Antonio Navalón
If one looks at today’s world’s shape and the situation of the countries that matter to us – starting with our own – and which affect us, one can come to a conclusion that seems obvious. In my opinion, a conclusion that provides some of the most important answers to the significant historical changes we have experienced at least in the last century: crises are for the summer.
The summer of 1939, as seen in the annals of history, was a summer apparently free of dangers but full of threats and tensions, the same ones that eventually triggered the outbreak of World War II. This year’s summer is characterized by a war raging for more than four months. A war with incalculable consequences and, worse, a war that we do not know how it will end and what its actual costs will be.
It is important to remember that until the emergence and development of this conflict, Ukraine was considered one of the most corrupt countries in the world. With the conflict in full swing, that has apparently been put aside or has simply ceased to be a priority issue.
To mention a few facts, it is estimated that the Russian-Ukrainian conflict will leave more than nineteen million people suffering from chronic hunger. This war is causing approximately twenty billion in economic losses per day.
I leave aside – not to ignore it, and even though it is, unfortunately, the most visible, the most computable, and the most immediate consequence – the horrors of the dead, the displaced, what Russia’s invasion of Ukraine means in geopolitical terms and the effects this conflict is bringing. I leave aside the obvious fact of a reality that appears more and more undeniable, and that is what it means to be living through multiple crises in parallel – energy, financial, political, social, and geostrategic. The crises we are experiencing have brought about three significant changes.
The first is that it is not that the energy crisis has triggered the conflict but that energy and its domination are probably some of the reasons for the war. The second is that a change such as the one that is taking place is impossible to carry out without the confabulation of what is implied by so many years of lack of seriousness and of doing things without the necessary planning and foresight. The consequences of such high inflation and the lack of economic stability that hinders development have placed, among other things, the world’s currencies on a merry-go-round of ups and downs with an increasingly complicated solution. The third major change that accompanies the so-called asymmetric combat that is taking place in Ukraine contains not only new elements but also shares characteristics of conflicts that have been experienced before and which correspond to the field of military doctrines, which, by now, have had a complete rethink and have shown that things are no longer executed as they used to be.
This is not the first time that the Western world has played with fire and created a problem of a dimension similar to the attack on the Twin Towers. After the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, there were years of moral condemnation. Finally, the United States of America and its Western allies decided to train and teach the mujahideen of the war, the patriots and defenders of Afghanistan, how to use the famous surface-to-air missiles. This training allowed even the balance of the conflict against the Soviet armored and weaponized helicopters that provoked massacres and evident repression against the Afghan people. As a consequence of the conflict and the support, the Americans and their allies provided, a hero of the Islamic world was born. This hero was called Osama bin Laden. Moreover, that was not all, but all the funding, support, and backing provided by the Western world also allowed the creation of a cell that spread terror all over the world for a large part of the 21st century called Al Qaeda.
Today, the missiles provided by the United States are not the ones hunted by the Soviet Army called Stinger. Today the missiles that the Americans are sending to Ukraine are called FGM-148 Javelin and are weapons capable of firing projectiles using heat detectors, reaching a distance of up to four kilometers. This is a man-portable anti-tank system that, if in the hands of a moderately trained army, can be as devastating as outnumbering or out-strengthing the enemy in front of you.
I do not mean to say that we are building another Al Qaeda-like organization or that – as a consequence of Western support for Ukraine in the conflict with Russia – a new Osama bin Laden will emerge. But I want to note that, for the worse, again on this occasion – as has happened on many others throughout history – the real losers are the people and the winners are the owners of the industry of death.
The Ukrainian troops have produced a real game-changer. After so many tanks and the clear Russian numerical superiority, handling that missile, plus drones and the use of technologies, has brought about an unforeseen outcome of the conflict. A country like Russia, with such a solid development of hackers and cyber terrorism, today finds itself in a situation in which not only has it not been able to win, but it has had tremendous and terrible losses, the most difficult to explain being those that go against the logic of the ratio of the forces.
To date, no one has the actual bill for what Ukraine already owes in these first months of the conflict for its support from the NATO countries and the United States. However, it is clear that it is a huge bill that will take generations to pay.
In another order of events, it is essential to analyze the historic and recently approved German rearmament plan, representing the largest German rearmament since the Second World War. This plan, among other things, will allow two percent of Germany’s Gross Domestic Product to contribute to making Germany the largest military power in Europe and the third-largest in the world, behind only China and the United States. Germany is the heart of Europe; whoever dominates it will be able to dominate Europe, as Sir Halford John Mackinder’s Heartland put it in his theory of Russian territory and the area of most significant untapped resources, and also was once put forward by Karl Haushofer who turned it into the Nazi domination strategy. A theory that can also be transferred to the case of Ukraine.
At present, we find ourselves in a curious situation. It was not enough for us to have a Second World War and to have witnessed the most significant mass tragedy in the history of humankind until now, to allow once again the rearmament of Germany, a country that has already been decisive in other moments of history. Moreover, its membership in the Western defensive bloc but, above all, the limitation of its strength and the moral use of its military force is one of the critical factors in understanding the mid-twentieth century and so far in the twenty-first century. Yet today, as one of the side effects of the Ukrainian war, we will have a German army that I am sure will not only be massive and well-armed. But above all, it will be an army that hopefully will have already erased from its memory what it means to have so much power and will be aware that its misuse can end up provoking a situation like the Holocaust.
Rampant and runaway inflation everywhere, but mainly in the United States and the more developed economies, makes it clear that we are reaching the end of the road. The world is bankrupt. Look at countries’ national debt and tell me if Americans can pay back everything they owe. And if they cannot do it, who will be able to pay it? A figure exceeds thirty trillion dollars and represents more than one hundred and thirty percent of their Gross Domestic Product.
At a time when we are also witnessing the total transformation of the economy, of technology, the war economy, and of a system that we have not been able to articulate well the coexistence between the old economic models and the new ones, inflation such as the one we have – starting with the United States – is a dominant factor in the world economic panorama.
We are witnessing the end of one world and the birth of another. Only this new world has a marked absence of States and too many risks of disappearance due to the multiplication of factors, on the one hand, of weapons and, on the other hand, of its lack of control. We have left control in the hands of the new technologies, and now everything is possible as far as they allow. These factors, added to those accompanying the various crises afflicting our world, have created a kind of bubble effect in the economic development of countries. A bubble that could easily burst at any moment, producing a crisis like never before.
Never before have we been in such need of statesmen; I suppose every generation has felt the same way. And never before have we had a more depressing political outlook – as a consequence of the actions taken by the people who embody power. It is difficult to know what changes this whole situation will really bring about. Although it is easy to suppose that, without a total change of values, mentalities, and ways of facing the day-to-day in our lives and without a change in our policies, we are condemned to a tragedy that will surpass – from my point of view and I wish nothing more than to be wrong – any crisis ever seen before.
If we do not get back on track, the crises brewing in this summer’s heat will have devastating consequences. The coming crisis will be worse and more catastrophic than those of 1929 and 2008 combined. It will be worse than any crisis. I hope we get back on track. And I hope that the political and economic wills will prove me utterly wrong in my prediction.
