The Price of Truth: The Strategic Bankruptcy of the West and the Case of Jacques Baud
The Price of Truth: The Strategic Bankruptcy of the West and the Case of Jacques Baud
By Frank Dumon
In an era where the Western world presents itself as the guardian of the rule of law, democracy, and freedom of speech, reality reveals an increasingly darker and more authoritarian face. One of the most poignant and simultaneously illuminating testimonies of this decline comes from Colonel Jacques Baud, former Swiss intelligence officer and author. In a recent and devastating conversation with Nima Alkhorshid, Baud not only outlines the inhuman personal price he pays for his freedom of speech but also pinpoints the sore spot of Western strategic thinking. From the Sovietization of Europe to the ideological blindness of Israeli intelligence, and from the desperate acts of the Ukrainian regime to the rational, doctrine-driven warfare of Iran: Baud's analysis is a necessary correction to Western narratives.
This article serves as an in-depth exploration of the key points from this conversation. It is an analysis of a West that is not only losing militarily but also intellectually and morally, because it has forgotten the fundamental rules of strategic art.
The Sovietization of Europe: Replacing Justice with Political Arbitrariness
To understand Baud's geopolitical analysis, one must first confront the context of his own situation. It is a context that exposes the true nature of current European governance. Jacques Baud, a Swiss national residing in Belgium, is subject to sanctions from the European Union. These sanctions are not the result of a judicial process, an indictment, or a proven violation of any law. They are the direct consequence of his freedom of speech and his critical analysis of the conflict in Ukraine.
The Absence of Legal Certainty and Due Process
The defining characteristic of these sanctions is their total lack of limits. In a normal rule-of-law state, a punishment is proportionate to the crime and has a clear duration. Someone who steals a trifle receives a different penalty than someone who commits murder. In Baud's case, there is no punishment because there is no crime. There is no judge who has heard his case, no opportunity for defense, and no legal decision. The sanctions are for an indefinite period; they could last six months or twenty years. He has lost his bank accounts, cannot buy anything, and is dependent on the generosity of others for his food.
Even more absurd is the travel ban. Baud is not allowed to return to his own country, Switzerland, and cannot leave Belgium. If he were to do so, his case would suddenly be converted into a criminal case. The Swiss government has protested to the EU, pointing out the violation of his freedom of speech and the lack of due process. The result? Nothing. The European Union is not troubled by the protests of a sovereign state or by the foundations of human rights.
The Reversal of the Rule of Law
Baud makes a crucial and sharp distinction that gets to the heart of the problem. The rule of law means that political decisions are made within a legal framework. The law defines politics. What we are now seeing in the European Union is the exact opposite: politics defines the law. This is, according to the classical definition, the essence of a dictatorship. Political goals – in this case, exerting pressure on Vladimir Putin – are used to destroy individuals, regardless of the facts.
Baud aptly compares his situation to the trials in Prague in the 1950s, as depicted in the film by Costa-Gavras from the early 1970s. Then, as now, people were not accused of crimes they had committed, but crimes were fabricated to punish people. It is a symptom of what Baud rightly calls the "Sovietization" of Europe. It is a warning to everyone: what is happening to Jacques Baud today could happen to any citizen in Europe tomorrow who dares to express dissenting opinions on Brussels' foreign policy.
The Strategic Bankruptcy of the West in the Middle East
When we broaden our view from Europe to West Asia, we see the same pattern of Western arrogance and strategic emptiness, this time on the battlefield. The confrontation between the United States and Iran is not just a series of incidents; it is an existential conflict in which the balance of power is fundamentally shifting.
The Logistical Collapse of the American Presence
The United States began its military campaign with an extensive network of bases in the Middle East, from Kuwait and Saudi Arabia to Jordan (with the notorious Al Udeid and Muhafak bases). These bases were essential for fuel, ammunition, and aircraft maintenance. Through targeted and effective missile strikes, Iran has systematically rendered these facilities unusable. The Americans have been pushed back, and even on their remaining bases, they are vulnerable.
This has not only a geographical but also an operational dimension. Aircraft now have to be refueled and supplied from much greater distances. This shortens their flight time, reduces the payload they can carry, and makes the logistics chain extremely vulnerable and complex. Iran has effectively "debased" the US in the region, a masterstroke in operational warfare.
The Doctrine of Unconditional Escalation
What the West often misinterprets as chaos is, in reality, a highly rational and disciplined strategy on the Iranian side. Baud identifies this as the Iranian doctrine of "unconditional escalation."
This works on two levels:
Horizontal escalation: Widening the circle of operations to push the enemy away from one's own territory (for example, through the involvement of the Houthis in Yemen, who recently imposed a blockade and struck Saudi Aramco facilities).
Vertical escalation: Increasing the intensity, scope, and pressure of the attacks.
For Iran and its allies, this is an existential war. They know that the United States and Israel want to destroy them. As a result, they have nothing to lose, which makes them willing to escalate to a level that the West, accustomed to comfortable, risk-free warfare, cannot or will not understand.
The Myth of Israeli Intelligence
One of the most provocative yet necessary corrections in Baud's analysis concerns the reputation of Israeli intelligence services. In Western media, it is consistently claimed that Israel has the "best intelligence service in the world." Baud, who worked with all Western intelligence services during his career, debunks this myth with professional authority.
Tactical Assassination Intelligence versus Strategic Blindness
Israel is indeed exceptionally good at what could be called "security or assassination intelligence." If they want to find, eliminate, or neutralize a specific person, they will find that person. However, this is a purely tactical competence. When it comes to assessing threats, understanding the capabilities of neighbors, or analyzing the strategic reality, Israeli intelligence is probably one of the worst in the world.
The reason for this is fundamental and deadly: ideological bias. An intelligence service must never be ideologically motivated. Its task is to understand the enemy, to literally put oneself in the opponent's shoes. How does the enemy view the war? How does he define victory? How much loss can he bear culturally and socially?
This is where Israel (and by extension the West) systematically fails. They are so convinced of their own superiority that they cannot accept that their opponents – whether Iranians, Palestinians, or Hezbollah – have a greater will to fight and a higher tolerance for losses. Western society panics at 50 deaths; societies in the Global South have historically proven they can withstand thousands of casualties without losing morale or combativeness. This cultural blindness leads to catastrophic underestimations.
A History of Repeated Failures
This is not a new finding. Israeli commissions have themselves acknowledged this failure after the wars of 1973, 1982, and 2006 in Lebanon. In all these cases, the enemy was underestimated, and in practice, Israel was defeated or forced into an unfavorable ceasefire, despite tactical victories. The structure of Israeli society and the military apparatus is so informal and steeped in ideology that objective analysis never reaches the political hierarchy. The analysis is already colored from the bottom up and further distorted from the top down to support the political narrative. Relying on Israeli strategic intelligence is therefore not only risky; it is a recipe for disaster.
Netanyahu’s Trap and the Illusion of ‘Pickaxe Mountain’
This analysis of Israeli intelligence brings us to a current and acute danger: Benjamin Netanyahu's attempts to drag the United States, and specifically Donald Trump, further into the quagmire. According to reports, Netanyahu wants to provide Trump with new intelligence about an alleged nuclear facility under a mountain (the so-called "Pickaxe Mountain"), hoping to justify a ground offensive.
The Foot in the Door: A Strategic Trap
Baud warns that Netanyahu's goal is not necessarily to take this mountain, but to gain a "foot in the door." By getting ground troops (boots on the ground) into Iran, Israel would effectively hold the United States hostage. Even in the best-case scenario, such a unit cannot hold such a location for long in the heart of Iran. Casualties would mount, and the United States would be forced to send more troops to form a bridgehead and rescue their own soldiers.
This is precisely what Netanyahu wants: the US irreversibly entangled in a ground war in Iran, so that American military power is permanently deployed for Israeli strategic goals. It is a policy Israel has pursued since the 1950s. Trump would be wise to be extremely skeptical. Previous American presidents did not fall for this trap; Trump did in February, and he risks doing so again in desperation to claim a "success." But as Baud states: the longer you wait, the greater the defeat will be once you fall into the trap.
Ukraine: Desperate Attempts to Internationalize the Conflict
The same pattern of strategic desperation is visible in Ukraine. President Zelensky finds himself in a position he cannot win. The military reality on the ground is that Ukraine is slowly but surely losing, or, less diplomatically put, Russia is slowly but surely winning. The constant changes in Ukrainian military leadership (Ministers of Defense, commanders of ground forces) are not signs of strength but of internal chaos and the failure of the current strategy.
False Flags and the Search for Allies
When a country is losing, it becomes most dangerous because it is prone to desperate acts. For Zelensky, the only way out is to internationalize the conflict. He must convince the United States and other NATO countries that their own security is directly at stake. This leads to provocations designed to drag other countries into the war.
We see this in the alleged drone strikes in Poland and Romania, which bear all the hallmarks of "false flag" operations. We see this in the attack on an Iranian cargo ship en route from Russia to Iran, where Ukraine tried to position Iran as a direct enemy to consolidate American support.
Even more worrying are the reports from the Iraqi National Security Advisor about clandestine Ukrainian operations in Iraq. These units would be carrying out false flag attacks on Iraqi installations to blame Shia resistance groups. The goal is to disqualify these groups, which fight against the illegal foreign military presence of the US, France, and the UK, as "terrorists" supported by Iran. Ukraine has no historical or strategic interests in Iraq, Sudan, Mali, or Syria. Yet Ukrainian operatives are active there to serve Western interests, hoping this will be "rewarded" with more military aid for Kiev. It is a transaction of blood and chaos, driven by existential despair.
The Loss of ‘Operational Art’ and the Lesson of Vietnam
The common thread running through all these conflicts is the fundamental loss of strategic thinking in the West. We are witnessing an intellectual and military defeat that has been decades in the making.
Tactics without Strategy is the Noise of Defeat
The Chinese strategist Sun Tzu stated centuries ago: "Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat." The West, and especially the US and Israel, is not waging war based on a long-term strategy. They merely react to events. It is a "tit-for-tat" approach. They attack a target, the enemy reacts, they attack another target.
This lack of strategy became painfully clear in the opening scenes of the conflict with Iran. The US and Israel attacked a series of military targets, assuming this would lead to a rapid collapse or revolution. When this did not happen – because they had completely underestimated the resilience and national unity of the Iranian population – they ran out of their list of military targets. What followed was the attack on civilian targets. This is not a sign of strength; it is the classic symptom of a military force that has lost its strategic goals and uses brutality as a substitute for effectiveness.
Forgetting Operational Art
Western military doctrine has lost what is called "operational art." After the Cold War, and especially after 9/11, Western military thinking has been reduced to the tactical level: locating and eliminating individual "terrorists." One has forgotten how to plan and execute large, combined operations at the operational level. One has forgotten how to defeat an enemy by disrupting his system, rather than just killing his individual cells. You can kill terrorists, but that does not eliminate terrorism.
Russia, on the other hand, has based its military doctrine on the defense of the homeland and large-scale ground operations. They have kept the understanding of tactical, operational, and strategic levels alive. Iran is now showing the same capability. They combine strategic missile capabilities with operational and tactical execution in a way the US has not encountered since the Vietnam War.
The Enemy Determines the Terms of War
This brings us to the most disturbing conclusion for the Western establishment: the enemy now determines the terms of war. In the recent past, the West dictated the pace, location, and rules of the conflict. Today, it is Iran, Hezbollah, and the Houthis who set the framework of the war. They have pushed the US away from their borders. They have paralyzed NATO's logistics. They respond with rational, doctrine-driven consistency, while the West remains chaotic and reactive.
This is precisely what happened to the United States in Vietnam. The US could win tactical battles and drop a devastating amount of bombs, but it was the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese forces who determined how the war was fought. They dictated the pace. They understood the political and cultural dimensions of the conflict better than the American generals. The result is well-known. History rhymes, and the echoes of Vietnam today sound louder and louder over the plains of the Middle East and the steppes of Ukraine.
Conclusion: A Warning to the Future
The story of Colonel Jacques Baud is more than a personal drama; it is a microcosm of a West that is eating its own foundations. The European Union, blinded by ideology, is replacing the rule of law with political arbitrariness and punishing dissidents without trial. At the same time, the Western military apparatus in the Middle East is collapsing like a house of cards because it refuses to recognize the reality of its opponents.
The reliance on flawed, ideologically tinged intelligence from Israel, and the desperate acts of a Ukrainian regime trying to mask its own failures by internationalizing the war, are not signs of a strong alliance.
They are the death throes of a hegemony that has lost its grip on reality.
For observers, policymakers, and citizens who still hold truth in high regard, the message is clear. Do not trust the narratives of the established powers. Understand that a war is not won by the most bombs, but by the most coherent strategy and the deepest understanding of the opponent. And above all: realize that the path to dictatorship does not begin with tanks on the streets, but with the silent acceptance of the violation of the rule of law, as we now see in the case of Jacques Baud.
The time to wake up is not tomorrow. That time is now.