We are at war in Europe, again, and the internal tensions in the democracies are footnotes in the great major conflict that is underway and that affects Russia, the United States, China, Europe and, of course, Ukraine as the scene and initial victim of the catastrophe that has already produced tens of thousands of dead Russian soldiers, as many Ukrainians, thousands of children deported to Russia, ten million displaced inside and outside Ukraine, razed cities, hunger, energy insecurity, rising prices and the building of many internal and external walls.
I re-read Joseph Roth's The March of Radetzky these days and I seemed to find a parallel between that dying Austro-Hungarian empire of frivolities and Viennese formalities, which would collapse with the Great War of 1914, and the feeling that it is detected in the world today that Pope Francis graphically describes how "for years we have been living the Third World War in bits and pieces".
Crimea and Syria in 2014 and Yemen later have been bloody sparks as an advance of a more serious war that directly or indirectly affects us all. It is not the leaders who promote it who suffer, but the towns.
Xi Jinping's visit to Moscow is another indication of the internationalization of the conflict. Russia is de facto at war with Europe and the United States, and Putin seeks the desperate embrace of China, which aims to reach the category of world hegemonic power. Washington and Beijing are not formally at war, but they do dispute the dominance of trade, diplomacy and international influence around the planet.
Here we are entertained by the motion of censure of Ramón Tamames, in France there has been a great social shock because Macron has stubbornly delayed the retirement age by two years, until 64, in Italy the extreme right de Meloni presides over a Government that wants to close the gates of entry for migrants through the Mediterranean and in the United Kingdom they begin to discuss whether they are better or worse after Brexit when all the indicators point out that leaving Europe was simply an error promoted with lies by a supremacist elite who think the country is theirs.
We are at war and the arms industry is the only one that is not in crisis. Arms companies are listed on the stock market with gains that have reached 150%, as is the case of Germany's Rheinmetall and gains of 300% compared to the previous year. Russian state company Almaz-Antey is trading up 45% since the invasion. The five largest American arms companies accumulated a share price increase of 24 billion dollars in the last year. In Spain, the companies Santa Bárbara, Maxam, Navantia and others do not fulfill orders. The world is arming itself to the teeth. A long war and the suffering of many people can be seen.
It is worth recalling President Eisenhower's farewell speech when he handed over power to John Kennedy in January 1961: "We must guard against the acquisition of undue influence, both solicited and unsolicited, by the industrial military complex". It is the economic and malevolent power of all weapons.
I cannot exonerate Putin as being directly responsible for starting this great catastrophe. He doesn't have to win this war. Military aid to Ukraine is justified. But it is necessary to prepare for peace, reconstruction and the new world order that will emerge from the rubble of the ever-punished Ukraine, which, like Poland, suffered the greatest atrocities of Nazism and Stalinism.
