Philippe de Bard

Senior Adviser (EU · OSCE · UN)
Political, Security & Economic Affairs
Elections | Governance | Rule of Law
RT ≠ endorsement
Bien sous tous rapports.

[Philippe de Bard @Phdb2009]

#ForeignPolicy has published my latest piece on Haiti. However, in #Haiti, as elsewhere, #elections alone are not the answer. Holding a credible vote is indeed far more complex than simply scheduling it.
https://t.co/moe45ktXZR

[Philippe de Bard @Phdb2009]

#IranWar‌: The #US and #Iran have reportedly reached a preliminary memorandum of understanding—informally dubbed the “#Islamabad Declaration”—through Pakistani mediation. The text still requires President Trump’s final approval, and Tehran has yet to formally confirm it.

What the MOU covers:

• Reopening of the Strait of #Hormuz and phased lifting of the U.S. naval blockade on Iranian ports.
• No new U.S. sanctions during negotiations, followed by a roadmap for sanctions relief under a final agreement.
• Temporary waivers for Iranian oil exports and the release of frozen Iranian assets.
• Iran commits not to produce or acquire nuclear weapons and freezes further expansion of its #nuclear program.

What it postpones:

The most contentious issues are deferred to a 60-day negotiating window: Iran’s estimated 440 kg stockpile of 60%-enriched uranium, future enrichment activities, ballistic missiles, verification and inspection mechanisms, and #Tehran’s support for regional proxies. #Trump himself acknowledged that the arrangement only addresses Iran’s nuclear material at a conceptual level.

The central question is whether this MOU can generate enough political momentum to resolve issues that have derailed every previous round of U.S.-Iran diplomacy. @ReutersPolitics

[Philippe de Bard @Phdb2009]

#2026WorldCup #mundialdefútbol2026 : against #Scotland, #Haiti has signed its great comeback despite the defeat https://t.co/OgXcd7Ywql

[TV5MONDE Info @TV5MONDEINFO]

A Barcelone, Léon XIV va bénir la Tour du Christ, point d'orgue du titanesque projet du génial Gaudí. Histoire de la Sagrada familia et ses 143 ans de travaux.

[Philippe de Bard @Phdb2009]

#US: #Inflation Jumps as #Iran War Intensifies Price Squeeze. Consumer prices rose at a faster rate for a third-straight month in May, to 4.2 percent annually, as the energy shock put more pressure on the U.S. economy. @nytimes

[Fox News @FoxNews]

NEW: Here's a look at the massive U.S. military presence now spread across the Middle East.

According to U.S. Navy officials, nearly 20,000 American sailors and Marines are currently at sea aboard two aircraft carriers — USS Abraham Lincoln and USS George H.W. Bush — along with 18 guided-missile destroyers, the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit, and more than a dozen air squadrons.

The assets are spread across the Eastern Mediterranean, Red Sea, North Arabian Sea, and Arabian Sea, where U.S. forces are helping defend Israel, counter Houthi threats, conduct operations involving Iran, and support maritime security in and around the Strait of Hormuz.

The naval force is part of roughly 50,000 U.S. troops currently deployed throughout the Middle East.

[Miami Herald @MiamiHerald]

UN chief heads to Haiti as displacement reaches record levels, electoral challenges mount https://t.co/uVKIFZN37R

[Crazy Vibes @CrazyVibes_1]

When the President of France visited the United States in April 1960, he asked the FBI to help him find a man.
The man he was looking for was an American citizen. He was sixty-four years old. He had been awarded fifteen French military decorations and — six months earlier, in a ceremony in Paris — had been made a Knight of the Légion d'honneur, the highest civilian honor France can give. The medal had been pinned to his chest by the President himself, who had publicly called him un véritable héros français. A true French hero.
The FBI located the man within a few days.
He was operating an elevator at Rockefeller Center in New York City.
The elevator operator's name was Eugene Bullard. He had been born in Columbus, Georgia, in 1895, the son of a man whose own father had been a slave.

He had run away from Columbus at the age of eleven, after watching a white mob nearly lynch his father.
He spent the next several years drifting through the American South. At sixteen, he stowed away on a German freighter at Norfolk, Virginia. He landed in Aberdeen, Scotland. From there he made his way to London, where he learned to box. By 1913, at eighteen, he was prizefighting in Paris.
When Germany invaded France in August 1914, Bullard was nineteen years old. He had no legal obligation to fight. He had no French citizenship.
He went to the recruiting office on October 19, 1914, and signed up for the French Foreign Legion.
He spent the next eighteen months as an infantryman in some of the worst fighting of the war — at the Somme, at Champagne, at Verdun. He was wounded three times. The third wound, on March 5, 1916, tore open his thigh and left him with permanent damage to his leg.
He was twenty years old. The doctors told him he would not return to the infantry.
He decided he wanted to fly.

In a Paris café in the spring of 1916, while he was recovering, Bullard mentioned to three white American friends that he was thinking of joining the French air service. A Mississippian named Jeff Dickson laughed.
Gene, Dickson said, you know damn well there aren't any Negroes in aviation.
Bullard answered: Sure do. That's why I want to get into it. There has to be a first to everything, and I'm going to be the first.
Dickson bet him two thousand dollars he would not make it.
Bullard took the bet. He earned his pilot's license on May 5, 1917. He won the bet.
He reported to the front in August 1917 and flew approximately twenty combat missions over the next three months in a SPAD VII. The fuselage was painted with a bleeding heart pierced by a knife and the French phrase Tout le Sang qui Coule est Rouge — All Blood that Flows is Red.
He carried, on every combat flight, a small capuchin monkey named Jimmy in the front of his flight jacket.
The French press began calling him L'Hirondelle Noire — the Black Swallow.

When the United States entered the war in 1917, Bullard immediately applied to transfer to the U.S. Army Air Service.
His application was rejected.
The U.S. Army Air Service had a policy, in 1917, of not accepting Black pilots. The other American pilots flying for France in his unit, all of them white, were transferred to the U.S. Air Service.
He was the only one who was not.

For the next twenty years, he was one of the most familiar faces in the Montmartre nightlife of Paris between the wars. He owned a nightclub called L'Escadrille. He spoke fluent French, English, and German. Hemingway drank there. Fitzgerald drank there. Langston Hughes drank there. Josephine Baker performed there. Louis Armstrong was a personal friend.
When Germany invaded Poland in 1939, Bullard was forty-four. His fluent German and his ownership of a nightclub frequented by German officers made him useful to the French Resistance. He became an intelligence agent — eavesdropping in his own bar on conversations between German officers who did not know he understood every word.
When France fell in June 1940, friends in the Resistance smuggled him across the Spanish border before the Gestapo could arrest him.
He came back to the United States for the first time in twenty-eight years.
He arrived in New York with thirty dollars in his pocket and a permanent limp.

He did not return to a hero's welcome. He returned to a country that had no idea who he was.
He worked at a perfume counter. He worked as a security guard. He worked at the Staten Island shipyards. By the late 1940s, he had taken the job that he would hold for most of the rest of his life.
He operated the elevator at Rockefeller Center.
He was wearing the elevator uniform on the day a producer from NBC came down from the studios upstairs to ask if he was the man Charles de Gaulle had been looking for.
A few weeks later, NBC sent a film crew to interview him in the lobby. The studios where NBC produced The Today Show were on the floors above. He had operated the elevator that took the network executives up to those studios every morning for nearly ten years. He had not been recognized as he did it.
He went back to operating the elevator the following Monday.

He died of stomach cancer on October 12, 1961, three days after his sixty-sixth birthday.
He was buried in the French War Veterans' section of Flushing Cemetery, in Queens, in the uniform of the French Foreign Legion. The casket was draped with the French flag.
In 1994 — thirty-three years after his death — the United States Air Force formally commissioned Eugene Jacques Bullard as a Second Lieutenant, posthumously.
It was the first commission the U.S. military had ever offered him.
He had been the first Black combat pilot in American history.
The French had been calling him a hero since 1917.
The Americans got around to it in 1994.

[BFM @BFMTV]

Île Maurice: après le Groenland, les États-Unis envisagent de racheter les îles Chagos

[Financial Times @FT]

Switzerland weighs Franco-Italian alternative to US air defences https://t.co/qyH9rkozqf

[SIPRI @SIPRIorg]

The nine nuclear-armed states—🇺🇸🇷🇺🇬🇧🇫🇷🇨🇳🇮🇳🇵🇰🇰🇵🇮🇱— continued programmes to modernize and enhance their nuclear arsenals in 2025, and most deployed new nuclear-armed or nuclear-capable weapon systems during the year. Learn more ➡️  https://t.co/gvgDpsPerb

#SIPRIYearbook2026 #NuclearWeapons #ArmsControl #NuclearRisk #Disarmament #NonProliferation

@SweArmsControl @AlvamyrdalCNTR @RobertEgnell @UNIDIR @nuclearban @scientistsorg @SweMFA @CSparre @ICRC @FOIresearch @hrw @PugwashConfs @Greenpeace @globalzero @antonioguterres

[Civixplorer @Civixplorer]

⌚️ Countries with the most time zones.

🇫🇷 France tops the list, a result of its extensive colonial history and far-flung territories.

[Defense News @defense_news]

The French Army has developed its own large-language model for staff officers, called Berthier, named after Napoleon’s chief of staff. https://t.co/c4smzMJpNw

[IISS News @IISS_org]

Control and security of chokepoint and sea-lanes of communication has become increasingly debated in light of the war in the Gulf.

This research paper analyses why and how maritime Southeast Asian states are seeking to develop and implement anti-access/area-denial strategies and capabilities to respond to major conflicts.

Find out more I Dr @EvanLaksmana I https://t.co/0A9nBxd8AY 

IISS Shangri-La Dialogue   
29–31 May 2026 
#IISS_SLD26   
https://t.co/aj642880tE

[Philippe de Bard @Phdb2009]

**The Eurozone economy officially slipped into the red in Q1 2026, with GDP contracting by 0.2%.** 📉

This negative figure is largely tied to a "statistical anomaly" originating in Ireland. Ireland’s GDP plummeted by roughly 12%, driven by "Leprechaun economics"—volatile accounting maneuvers by multinational corporations shifting assets, rather than a collapse in local activity.

**The Reality Check:**

* **The Irish Distortion:** Ireland’s massive 12% swing punched well above its weight, mathematically dragging the entire Eurozone’s aggregate growth into negative territory.

* **Underlying Trends:** When excluding the "Irish factor," Eurozone growth would have otherwise been a modest 0.2% to 0.3%. However, the bloc is still facing real pressure from rising energy costs, global conflict, and tightening monetary policy.

In short: Ireland's accounting distortion turned a sluggish but positive quarter into an official contraction.

#Ireland #EUEconomy #GDP #Eurozone #FinancialNews #MacroEconomics #Q12026

https://t.co/GhWf6uw8zq

[Philippe de Bard @Phdb2009]

#France’s fiscal outlook is deteriorating fast. Treasury projections reportedly show the budget #deficit reaching 5.2% of GDP in 2026 (vs. the government’s official 5% target) and potentially exceeding 6% in 2027 without corrective measures. Rising social spending, healthcare costs, local government expenditures, and higher debt-servicing costs are driving the slippage. @bfmbusiness @Figaro_Economie

[TV5MONDE Info @TV5MONDEINFO]

C'est un phénomène climatique très redouté.
L'Organisation météorologique mondiale annonce l'arrivée d'une version augmentée d'El Niño.

[USA en Français @USAenFrancais]

🇨🇩🇷🇼 Les États-Unis prennent de nouvelles mesures pour lutter contre les menaces qui pèsent sur la stabilité et la prospérité dans l’est de la RDC, en sanctionnant de hauts commandants de deux groupes armés précédemment désignés par les États-Unis, les FDLR et le M23, soutenu par le Rwanda.

[Axios @axios]

"You're fucking crazy": Trump fumes at Netanyahu in call on Lebanon https://t.co/nAMDbaMWm6

[Axios @axios]

NEW: U.S. and Iranian forces exchanged strikes as peace talks remained stalled and tensions escalated across the Middle East. https://t.co/vgs3tIKlIS

[Cultination @Cultination1]

🇳🇦👩🏾‍🦱🚿Les femmes Himba ne se LAVENT avec de l’eau qu’une seule fois dans leur vie : le jour de leur MARIAGE.

Le peuple Himba, vivant dans les régions désertiques du nord de la Namibie, a développé des pratiques d’hygiène adaptées à l’extrême rareté de l’eau. Les femmes himba NE SE LAVENT avec de l’eau qu’une seule fois dans leur vie : le jour de leur MARIAGE.

Au quotidien, elles pratiquent le « bain de fumée » : elles BRÛLENT des herbes aromatiques et s’en enveloppent dans une couverture pour purifier leur peau.

Elles S’ENDUISENT également chaque jour d’otjize, un mélange de beurre de vache et d’ocre rouge qui protège la peau du soleil, l’hydrate, REPOUSSE les insectes et leur donne leur célèbre couleur rouge-orange.
(Times Of India)