Antonio Navalón
The problem with wars is that all of us pay the costs, and usually, if they survive, the joys are enjoyed by those who start them. It is terrible. The weak and the cowards are much more dangerous than the bad guys within humanity. If you take a good look at everything that has happened over the years, you will realize that no one wants to start wars, even if only on paper. This time it is different. This time, as happened in old Europe in the late 1930s, there is a European, a Russian, but a European, who does want a war. Adolf Hitler wanted it for a reason. Deep down and beyond ethnic purity, the Holocaust and the extermination of all those who were not blond, blue-eyed, and tall shares the same essence driving Vladimir Putin to do what he is doing.
Hitler needed space. Putin needs space, presence, but, above all, inhabitants. What do leaders think about in their loneliness? It is hard to know. However, one idea conveys a little of the Russian President’s plans: he will not stop until…, and that is the problem, only he knows how far he will stop. Does he think he will be able to win against everything and everyone at once? None of us know – not even President Joe Biden – what Putin knows about us that we don’t know. Put another way, the cumulative costs, from the penetration experience at the highest level in the U.S. Government when Donald Trump was at the helm, are a cost we will continue to pay for many years. Perhaps that is the reason that leads to the ultimate explanation for why, in principle, everyone realizes that for Putin, the end of this war is only his and no one else’s. If we do not know what the ultimate goal is, we can hardly establish what he is willing to do and what he is not willing to do. In the meantime, he gives the impression that he is ready to do everything. For starters, Putin is willing to massacre commonly accepted and collective fears.
Who said fear of nuclear? Nuclear is part of the most widespread nightmares of the world – the free and the occupied – about how this verbena we are in and this gift, often squandered, called life, may end. There are no limits for the Russian leader, as has happened before with another ruler. The only reason why the first nuclear bomb was American was that it was developed first by scientists such as Robert Oppenheimer and the participants of the Manhattan Project rather than by Adolf Hitler’s scientists such as Wernher von Braun. However, despite being the leaders of the endeavor, both Oppenheimer and von Braun – felt a profound lack of respect for the consequences of what they were doing.
When will Putin pay for what he is doing? I would not want to be one of his wealthy companions who had accompanied him in his climb to power from the first day when, from the mayor’s office in St. Petersburg, he started the path to the stars that we are victims and witnesses today. All his core of power, stars or no stars. All his generals. All his wealthy friends. All of Russia’s powerful have lost everything.
Someone who can win a war against everyone without limits will not share anything with anyone. Putin has many problems outside; above all, he has the problem that – contrary to what it seemed – we are neither so dead nor so weak. However, mistakes are piling up, and they could take their toll on us at some point. I understand President Emmanuel Macron when presented with an opportunity to score a penalty that will take him into history. But the truth is that, except for the unbalanced game between the United States and Russia, no one has anything to say. That may be the reason why a Norwegian by the name of Jens Stoltenberg – who holds the post of Secretary-General of NATO – allows himself to make Europe’s positions and to answer, riding on a tank, the political responses to what is a challenge in all orders as posed by Putin.
We all have costs. The problem is that we will surely start paying long before the culprit of all this gets the bill. Will nuclear war start? It is possible. What is clear is that the time has come to say goodbye to the 20th century. Farewell to World War II, which already seems as distant as Julius Caesar’s Gallic War. Farewell to the order established due to the war that began in 1939. We also have to say goodbye to the imperfect balance because bipolarity was based on confrontation.
This is another ticket. It is another story. That is why, in the age of the Internet, of the Mark Zuckerbergs, of Elon Musk, of Jeff Bezos, fifteen days have been as if years have passed in the twentieth century. And in fifteen days, one of the costs that all those sacrificed – as if they were Ukrainians, though yes, with Picassos and Van Goghs on the walls that are the companions of Vladimir Putin’s adventures – have been able to verify that it is not true that the Russian army was as terrible or as horrible as the one that had been sold to us. It has also been proven that a people whose dignity has been whipped and who have a national sense of belonging and that they are the owners, can withstand for fifteen days and with an enormous inequality of all kinds, a war machine that Putin would like to be as perfect as the one used by Adolf Hitler. However, experience and what has been seen show that this was pure speculation and that, in reality, the Russians were not as powerful as was thought.
Interestingly, the war in Ukraine – a war that is raging in Europe and at the heart of communications and the contributions that technology has made to everyday life – should be the most public and publicized war in the history of humankind. However – despite the countless technological resources at our fingertips – very few images have been recorded of the confrontation between the Russian and Ukrainian armies. Moreover, this is a war in which there are many declarations. The President of Ukraine has already even included in his routine a kind of morning briefings in which he reports – partially – on what has happened. However, there are very few testimonies that can verify the reality of the combats. One should not confuse the photos of human suffering, casualties, or the great exoduses of refugees with what I am saying. Since the Gulf War and Operation Desert Storm, the world got used to following wars live and having the information almost instantaneously. The Ukrainian war is a war without pictures, and one has to ask why it is so.
Can Putin end the situation with one bombshell? Undoubtedly. The problem now is the costs of this war, especially if one questions how long Putin will be able to maintain – without starting to kill so many people both inside and outside – the monopoly of violence he has unleashed. Putin is paying a high cost for this war. The question is whether when the time comes for him to settle the score, we will all still be here or whether he will end up destroying us all before he pays.
In the meantime, take my advice and put all the memories of World War II and compare or liken them to the Napoleonic battles or the Gallic War and place yourself in a world in which everything we seemed to have learned, everything we would never again walk the paths of horror for, was – as in so many other things – a lie. It is enough for one to convince himself that he can be God on earth astride a nuclear bomb for our whole world to; first, collapse in terror and, second, disappear either because we cannot stand the strain or because of an instrument of war wipes us off the map. The costs are already very high. For starters, the next countries Putin wants to eat already know that his Army is not as fierce as he needs it to be. And as this war rages on, the costs are getting higher and higher.
Of all the casualties that the confrontation initiated by Vladimir Putin has produced, the most dangerous and the ones he most needs to pay attention to are those around him. No history allows us to say how much the Russian generals will endure the humiliation of having a road with sixty-five kilometers of trucks and armored vehicles and yet not having an explanation as to why the Russian army has not managed to end this war—especially considering the remarkable superiority and disproportion that exists between Russia and Ukraine. I don’t know if Putin will want to end the war by gambling everything, but I do know that there are too many allies of the Russian President who have already lost everything. And that is the main problem that Putin has to deal with from the rear.
