Dwelling in the marbled halls of Paris's Congress of Mayors, where local leaders gather to hash out potholes and playgrounds, General Fabien Mandon, France's freshly minted army chief-of-staff, appointed in September 2025, stepped up to the podium on November 19 and uttered words that should chill every parent's spine. "If our country wavers because it is not ready to lose its children... or to suffer economically because the priority has to be military production, then we are indeed at risk," he declared, imploring mayors to stoke the "spirit" of sacrifice in their towns and villages. This wasn't battlefield bravado whispered to troops; it was a public clarion call, framing the potential deaths of the young, our sons and daughters, the baristas and bar exam-takers of tomorrow, as an acceptable ledger entry in a looming clash with Russia. Mandon, echoing his October warnings to the National Assembly of a "confrontation in three or four years," paints Moscow as an inexorable foe, hardened by Ukraine's meat grinder, while Europe slumbers in peacetime bliss. The madness? Treating child sacrifice as "all in a day's work" – a pragmatic footnote in deterrence strategy. As German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius grimly noted, some experts whisper that 2025's summer was Europe's last gasp of peace, with Russian aggression possibly by 2028. This post dissects the general's gauntlet, the political firestorm it ignited, and the grotesque normalisation of generational bloodletting in an age of drones and hypersonics. This is the slippery slope to sleepwalking into slaughter.
The General's Gospel: Deterrence Through Doomscrolling
Mandon's rhetoric isn't off-script; it's the crescendo of a chorus. In a November 2025 defence magazine interview, he lamented Europe's "peacetime" myopia: "The Russians... do not know peace. They have been at war in Ukraine for years and are ready to pursue it." France's July 2025 National Strategic Review brands Russia the "most direct threat" to Euro-Atlantic stability, fuelling a €413 billion military hike by 2030. The general's playbook? Psychological priming: If citizens can't stomach "losing children," euphemism for body bags from the Somme to Donbas, deterrence crumbles. Mayors, as community shepherds, must preach fortitude, lest economic reallocations (tanks over Teslas) spark revolt.
It's cold calculus, rooted in realpolitik. NATO's 2025 Vilnius summit upped troop pledges to 300,000 on high alert, with France committing €2 billion more to Ukraine's arsenal. Mandon's "spirit" echoes Clausewitz: War as politics by other means, demanding societal steel. But the phrasing? A gut-wrench. "Lose its children" evokes WWI's "lions led by donkeys," where 1.4 million French youth were fodder for trenches. In 2025, with hypersonic missiles and AI targeting, is this pep talk or psychological warfare on one's own populace?
The Backlash Bonfire: From Warmonger Whips to Ostrich Accusations
France's political circus erupted like a faulty firework. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the firebrand of far-Left La France Insoumise, thundered "total disagreement," slamming Mandon for overreach: "It's not his job to invite mayors... to start making military preparations that no one has agreed on." Communist boss Fabien Roussel invoked 51,000 war memorials – silent sentinels to Verdun's ghosts – decrying "intolerably belligerent speeches." On the nationalist right, National Rally's Sébastien Chenu called it an "error" without legitimacy, while Louis Aliot grudgingly nodded to dying for a "just" war.
Yet, a lone Left-wing voice, pro-Ukraine MEP Raphaël Glucksmann of Place Publique, hailed it as a wake-up slap: "These ostriches... underline the state of denial and capitulation." Government shields? Defence Minister Catherine Vautrin dismissed critics as context-manglers, praising Mandon's "military language" for lives on the line daily. Europe Minister Benjamin Haddad echoed: A "lucid and honest speech on the reality of the threat."
X mirrors the melee. Lawyer Juan Branco eviscerated Mandon as a "cowardly" palace intriguer, unscarred by real fronts, now preaching child sacrifice: "He has never borne children, let alone protected them." Russian state media like RT twisted the knife: "Warmongering" to justify NATO's "nonsense' aggression fears. The divide? Pacifists see provocation; hawks, prudence. But all recoil at the casual calculus of kids as cannon fodder.
The Madness Unveiled: Normalising Necromancy in the Nuclear Age
Here's the true insanity: Framing child death as a strategic spreadsheet item, as if it's just another Tuesday in the Tuileries. Mandon's "spirit," that willingness to "suffer," romanticises sacrifice in an era where wars aren't bayonet charges but algorithmic annihilations. Russia's Ukraine grind has claimed 500,000+ lives (per UN estimates), turning youth into statistics via Telegram dispatches. Now, Europe eyes conscription: Sweden's 2025 draft revival, Germany's Zeitenwende rearmament (€100B special fund). Pistorius's "2028" timeline? It's not sci-fi; it's spreadsheets projecting Putin's post-Ukraine pivot, the Baltics, Poland, or a Black Sea feint.
But "losing children" as deterrence dogma? It's necromantic madness, invoking ghosts to haunt the living. WWI's 20 million dead birthed "never again"; WWII'sHiroshima. Yet here we are, generals gamely tallying toddlers as tactical trade-offs, eroding the taboo that war's ultimate cost, innocence extinguished, must be the last resort, not a pep-rally punchline. As Branco seethes on X, it's the "indecency" of unbloodied elites dispatching the uninitiated. In a multipolar mess – China eyeing Taiwan, Iran arming proxies – this rhetoric risks a feedback loop: Alarm begets arms races, which beget accidents.
The leaked U.S. draft peace plan for Ukraine (floated in October 2025 talks) underscores the farce: Frozen lines, neutral buffers, but no off-ramp for Europe's "spirit" build-up. If Putin signs, does Mandon's doomsday dial down? Or does it embolden hawks to hunt new horizons?
Sanity demands de-escalation, not eulogies for the unborn. Diplomacy's the drill: Revive Minsk-style talks, cap NATO expansions, pour billions into cyber shields over Caesar's legions. France's €50B defence budget? Smarten it, AI defences, not just artillery.
This madness – children as chess pieces – isn't inevitability; it's a choice. As Glucksmann warns, denial dooms us; but so does despair-mongering. Europe must steel without sacrificing its soul. Otherwise, Mandon's "spirit" becomes a spectre, haunting villages not with resolve, but regret. The memorials Roussel invokes? May they stay monuments, not multipliers. Lest we "lose our children" not to foes, but to the folly of forgetting why we fight at all.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce91zvnrz0lo