Antonio Navalón
There is a phenomenon that repeats itself over and over again. The last ten centuries have been a butchery in the continent we know as Europe, including, of course, the part where three continents meet, which is Turkey. Since Greece – passing through the Roman Empire and then through all the empires there have been – it can be observed that the geographical and ethnic configuration of Europe is made on the trail of bones, misfortunes, and butchery. It is incredible that in a place so physically small in comparison with others – for example, Russia, which is the largest country on Earth and a part of its territory is on the European continent – so many languages, ethnicities, personalities subsist and, above all, unification has not been achieved even in the name of the interest and security of the European continent at any time. Once again, the game of frontiers is staining the map of Europe red. Once again, as has been happening for so many centuries, the accommodation of Europe and the beginning of the great world catastrophes passes through what in the end at some point was known as the mother of cultures, at least the Western ones, and advocated and propelled a situation in which the rest of the world was involved in one way or another.
The invasion of Ukraine by Putin’s Russia is, unfortunately, one more chapter in the long and endless list of affronts, incompatibilities, and racial hatreds – including linguistic ones – that exist in a space, I insist, so relatively small and yet so explosive and transcendent for the rest of the world. Two phenomena recur repeatedly. On the one hand, social hatred. It does not take a genius to understand that without the Treaty of Versailles and how badly the outcome of the First World War was resolved, we would never have arrived at the Second World War, and it would never have broken out. What happened at the beginning of the 20th century should have been a universal lesson against hatred and should have taught us to win wars intelligently to prevent future conflicts.
If the problems that remained unresolved after the end of the First World War had been eradicated at their roots – efficiently and without leaving any loose ends – the Second World War would indeed not have happened. In retrospect, what remains after a conflict is not the order imposed after a military victory, but the social legacy and the havoc wreaked on balance between the victors and the vanquished. Adolf Hitler would never have been in power without the Treaty of Versailles and without the sense of collective humiliation of the German people. Today, Vladimir Putin wears the shame of the fall of the Soviet Union. A fall that was not caused by any military disaster, but was the consequence of an implosion caused by the inefficiency of the regime and by a lack of practicality in solving problems, and which did nothing but fuel the humiliation of mother Russia and, above all, the loss of its status as an empire and a world power.
Europe and the world – that part that so enthusiastically applauded the fall of the Berlin Wall – could have intelligently remembered the characteristics repeated throughout the history of what was once called the Soviet Union and which, moreover, had previously been the great empire of the Czars. We did not. Some historians announced the end of history and the definitive triumph of capitalism over communism. We did not realize that, in the future, that victory – which was a victory based above all on the mistakes made by the Soviet Union and not on the successes committed by the Western world – would sooner rather than later, if not well managed, raise the dreams of greatness again. But, above all, it would be the elements that would promote the Russian national sense that would or could again put us all in danger.
It was clear, especially in 2007, what Vladimir Putin felt and wanted. We enjoyed Boris Yeltsin’s drunkenness and pratfalls. We wondered how it was possible for an obscure KGB officer – after having gone through a brief administrative experience as mayor of St. Petersburg – to relieve Boris Yeltsin and take over the Russian presidency. And yet the West did not understand that the merry-go-round of hatred and historical resentment had been set in motion once again. We failed to see that these feelings within the Russian leader had provoked and fueled a kind of revenge and awakened the ambition to regain the empire that had once been the nation of his birth.
The current crisis, which may lead to the outbreak of a Third World War, is a crisis that has many components. Still, two essential elements require special attention—first, having awakened the feeling in the former empires to overcome the mistakes and failures committed in the past to regain their status as leaders, as well as to take advantage of the weaknesses and oversights by those who had initially won the game against Communism.
At the very moment when Vladimir Putin – after his speech proclaimed in 2007 in Munich – was moving away from a common defensive military doctrine with the rest of Europe and the steel wall was being created again, although we were not aware of it at the time, the Russian leader had a definite impulse in the internalization of the humiliation and development of the new weapons and the new militaristic spirit of Russia. Months later – in 2008 and without being aware of the possible consequences – President George Walker Bush invited Georgia and Ukraine to join NATO. With its eastward expansions, NATO has been moving dangerously close to Russia’s borders, forgetting – both in Washington and Brussels – the origin of the mixture of humiliation with insecurity and the imperial past of a country like Russia. All this was creating a feeling that, to a certain extent, justified the first operation of investing in defense and not only that but also making military issues a subject in Russian schools.
Before the invasion of Ukraine, before the reconfiguration of the map, and before the beginning of what no one knows how it may end came a stage of humiliation, hatred, concealment, and preparation. And every time a country close to Russia became either a member of the European Community or a member of NATO, we were creating more ammunition against what one day would be what it is today: the explosion of the living space of a Russia that feels threatened.
Clearly, there is only one winner in this crisis at the moment, and that is China. The Chinese are not only the great arbiter and surely the negotiators of the only possible way out before the Apocalypse breaks out at all levels, but they have also managed to get the United States – which, up to this moment – was involved in a commercial, economic and positional war to try to become the world leader again. This whole scenario has meant that right now, China has its hands free to, on the one hand, be the only element that can be Putin’s controlling element. And on the other hand, the Chinese no longer have to fight against the United States since the Americans have now become the main rivals of the Russians in shaping the world.
Hatred and frontiers. The same old formula. The unlearned lesson. It seems that every so often, we need millions of dead to remind us that, in the end, the changes have been minimal. Meanwhile, fear, panic, and the threat that at any moment an accident or a deliberate action – no one knows how far the new Russian Tsar is willing to go – can provoke a new Holocaust in the broadest sense. There is only one guarantee: that the economic and financial power – which is the only element that can counteract the effect of the West’s economic measures on Russia – i.e., China, can exercise real control over the situation. But that, in any case, and let us hope that this is not the case, this would have to pass through the amputation not only of Ukraine but of many states that will inevitably have to guarantee Russian tranquility and peace. And that would mean putting an end to the dream of the European Union and putting an end to the fact that they are part of the Western defensive scheme. A scheme that at this point – and as Donald Trump himself took it upon himself to advocate – is a scheme that has ceased to exist.
The game of frontiers is crueler than the game of thrones since, in the end – if one looks at the consequences that this game can bring about – the results can be devastating and irreversible.
