“We are at war”. In his second public address within four days, President Emmanuel Macron did not mince his words. In his speech to the nation on Monday evening, he put a great emphasis on these four words: “We are at war”. The enemy is not an invading army, but an invisible virus spreading all over the world at a frightening speed. President Macron chose to use this military reference. France had failed so far to seize the extreme gravity of the health crisis. Last Sunday, in Paris, there was a huge contrast between the number of people who cast their votes in the first round of the municipal elections and the very large number of those who chose to enjoy the first signs of Spring and strolled or sat in the sun. On Nine Eleven in 2001, during a very different kind of war, the world may have felt “all American”. Nearly twenty years later, French people showed that they did not feel “all Italian”. A sad mixture of blindness and selfishness. Now that France is increasingly faced with an “Italian-like situation”, this will, of course, change. This is a time for solidarity, responsibility and resilience. At the end of the Cold War, President Ronald Reagan once said that if Martians were to invade our planet, we inhabitants of Earth, capitalists and communists alike, would unite to resist them. The present pandemic does not come from a foreign planet, but it should force us to transcend the divisions that exist between nations and even more so, within them. We are all in the same boat, and will triumph together or fail together. This is a time for national unity, behind responsible leadership and international cooperation. A time to transcend selfishness and sacred individualism. A time to dismiss fake news and resist conspiracy theories. 

Dominique Moïsi, Institut Montaigne's Special Advisor