Antonio Navalón
Models become exhausted. Empires collapse—everything changes. As if we didn’t have enough with hyperinflation or what the Covid-19 pandemic has meant, the world has been holding its breath again in the last few weeks. The word “war” has appeared again as something probable and possible in the last few days. And what is more worrying and what stands out is that this word is once again latent in a continent that has already witnessed what an armed conflict can bring and the consequences it can provoke. Today, the European continent is once again at the scene of a confrontation between two of today’s most important empires: the United States and Russia. Years later, the world is once again involved in a new dispute between the West and the East, between the so-called “free world” – even though it is currently very confusing – and the world, no longer communist, but the world led by the Russians.
I believe that, without firing a single shot, Vladimir Putin is winning the battle so far. If one takes a good look at the panorama, one will realize that on one side of the ring, there is much concern, tension, much verbal threat, and much attempt to maintain a flimsy unity that is the consequence of various factors but basically of the position of contempt of the former American President towards the defensive and economic alliances of his country with the rest of the world.
Donald Trump did not want it and imposed a defensive cost increase on all the countries part of NATO under the epigraph that the United States has no reason to defend anyone other than itself. Today, due to Trump’s actions, the free world’s leadership is up for grabs or at least was expressly relinquished by the forty-fifth President of the United States. And this lack of leadership and common fronts or positions have led to the fact that we are currently facing a crisis that so far has already led to the displacement of more than one hundred thousand Russian soldiers to the Ukrainian border and where the Americans have more than over eighty-five hundred soldiers on alert.
Joe Biden has many problems, not only is he facing the fragmentation and internal division of his country, but he is also facing one of the biggest dilemmas of his administration so far, which is the position and the decision he will take in the face of the increasingly tense disagreement with Russia and its President. I hope that someone will truly understand that this crisis has, above all, a political foundation and that the stakes are really high.
One of the biggest problems of the 21st century and the revolution of all kinds that we are experiencing, mainly due to the technological universe, is the crisis of leadership. Old is not equivalent to wise. And it doesn’t matter if you have been in an activity for fifty, thirty, or twenty years if you have not developed the wisdom and astuteness necessary to justify the passage of time and the added value of that time. President Biden has been in politics in his country for fifty years. Still, the truth is that – without being the only one – he is guilty, as are the rest of the politicians who have allowed or caused the depressing and divided situation in which the United States of America currently lives. Putin’s personality is clear, and he is at least astute in the sense that he plays on the strength of contracts and the undeniable fact that, after the United States, his nuclear arsenals are the most relevant.
We are not in a crisis led by giants. History shows that when problems break out, you never know what each one will give of itself or how far its limits are. If in doubt, take a look at the behaviors and what was believed of the leaders before World War II. What the likes of Winston Churchill, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Yosef Stalin, or any of the other fellows of that era who shared and fought with Adolf Hitler ended up becoming is something that was forged over time.
On the one hand, Biden seems to agree with himself, and – as far as is known – it seems that the other major American party, the Republican party, also supports him. As in the old days, the U.S. Secretary of State comes and goes and has resumed his role and function both internally and externally. On the other hand, I do not know if it is because, in politics, there is no memory – just as there is no reason and force and history end up convincing us that those who won were the ones who should have won – but when one listens to the Russian President explain where his crisis lies and what he is asking for, everything takes on a different meaning. When one sees the more than one hundred and fourteen thousand Russian troops on the borders with Ukraine, one’s mind inevitably flies back to the 1960s. In that scene, President John Fitzgerald Kennedy is pictured on the one hand and, on the other hand, the missiles on the island ruled by Fidel Castro.
What Vladimir Putin is asking is that the missiles not be placed outside his house. We cannot forget that at the time, Kennedy and the world were on the brink of nuclear war because the missiles – placed in Castro’s Cuba – were close to two hundred nautical miles from U.S. territory. For Putin, the Crimea issue should have been forgotten by now, just as the theft of California or Texas by the United States from Mexico was forgotten at the time. In the meantime, while we continue in an exercise in which, in the end, the Russian request is simple and basically consists of NATO ceasing to expand towards the East; that missiles be kept away from Russian territory; and that the spirit of cordiality is maintained, there is still a lot of uncertainty involved.
At this moment in the European Union – where democrats and non-democrats coexist – and where there are, for example, NATO members that belonged to the Warsaw Pact and were communist countries, as is the case of Poland – a country that is also led by a far-right government and that has permanent conflicts over the fundamental rights of its citizens – the effects of the division are beginning to be seen. Surely Emmanuel Macron, the Germans, and we don’t know how many others will talk directly to Putin. I also want to believe that they will do so in agreement with the Americans. But, in the meantime, the gesture – sometimes one reads things that give the impression that they are some joke – hints that at the moment, at least two dialogues are going on in parallel. Indeed this is the right thing to do in diplomacy and politics. However, we must be careful and attentive because sometimes the wills or interests of some are contrary or not compatible with those of others.
Irrespective of the respite and what it means to see that one can also die from a nuclear attack, from a gunshot, or a European war – and not only from the consequences of the virus and its mutations – at the moment, we are in the midst of a situation in which economies and world reordering demand a certain peace. We are in a position where unity is not even nominal. Those who want to have a conflict seem to be more concerned than those affected by it, which in this case are the Ukrainians.
First, we need peace so that we do not die of anxiety, sadness, or defeat in the face of a health crisis. And secondly, we also need an environment of prosperity and harmony to rebuild our economies, hopes, illusions, and certainties. Certainties not based on the assumption that we will either die by the Omicron or by the outbreak of war.
I believe that, without firing a single shot and without launching a single missile, history is leaning in favor of the Russian President. And it does so for a very simple reason because at the end of the day, the elements of deep collaboration that meant defending oneself and living and having a collective code of values have disappeared. To give an example, while all this is going on, in the U.K., they are looking to find out how drunk – and if at all – the British Prime Minister was at his parties, one of which was held in full mourning for the death of Queen Elizabeth II’s husband and amid Covid-19 restrictions. The so-called “Partygate” against Boris Johnson makes us wonder how much time the current British leader has left at the helm of the country, but, above all, it is a fact that highlights an irrefutable truth: while some are investigating, some are negotiating, and others are participating in what could be the trigger for a new war in Europe.
The world has to be reinvented. The model is dead. The empire is falling, and we are on crutches trying to live in a world that has changed so much, that has so many problems and so many deficits that we do not know how far this situation is going to go and how we can begin to rebuild our lives. And in the midst of all this, someone very coolly – as if he were a gunslinger from the old West – walks into the room and says, “get the missile out of my door and stop berating the enemies. Because otherwise, unlike you, I have unity, I have nothing to lose, and I can wage war”. That someone is Vladimir Putin, and he is the one who, without firing a single shot, is winning this dispute. A dispute that is the most evident proof that the world we knew has vanished.
I hope and wish that we are not facing a new World War at this moment. Indeed, I hope and expect that there will be no war since there is already a modern war – which is technological but above all a war of perception – that is being waged. And look at what it means to have over a hundred thousand troops on a country’s border under the claim and demand that no one stalks its territory. There is a problem of narrative and political initiative that the West is not winning. And everyone else watches the film trying to get into the movie but really with the impossibility of telling anything relevant in what is undoubtedly already a factor of radical change in the new world.
