Meeting with Sophie Kauffmann
The Centre de Recherches Europes-Eurasie-CREE (Inalco), with the support of the Ukrainian Institute, is honored to invite you to meet Sylvie Kauffmann around her book Les aveuglés, Éditions Stock.
Book presentation
The end of the Cold War was to usher in a new era, marked by the triumph of liberal democracy, which could now only expand. No country was more convinced of this than reunified Germany.
Three decades later, to the east, Vladimir Putin's Russia has become increasingly aggressive. In Central Europe, the young democracies fell into the trap of populism. And while in the West, France tried in vain to overcome the flaws of an outdated political model, even further west Donald Trump abused American democracy and threatened the international order. But like the three monkeys, the Chancellor and her Social Democrat coalition partners closed their eyes, ears and mouths. Until February 24, 2022.
On that day, their world collapsed. Putin invaded Ukraine and pulverized the European order. Then came the questions: why did we get it so wrong? What signals did we ignore?
This book recounts, through the testimonies of the protagonists of the key episodes of these twenty years, what prevented us from assuming the reality of Putin's Russia: the American retreat, the blindness of Germany, prisoner of its history and economic success, the contempt for the new democracies of the East, the obsolete Russophilia of certain French elites, the bad strategy of the cavalier seul of Sarkozy and Macron and their unrealistic dream of a great European security architecture with Moscow.
When should we have taken a different path? And for that matter, was there any other way? Will Europe emerge weakened or strengthened from this eye-opening war.
Author biography
Sylvie Kauffmann is a journalist at Monde and former editorial director, where she writes a weekly geopolitics column. She has been a major reporter and correspondent in Moscow, Central Europe, the United States and Asia. She has contributed to the New York Times and writes regularly in the Opinion pages of the Financial Times.
Organizer
- Iryna Dmytrychyn (CREE, Inalco)