At this point in history, nothing could seem more contrary to human dignity than war, the arms race and multi-billion-dollar military spending. Especially when there are so many millions of people still suffering from hunger, lack of housing and access to the most basic rights.
It is criminal, but also very cowardly, for an army ten times the size of another to invade a country, kill innocent people and destroy its towns and villages. Vladimir Putin may have just reasons to attack Ukraine, but nothing can justify his brutal and blatant thuggery. It is clear that the resources of dialogue to overcome their differences have not been exhausted, and just as we have condemned all US invasions in the past, we must do the same today against the Russian armed forces. There can be no mistake about this, and there can be no eclectic attitude to what we have witnessed around the world. Once again, “evolved” Europe and the Western world are shocking and shaming us, as the cannons of the two world wars, the Balkan conflagration and other horrors are still smoking, on a par with what the United States has done in Vietnam, Libya, Afghanistan and so many other countries.
There is no doubt that the new war we are lamenting is not only the work of a madman like Putin. It is also the fault of the NATO countries who were unable to deactivate their military entente once the Soviet Union disintegrated and the Warsaw Pact ended. Not to mention the President of the United States, who is clearly the intellectual and material author of all the latest universal nonsense. We are thinking, in particular, of a fool like Boris Johnson, a hypocrite like Emmanuel Macron or a traditionally corrupt Italian leader, among so many others who claim to be democrats. Nor can we exclude in our condemnation the Colombian lambast Iván Duque, whose state has the double characteristic of being both a narco and a criminal.
Fortunately, there are rulers on our continent who have preferred to be more cautious and silent, probably because they do not want to see their business dealings with Russia, China or the so-called European Community affected. However, we regret the brief reaction of our newly elected president who, joining in the repudiation of Putin, was unable to add a word about the responsibility of so many heads of state in this conflict. We think that this is because he is on holiday, so we do not want to exhaust the hope that he will add further comments on this tragic collective responsibility.
Whatever happens in Ukraine and Russia, this conflict will stimulate the arms race, give huge incentives to arms manufacturers, and capture much of the budget of all our nations in such need of bread, roads, bridges and infrastructure as we now see pulverised by Russian missiles. It will continue to take away or defer resources from the education, culture and health of millions of people. Without ruling out the possibility that the men in the epaulettes will continue to threaten their governments, demanding more resources to support the idle, wasteful and unproductive life of their barracks. Nor will they benefit the police forces that are so badly needed to combat other scourges such as common and organised crime.
Hopefully, the left will never again abandon itself to wars and the use of weapons of mass destruction, such as those cherished by all the world’s militaries, regardless of the convictions of their political authorities. Their discourse should always be one of peace and fraternity, especially when the lethality of the world powers is no longer counterbalanced and only the ideas and mobilisation of the people can inhibit them in their greed. It is about opposing moral authority to military capacity. It is about giving us again leaders like Mandela, Ghandi and those who with their intellectual solvency and consequence defeated even the empires themselves.
