Antonio Navalón
For many, June 29, the day on which NATO members signed the Madrid Declaration at the summit meeting, is a watershed in modern history. It is not only because NATO – an element in crisis – has been wholly revived due to Vladimir Putin’s actions and the conflict in Ukraine, but because they started that day as thirty members and ended the day as thirty-two. If I were the head of the Kremlin, I would observe and keep in mind that, whatever I do, the only certainty is that as of today, the attack and defense missile systems and the entire structural network to prevent a possible invasion will be placed less than twenty kilometers from St. Petersburg. They will be so because of the recent acceptance of Finland’s membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and they will also be blocking the routes of those who for a long time served as the leading suppliers of some of the raw materials for military and energy use since the Second World War.
The world is playing war. Today this war can already be said to be between the United States and NATO against Russia via Ukraine. With every shipment of arms arriving in Ukraine, two things are inevitably condemned. On the one hand, the sentence of a battle that will continue to cost a very high number of human lives is signed. And on the other hand, every day, we are moving deeper and deeper into a dead end. The Kremlin inhabitant has only two paths: either he tells his Foreign Minister to start negotiating for an honorable peace, or he finally touches one of those many buttons that would mean activating the weapons of mass destruction and attacks to raze Ukraine to the ground. The worst thing about the second scenario is that Ukraine would probably not be Putin’s final destination, but the overweening ambition of the Russian leader would surely drive him to continue as far as his capabilities would allow him to go.
The decision taken last June 29th at the NATO Summit to multiply and increase the budget and contributions of member countries in defense matters, as well as the increase of troops and military elements to guarantee the so-called collective security, gives a worrying picture. If before it was an unfounded assumption on Putin’s part that he felt harassed, after this decision, he now has every reason to be. And now the world is seriously engaged in a game of war. The problem is that whatever is done and however it is done, the consequences will not only be limited to Europe but to the rest of the world. It is as if, suddenly, in the Internet age, all inhibitions have been lost, and we have all become rapid shooters or “trigger happy” – as the British say – with the possibility of attacking at any moment. However, in response to what happened, it must be recognized that Putin not only picked up the rifle to deal with the threat but also his missiles and everything he had at hand to escalate to the point where we are now. And he did so by provoking an escalation of tensions, but, above all, of violence, that will take a long time for us to be able to assimilate.
But what more can be said about Putin? The Russian leader has now reached a point where he has to make concrete decisions such as, for example, the physical and complete elimination of Kyiv or stop seeing Zelenski’s actions as an element that has won him the propaganda war. He must also stop seeing it as an element of distortion against his political objectives.
Last week, the war took a qualitative leap that will affect us all sooner rather than later. It is a war in which, I repeat, there are only two ways: either to negotiate the least disastrous peace or to attack with such ferocity that I believe it is impossible to stop it in Ukraine. What will happen the day they point their missiles at American planes carrying weapons to be delivered to the Ukrainian army? What will happen when a rocket escapes and hits Poland or any of the NATO member countries? They are delighted to tell each other that whoever attacks one attacks all the other NATO members. But if that is so, we must know that the policy that is currently being implemented leaves very few paths because either NATO stops rearming and investing in military deterrence strategies, or we reverse the terms.
On many occasions, the world has gone mad. And it is true – as a survivor of Auschwitz might think – that there is always something left to tell. However, we have reached a situation where either the Russian President is given the entire Donbas region of Ukraine, including Odesa, thus closing the exit to the Baltic Sea from Ukraine, or it is already a Dantesque scenario with not four but five horsemen of the Apocalypse lurking. In this case, the fifth of them would be represented by all that it means to have large masses of people having overcome famine – as is the case of China – now facing the starvation of the so-called developed countries and, above all, the lack of hope.
The political leadership has been lost. The social and economic models have collapsed. We are at a point where it seems the way out of inflation, deflation, or bankruptcy is war. However, this is not new. Moreover, wars tend to provoke elements of lack of control in those who emerge victorious. For example, at a particular moment and despite commanding an army of five hundred thousand men and facing more than five million soldiers – which was what the Russian army had at that time – General Patton proposed to his government to invade Moscow. For him, the invasion would culminate in what he saw as the great post-war problem of coexistence with the communists. A similar case was made after the failure of the Korean War when General MacArthur proposed to use a nuclear bomb on Beijing.
General Patton died in Berlin in a suspicious traffic accident before returning to the United States to report to his bosses. As for General MacArthur, he was escorted on his way to a military court since weapons solutions, only for men with guns, are often the beginning of the greatest catastrophes in civilian societies. General Eisenhower bid farewell to the U.S. Presidency twenty-four hours before he was replaced by John Fitzgerald Kennedy, denouncing the dangers of the military-industrial complex. After the NATO meeting in Madrid and the agreements to increase the defense chapters of the member countries, it can be said that the military-industrial complex has never been stronger than it is today.
The world is certainly no safer after the NATO Summit in Madrid than before, just as it was no safer before the invasion of Ukraine. The problem is how we will recover a sense of coexistence if that is even possible. Moreover – in terms of pure survival – if Vladimir Putin does not win this battle, his neck is in danger. Those who have accompanied him militarily or made great fortunes cannot see their wealth and lives destroyed simply because of the failure of the Ukraine operation.
We have reached a point where there are not many paths, and – beyond the childish positioning of who one is with – it is necessary to know that the world has entered a juncture of dangers from which we will hardly come out well if we do not invert the terms of how we are getting used to living.
We come in summer. We go on vacation with the phenomenon of total war and destruction at our doorstep as if it did not exist. In that sense, it is clear that countries like Mexico or the entire Latin American bloc, as well as other areas of the world, must know, first, that everything that is happening affects them or will affect them sooner or later. Secondly, it is necessary to remember that today wars cannot be limited to acting only in a selected part of the territory; they are launched, multiplied, and promoted at such a speed that they are uncontrollable.
How did we reach this point? To a point where we have gone from believing and maintaining that we have never been closer to peace to the elimination of a world with proportions of lack of common sense that ultimately end up affecting us all. This war is not asymmetrical. Wars are insane. This is undoubtedly the most dangerous war because, if it is carried to the last consequence, there is no possibility of victory for anyone. In the end, if we know anything and must learn anything, it is that the best war game is not to play any.
