legal force, later instrumentalized.
- 1997 (Friendship Treaty): The only binding protection mechanism, unilaterally terminated by Kyiv.
- 2004 (Orange Revolution): The first major signal of Western political intervention.
- 2008 (Bucharest Summit): Despite explicit warnings, the declaration that “Ukraine will become a NATO member.”
- 2014 (Maidan & legislation): The erosion of minority rights and the effective breach of the 1997 treaty.
- 2014–2021 (Minsk): Systematic sabotage of the peace agreement by the guarantor powers.
- 2021–2022 (Manoeuvres & rhetoric): Large-scale militarization and escalating confrontation.
- 2022 (Trigger): The immediate risk of an impending attack on the Donbas.
The conclusion is stark: Every promise was broken, every red line crossed. Europe fails to grasp this deep chronological continuity — Russia operates entirely within it.
The Decisive Divide: Hysterical Morality vs. Strategic Reality
Morality replaces analysis — with direct consequences for security policy.
This section crystallizes the central discrepancy Jacques Baud exposes throughout his analysis: morality versus reality.
- Russia: Thinks in terms of treaties, borders, security architecture, and strategic logic.
- Europe: Has dissolved its foreign policy into moral categories.
In Brussels, the decisive factor is no longer the analysis of historical processes, international law, or geopolitical interests. What matters now is a single narrative question: who is framed as “good” and who as “evil” within the European media landscape.
This moral simplification replaces complex analysis with narrative certainty. Treaties, security interests, and historical dynamics lose relevance the moment they no longer fit into a rigid black-and-white moral framework. Foreign policy ceases to function as an instrument of conflict management and becomes a stage for moral self-affirmation.
For Baud, this marks the decisive break with strategic reality: when morality is elevated above method, the capacity for de-escalation is lost. Europe no longer responds to the world as it is, but to a moralized distortion of it — rendering itself incapable of actively shaping security, stability, or peace.
The Political Escape: Escalation as Self-Preservation
Escalation becomes a tool to avoid admitting one’s own failures.
Moral categories, however, do not replace strategy or security policy. They function as political escapism — and in the worst case, as the accelerant that further intensifies crises.
Baud confronts the uncomfortable reason why Europe does not end the escalation:
- The stated reason for escalation: Not because continuation is realistic.
- The real reason: A genuine peace settlement would force Europe to confront its own failures — the disregard of Minsk, the dismissal of Russia’s security concerns, and a deeply rooted geopolitical self-deception.
Instead, Europe retreats into a strategy of moral self-justification:
💬 “We are fighting for democracy,” “We are defending Europe,” “We are on the right side of history.”These slogans replace analysis with pathos and policy with moral rhetoric. As Baud emphasizes, this conflict is not a moral war but a geopolitical confrontation — one that emerged from treaty violations, strategic deception, and concrete security realities.
Europe: Trapped in Infantilism — The Actor Without Definition
A political actor that reacts, but no longer shapes outcomes.
The European Union finds itself caught in a strategic vise:
- Economically: Fully embedded within the hierarchical G7 structure.
- In security policy: Fully dependent on the hierarchical structure of NATO.
Both systems do not operate through horizontal cooperation, but through clearly defined hierarchies, with Washington at the apex.
Europe frequently speaks of “strategic autonomy,” yet autonomy requires responsibility, risk tolerance, clarity, courage, and the articulation of one’s own interests. Europe possesses none of these attributes.
For Baud, Europe’s political leadership behaves like immature actors — akin to adolescents performing adulthood while requiring external approval for every decisive step. It is this political immaturity and strategic infantilism that propels Europe toward further escalation instead of seeking de-escalation.
The G7 Mechanism: Control Instead of Cooperation
Hierarchical steering replaces partnership-based politics.
The G7 is not a “council of friends,” but a geopolitical instrument of control.
💬 “Baud’s unsparing diagnosis: Europe is no longer a center of power, but an administrative body for American interests — an actor tasked with implementing decisions made elsewhere.”Within this mechanism, Europe does not function as an equal partner, but as a subordinate administrative layer. Decisions are pre-structured, strategic guidelines are set, and European governments are then tasked with executing them. Classical cooperation gives way to a system of control and discipline.
For Baud, this structure explains the erosion of Europe’s capacity to act. Those who permanently delegate political responsibility lose not only influence, but strategic competence itself. The G7 thus ceases to be a forum of shared interests and becomes a symbol of an asymmetry of power that reduces Europe’s role to the execution of decisions taken by others.
Baud’s Final Warning: The Day the Guardian Leaves
The question of Europe’s ability to survive without a protecting power.
Europe behaves as if it possessed a lifetime security guarantee. Yet this guarantee has always been a shadow — a remnant of a past world order.
Baud’s final warning is unequivocal and forms the dramatic climax of the analysis:
💬 “One day — quite likely in the foreseeable future — Washington will fully shift its geostrategic focus to Asia. What happens when the United States withdraws its troops, ends its assistance, and places the military burden back into European hands?”The consequence is clear: Europe will fall. Not because Russia advances, but because Europe has never learned to act without a guardian. It outsourced political responsibility and now finds itself in a world that no longer offers supervision.
This moment will be Europe’s true test. Without the protective framework of American presence, the continent will be forced, for the first time, to assume responsibility for its own security. Baud’s warning is therefore not a prediction of an external threat, but a self-diagnosis: Europe’s greatest risk lies not outside its borders, but in the long-cultivated dependency that has eroded its capacity for sovereignty.
The Legacy of Failure (Final Epilogue)
The quiet decline of a continent that overestimated itself.
Europe wanted globalization without risk, power without obligation, freedom without responsibility, and sovereignty without independence. But such an equation cannot hold.
- Baud’s bitter truth: Europe elevated political immaturity into a virtue — and now the world order it never truly understood is collapsing.
- Baud’s conclusion: Europe is not losing because of external threats, but because of self-deception, moral arrogance, strategic naivety, intellectual inertia, and the persistent refusal to emancipate itself from Washington.
His analysis is not an indictment, but a diagnosis — one that shows how a continent that once stood at the heart of global diplomacy has been reduced to a panicked house of cards, capable of collapsing at any moment under the weight of its own moral overconfidence.
This legacy is not a historical accident, but the result of a deliberate political posture. Europe sought to be part of the world order without bearing its costs, and to exercise influence without assuming responsibility. When this illusion finally fractures, what remains is not strength, but emptiness.
Baud’s epilogue is therefore not a reckoning, but a final warning. A continent that moralizes power, delegates strategy, and suppresses reality does not collapse abruptly — it erodes. Europe’s failure unfolds quietly, administratively, and self-inflicted. And therein lies its greatest danger.
Thank you, Colonel Jacques Baud.
Sources & Geopolitical References
Substack – US-Edition
This article is also available as a English-language edition on Substack:
Europe’s Self-Destruction - Jacques Baud
Original conversation (video)
YouTube-Interview:
EU & Zelensky STUNNED as Trump–Putin Summit Looms - Jacques Baud
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