One of the most negative historical phenomena, present in all cultures and civilizations and in all times, is the sacralization of power. The masses and the elites not only abide by the powerful, but also admire, envy and exalt them as saviors and sometimes worship them as gods. The formula: “…Those who are going to die salute you” is not a metaphor.
The powers that be never acted alone, but committed the population of some nations to the domination of others with the collaboration of the churches. Native wrens hunted down their brothers to sell as slaves, the subjects of the metropolis benefited from colonial exploitation and enjoyed it, whites, rich and poor, were complicit in slavery, complied with racial segregation, including the apartheid and antisemitism. The masses of the European metropolises and the liberal bourgeoisies did not rebel against colonialism or against imperial practices.
The corrupting back of power is not a speculation but a historical evidence. No social structure, ancient or modern, has escaped this curse that is expressed in the prerogatives of states, governments and warlords to act at will. Not even the democracies have corrected the defect. One of the most reprehensible manifestations of this civilizational aberration is the ability of the powerful to manipulate the majorities and drag them into unfair and predatory wars.
the stupid war
An anthological example among many that, past and present, could be cited, were the Crusades, when summoned by the popes and the European nobles, peasants, artisans, merchants and knights without fortune, for centuries, as if in a trance, fanatical, enlisted in military conquest expeditions, they killed and allowed themselves to be killed to presumably liberate the Holy Land, especially Jerusalem from the Jerusalemites without realizing that they were the only invaders.
All European parliaments and leaders, including those of Russia, and those of the United States, are elected and all consider themselves as paradigms of democracies, but none have carried out any consultation to find out the popular point of view about the stupid war that they have unleashed on the old and tired continent and that they carry out in the name of nothing, except their megalomaniac whims, which they impose with the greatest solvency.
The case of the supranational institutions of the European Union is worse, they have not even been formally elected.
Although the constitutions that enshrine the rule of law with independent powers and checks and balances to achieve balanced management of public functions, establish limits, they always leave loopholes and exceptions that facilitate the capricious and arbitrary exercise of power. In short, constitutions are not made to limit power, but to endorse its exercise.
One of the most graceful traits of power are the abilities to exploit successes and use progress as motivation and lever to progress, well-being to promote well-being and social peace to make coexistence more perfect. There are countries that they approach those ideals and others that, having advanced in their realization, suddenly change course and sink into quagmire because their rulers deem it pertinent.
an unnecessary war
Although I have consumed high doses of information from the parties, all manipulated and made up, I have not been persuaded that the West needed the expansion of NATO, to, as the Pope has said: “Go barking on Russia’s borders”, neither I see the need to expand the organization to benefit collective security in Europe, I do not believe that Russia had no alternative but war and I do not see how the residents, Ukrainians and Russians of Donbass have benefited.
In Hollywood there is a practice of awarding alternative “Razzie Awards” to the Oscars to highlight the worst film. If there is something analogous in world politics, it would be for the US administration. Not for having confronted Russia or for having supported Ukraine, but because of the way it has done it.
Among other contributions, respect for war and peace, the United States conceived the 14 Points of President Woodrow Wilson intended to serve as a guide for the reorganization of international society at the end of the First World War and which served as the basis for the Constitution of the League of Nations, the core of a mainly European international security system designed to prevent new wars between the powers.
The effort did not bear fruit because the League of Nations could not prevent the rise of fascism, the German rearmament and the outbreak of World War II, but it was not in vain either. In the wake of that realization, Franklin D. Roosevelt issued the Atlantic Charter, which, endorsed by Churchill and Stalin, served as the basis for the anti-fascist coalition of Los Aliados and as a draft for the UN Charter.
At the same time that there was intense fighting in the theaters of operations of the Soviet Union, the Far East, the Pacific, North Africa and the Second Front in Western Europe, Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill, like goldsmiths, embroidered the political ecosystem for the postwar, whose international security mechanism lies in the UN, which was established in San Francisco and whose birth was announced by President Harry Truman, who read the Charter.
It’s embarrassing
It is true that the United States is the country that has fought the most wars, but it is also one of those that, at least conceptually, have advocated for peace and that together with the Soviet Union, —led by six general secretaries: Stalin, Khruzchov, Brezhnev , Andropov, Chernenko and Gorbachev and eight presidents: Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and Reagan—, navigated more than 40 years of the Cold War, the most difficult and dangerous period in history, in which deeply enemy powers found ways to avoid war, which with the use of nuclear weapons would have been terminal.
It is shameful that today’s leaders have not known how to do it.
Those same countries, without the ideological differences of that time, today carry out the worst staging of their performance as world powers. The United States and Russia, military superpowers, whose power cannot be matched by any country, nor by all together, and which have the capacity to influence Europe, including NATO, act with an antediluvian mentality and instead of dialogue and peace they sponsor the war.
Providing weapons and more weapons, emulating to see who kills and destroys with more efficiency and cruelty, threatening and assuming war in Europe as a solution, is like putting out fires by throwing gasoline on them.
As has happened before, in the war in Ukraine all the actors are wrong. The good news is that everyone can rectify. It only takes humanism and courage. Of that there is. See you there.
*This text was originally published in the newspaper For this! It is reproduced with the express permission of its author.
