First it saves our identity. Those who survive a bombing search among the rubble of their home for childhood photos before the television, the inherited clock before the air conditioner. Later, this same identity that makes it easier for us to continue forward puts us in the herd of other victims. Sharing the pain comforts us. We protect ourselves with the flag, customs, religion and territory. We strengthen our exclusionary nationalism and the step we take to defend it with violence is easy, almost inevitable.
Then they save our weapons. We arm ourselves to avoid war. We prepare for the worst. We rely on deterrence. No one will dare attack us if we can respond with overwhelming force. None is more convincing than nuclear. None, at the same time, is more devastating. We live under the threat of mutual destruction, the end of the human race as we know it, but we live in the illusion of living.
These are the dilemmas on which our future will have to be resolved.
Western leaders beat the drums of war. Confrontation with Russia seems much more than likely. Ukraine is just the beginning.
European society, and also American society, are tired. There are already too many accumulated crises. Sixteen years have passed since the global financial crisis and economies are still not growing enough to ensure everyone’s well-being. Inequality and the ravages of climate change have been evident for years, but we do not take the drastic decisions that can mitigate their effects. We’ve weathered the pandemic, but we’re not ready to avoid the next one. Vaccines and preventive measures never effectively reached the Global South. Territorial conflicts broke out, wars in Ukraine and Palestine, but also in Sudan and so many other forgotten places in Africa and Asia.
It is hard for us to breathe under a dense, burdensome atmosphere of constant alarms and dramas. We thought we had done everything right, but uncertainty and violence surround us. We ask ourselves what any patient asks: why me? And no one answers us. Governments cannot cure us and prepare us to endure a long decline, a period in which everything that has already gotten worse can get worse. How many do they add up to?
Ukraine seems doomed. He needs the weapons that will not arrive in time. Russia will continue to advance this spring. If there is no counter-offensive before the summer, the Ukrainian cause will be very close to failure. Europe has never been so vulnerable since World War II.
The weapons, however, go to Israel. The USA and Germany are its main suppliers. They are uncomfortable with this trade, but they cannot stop it. The Germans feel guilty for the Holocaust, and the Americans, responsible for the survival of the Jewish people.
Six months have passed since the massacre on October 7 and there is no end in sight. Gaza will remain a war zone for the foreseeable future.
The US and Germany have called on Israel to do much more to protect innocent lives in the strip. This week’s attack on a humanitarian aid convoy seems to have run the gamut of his patience. No more excuses, say dignitaries in Washington and Berlin now. Israel reacts. He promises to take measures, to open new access routes for humanitarian aid. The deaths of WCK’s western aid workers will not be in vain. That of the thousands of Palestinians who preceded them, yes they were. Diplomacy is racist. Supremacism is a driver of Western geostrategy. Only when their own people die does European and American diplomacy abandon indifference.
Our leaders are not doing enough. What saves them condemns us. They are professionals at winning elections. Win at any cost, without looking beyond the next election cycle. They do not assume risks or responsibilities. I don’t recall any of them acknowledging a mistake. Now they talk about war.
“No one was prepared for the war that everyone expected,” wrote Leo Tolstoy in War and Peace. More than two centuries have passed since the events narrated in this pinnacle novel of Russian literature and it seems that we are still there.
NATO presents a plan to intervene in Ukraine. He wants to anticipate a Trump victory, but nothing will stop the US president from deciding the fate of his nation. If he chooses isolationism, no one will be able to stop him. NATO will be insufficient and Europe will be exposed.
The United States has saved Europe since the beginning of the 20th century. More than a hundred years have passed and today everyone knows that it is very possible that he will stop saving it before the Europeans wake up from the dream that the great weight of his soft power saved them from equipping themselves with hard power.
Weapons, however, are unlikely to save us. Only cooperation will save us. We need to renew the UN Security Council and all international organizations to fight for the universal common good.
It is a utopia, but in Europe it has started to work. The EU is an example of cooperation and shared identity. This saves us. Diluting ourselves in the universal saves us. Living in an international society of equals is our best future. It is worth keeping this hope.
