AI Says...
There exists a particular form of weakness that stems neither from a lack of resources nor from a deficit of intelligence, but from a temporal mismatch. In The World of Yesterday, Stefan Zweig offers a painfully lucid account of a cultivated, humanist, rational Europe that believed it had definitively left behind the age of brutality. It thought it was living in a pacified era, while others had already settled into a time of conquest.
Pacifist naivety does not lie in loving peace—which is a virtue—but in believing that the other side necessarily shares the same relationship to the world, to rules, to language, and to violence. It is a projection error: one attributes to the aggressor one’s own moral framework, one’s own calendar, one’s own conception of what is possible.
Living in the Wrong Time
Zweig shows how Europe’s pre-1914 elites refused to believe in war, not because they were unaware of mounting tensions, but because war seemed anachronistic to them. It belonged, they believed, to a bygone world. They lived in a long, legalistic, progressive time, while their future aggressors were already operating in a short, brutal, decisional time.
The pacifist victim is always one event behind. They wait for additional proof, an unmistakable sign, a clear transgression. Yet modern aggression is, by nature, gradual, ambiguous, wrapped in rational discourse. By the time certainty arrives, it is already too late.
Unpreparedness as a Historical Constant
History is replete with examples of this stunned unpreparedness of the attacked. In 1938, the Munich Agreements epitomized this tragic illusion: the belief that an expansionist regime could be appeased through reasonable concessions. Western democracies lacked neither armies nor resources, but rather mental readiness for the idea of aggression.
This unpreparedness is not technical; it is psychological. It arises from an inner refusal to accept that the other may seek to destroy the order rather than find a place within it.
Putin, Trump, and the Time of Predators
Vladimir Putin perfectly illustrates this temporal asymmetry. He operates within an imperial, revisionist timeframe in which force precedes law. Facing him, Europe reasons in terms of procedures, summits, and communiqués. Each Russian advance is initially interpreted as an isolated provocation, never as part of a coherent project. Once again, the delay is not military but conceptual.
Donald Trump, for his part, embodies another rupture in time. He respects neither alliances as inherited legacies nor institutions as stable frameworks. His relationship to the world is transactional, brutal, immediate. The very idea of an invasion of Greenland—however absurd it may appear within the European mental framework—reveals this gap: what is unthinkable for some is already negotiable for others.
Europe, stunned, responds with irony or disbelief. Yet stupefaction is a strategic weakness: it paralyzes, delays, and prevents anticipation.
The Parallel with Human Relationships
This mechanism is not confined to international relations. It also appears in the most ordinary human interactions. The victim—whether psychological, moral, or physical—does not believe in the possibility of aggression. They downplay signals, rationalize behaviors, and convince themselves that “it won’t go that far.”
This incredulity amplifies the violence of the impact. The more unthinkable the aggression, the more devastating it becomes when it occurs. Stupefaction prevents defense, just as it does in relations between states.
Escaping the Illusion of the World of Yesterday
Zweig’s message is not a call for cynicism, but for lucidity. Loving peace does not absolve one from understanding war. Defending the rule of law requires acknowledging that some operate outside it. Pacifism that refuses to think violence paradoxically prepares its triumph.
The real danger is not the aggressor—who is visible, predictable, and constant—but the illusion of those who believe they live in a world where aggression no longer has a place. They belong to a time that is no longer shared. And history, relentlessly, always punishes this delay.
Related Posts
