From a reader:

Well, your Francophone reader got part of the translation right, but for some reason truncated the quotation. I’m not sure why the middle clause was left out, but it makes a difference. The translation would be,
The second idea is that, “For us, war is always evidence of failure, and is always the worst solution. Everything must be done to avoid war.”
“War is always the worst solution” means that anything else — appeasement, surrender, or French companies selling WMD necessities to Saddam — are all better solutions.
War is always evidence of failure, and is always the worst solution, in the same sense as a police officer physically subduing a criminal: It is the failure of the suspect to obey the law and submit peaceably to lawful authority; and it is the worst solution besides letting the criminal escape.”