Goodbye Europe?
The nuclear holocaust looms behind the Russia-Ukraine war
The renowned Portuguese sociologist explains how the continent with the most deaths in armed conflicts in the last hundred years is heading towards an even more fatal one. As in the 1930s, the apology for fascism is made in the name of democracy and the apology for war is made in the name of peace.
By Boaventura de Sousa Santos: A new-old ghost looms over Europe: war. The most violent continent in the world in terms of deaths in armed conflicts in the last hundred years (not to go back in time and include the deaths suffered in Europe during religious wars and the deaths inflicted by Europeans on peoples subjected to colonialism), it is heading towards a new war that could be even more fatal, eighty years after the most violent conflict up to now, with close to eighty million deaths: the Second World War.
All the previous conflicts began apparently without a strong reason, it was common opinion that they would last a short time and, at the beginning, the majority of the well-to-do population continued to lead their normal lives, going shopping and to the movies, reading the newspapers, enjoying vacations. and pleasant conversations on terraces about politics and gossip. Whenever a localized violent conflict arose, the prevailing conviction was that it would be resolved locally. For example, very few people (including politicians) thought that the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) and five hundred thousand deaths would be the prelude to a major war, World War II, despite the fact that the conditions were present. Even knowing that history does not repeat itself, it is legitimate to wonder if the current war between Russia and Ukraine is not the prelude to a much bigger new war.
Media and polarization
Signs are accumulating that a greater danger may be on the horizon. At the level of public opinion and the dominant political discourse, the presence of this danger is presented through two opposite symptoms. On the one hand, the conservative political forces not only hold the ideological initiative, but also a privileged presence in the media. They are polarizing, enemies of complexity and calm argumentation, use extremely aggressive words and make fiery appeals to hatred.
They are not disturbed by the double standards with which they comment on conflicts and death (for example, among deaths in Ukraine and in Palestine), nor by the hypocrisy of appealing to values that they deny with their practices (they denounce the corruption of adversaries to hide the hers). In this current of conservative opinion, more and more right-wing and extreme-right positions are mixed, and the greatest dynamism (tolerated aggressiveness) comes from the latter.
This device is intended to instill the idea of the enemy to be destroyed. Destruction by words predisposes public opinion to destruction by acts. Despite the fact that in a democracy there are no internal enemies but only adversaries, the logic of war is insidiously transferred to supposed internal enemies, whose voice must be silenced above all else. In Parliament, the conservative forces dominate the political initiative, while the leftist forces, disoriented or lost in ideological labyrinths or incomprehensible electoral calculations, revolve around a paralyzing defencism. As in the 1930s, the apology for fascism is made in the name of democracy; the apology of war is made in the name of peace.
Mankind needs peace more than ever, for our entire planet, threatened by nuclear war, is in danger of total destruction. A destruction only man can provoke, only man can prevent. - Elie Wiesel
But this political-ideological climate is marked by an opposite symptom. The most attentive observers or commentators realize the ghost that haunts society and surprisingly converge on their concerns. Recently I have identified with some analysis of commentators that I have always recognized as belonging to a different political family than mine, that is, moderate right-wing commentators. What we have in common between us is the subordination of the questions of war and peace to the questions of democracy. We can differ on the first and agree on the second. For the simple reason that only the strengthening of democracy in Europe can lead to the containment of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine and, ideally, to its peaceful solution. Without a vigorous democracy, Europe will sleepwalk towards its destruction.
Internal war and external war
Are we in time to avoid the catastrophe? I'd like to say yes, but I can't. The signs are very worrying. First, the extreme right is growing globally, fueled and financed by the same interests that meet in Davos to safeguard their businesses. In the 30s of the last century, they were much more afraid of communism than of fascism; today, without the communist threat, they fear the revolt of the impoverished masses and propose violent, police and military repression as the only response. His parliamentary voice is that of the extreme right. The internal war and the external war are two faces of the same monster and the arms industry benefits equally from both.
Second, the war in Ukraine seems more confined than it really is. The current scourge, which is plaguing the plains where so many thousands of innocent people (mainly Jews) died eighty years ago, has the dimensions of a self-scourge. Russia to the Urals is as European as the Ukraine, and with this illegal war, in addition to innocent lives, many of them Russian-speaking, it is destroying the infrastructure that it built itself when it was the Soviet Union. The history and ethno-cultural identities between the two countries are better intertwined than with other countries that previously occupied Ukraine and now support it. Both Ukraine and Russia need much more democracy in order to end the war and build a peace that does not dishonor them.
Versailles or Vienna
Europe is much vaster than it appears from Brussels. At the headquarters of the European Commission (or NATO, which is the same thing) the logic of peace prevails according to the Treaty of Versailles of 1919, and not that of the Congress of Vienna of 1815. The first humiliated the defeated power ( Germany) and humiliation led to war twenty years later; the second honored the defeated power (Napoleonic France) and guaranteed a century of peace in Europe.
Peace according to Versailles presupposes the total defeat of Russia, just as Hitler imagined it when he invaded the Soviet Union in 1941 (Operation Barbarossa). Even allowing for this to occur at the level of conventional warfare, it is easy to predict that if the losing power has nuclear weapons, it will not stop using them. It will be the nuclear holocaust. The North American neoconservatives already include this eventuality in their calculations, convinced in their blindness that everything will happen thousands of kilometers from their borders. America first... and last. It is very possible that they are already thinking about a new Marshall Plan, this time to store the atomic waste accumulated in the ruins of Europe.
Without Russia, Europe is half of itself, economically and culturally. The biggest illusion that information warfare has instilled in Europeans in the last year is that Europe, once severed from Russia, will be able to restore her integrity by transplanting the United States. Justice be done to the United States: they take very good care of their interests. History shows that a declining empire always seeks to drag its spheres of influence with it to delay the decline. What if Europe knew how to take care of its interests?
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