Within the context of the political debate, it is not difficult to argue against our adversaries, but it is painful to have to argue with those who are closest to us ideologically when we think that they fall into a series of very serious errors, both for what corresponds to the diagnosis of the problems as well as proposals for their solution.
A few days ago it was one year since the criminal invasion of Ukraine by Vladimir Putin’s Russia, and I can only show a feeling of sadness and anger regarding the positions taken in the face of the conflict by the forces of the transformative left. and multinational of the Spanish State.
These days we have heard declarations from those responsible for almost all these parties opposing the military support that Spain, the European Union and NATO are sending to Ukraine – in my opinion with all reason and justice.
And in my case this surprise and this sadness are very sincere and profound, because I consider myself a person of the left.
I am convinced of the need for public services and their primacy over private businesses, I believe in State intervention in order to correct the dysfunctions and injustices of savage capitalism: I make the values ??of environmentalism, feminism and the LGTBI movement my own . I think we have to combat hate speech against immigrants, people of color and people of difference in general, which spread, in Spain and beyond, the worst elements of a reborn fascism that, without any doubt, is the worst threat that we have here and today.
Furthermore, in addition to being an anti-fascist, I am radically republican, and I believe that we should strive to achieve the abolition of an institution as anachronistic and anti-democratic as the monarchy and the return of the republic, a plurinational and secular republic, inspired by the values ??of freedom, equality and solidarity.
As a republican committed to the ideology and values ??of the left, I can only feel sad at the positions of the aforementioned political forces, regarding Vladimir Putin’s brutal aggression against Ukraine
When they oppose providing the Ukrainian people with the weapons they need to defend themselves and drive out the aggressor, they resort to a kind of supposed “pacifism” that translates into a shameful equidistance between the aggressor and the victim.
I am sure that my friends on the transformative left would never take any equidistance position if they witnessed a sexual assault or any other act of intimidation by the strong against the weak in our daily lives.
And this aberrational equidistance translates into a stubborn, absurd and unfair opposition to the supply of arms to the people of Ukraine.
Under the current circumstances, when Putin’s army massacres the civilian population and the economic and social structures of Ukraine, the idea of ??proposing a “ceasefire” would imply the consolidation of the status quo in the Ukrainian territory, occupied and plundered by the invaders in a very substantial part, with their cities destroyed, a large part of the population displaced, and with a fact as scandalous as the kidnapping and forcible deportation to Russia of more than 16,000 Ukrainian boys and girls. An injustice.
We cannot remain passive and with equidistant attitudes: we must continue to provide Ukraine with all the help it needs, including the military. Because peace without justice is not true peace, it is only submission and cowardice.
And it would not be bad to remember that this equidistant attitude is very similar to the one adopted in 1936 by the European and Western democracies with the Second Spanish Republic, to which their useless “pacifism” delivered into the hands of Franco and his Nazi allies and fascists.
Because a peace without justice would be nothing more than capitulation to the aggressor. We all want the end of this war, and the best way to put an end to it is none other than to help Ukraine militarily so that it can expel the invaders from its territory.
And this not only for moral reasons, but also for the very interests of Europe. Because a victorious Putin would not settle for the elimination of the Ukrainian nation; later – as Hitler and Stalin did before him – he would want to go further, and occupy Poland or any other country he found “Russifiable”.
When, not long ago, we passed the covid epidemic, we got vaccinated. Well, given the challenge that Putin’s aggression represents for Europe and the world in general, the best vaccine available to us today is none other than NATO.
It is true that the history of NATO is far from exemplary. But the world of 2023 is different from the decades of Francoism and the Cold War. NATO is very necessary today; The incorporation into this organization of two nations with a long neutralist tradition such as Sweden and Finland demonstrates this.
If we want European security to be less dependent on NATO, it will be necessary for the European Union to set out to achieve strategic autonomy. Those who defend the separation of Europe from NATO should be aware that European strategic autonomy would mean the need to obtain our own means to guarantee our European security, that is, a greater budgetary effort for the defense sector.
I believe that from the left it would be possible and necessary to reflect in order to develop a new foreign policy adapted to the times, as leaders like Lula, Petro or Boric are doing in Latin America, in contrast to the antediluvian regimes in Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua.
Today I sadly see the current equidistance position of the leading core of Podemos, but I have not lost hope that Vice President Yolanda Díaz’s project can move forward in a united, generous and inclusive manner, and that SUMAR is the meeting point for a left that is rediscovered and renewed.
Hopefully this project to refound a left that is both plural and integrated can overcome old Manichaean and outdated foreign policy approaches, and also add to its project solidarity with Ukraine and with all the peoples of the world who are victims of aggression and violence. .
Because, for all of us who are honored to be part of the left, there can be no higher priority than the fight against all kinds of injustice, dictatorship, imperialism and oppression. In order to build a world where the human rights of all women and men are defended in all corners of our common homeland, the Earth.
Joan Manuel López Nadal is a retired Spanish ambassador