“Raptores orbis, postquam cuncta vastantibus defuere terrae, mare scrutantur; si locuples hostis est, avari, si pauper, ambitiosi, quos non Oriens, non Occidens satiaverit; soli omnium opes atque inopiam pari adfectu concupiscunt. Auferre, trucidare, rapere falsis nominibus imperium, atque ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.“
“Thieves of the world, since, devastating everything, they have no more land to ravage, they search the sea; if the enemy is rich, they are eager to possess, to tyrannize him if he is poor, neither the East nor the West has satisfied them; alone among all, they covet with the same ardor opulence and indigence. To steal, to slaughter, to delight, this is what their false vocabulary calls authority, and where they make the desert, they call it peace.”
Agricola, 30, 7, Tacitus.
This summer, we wrote about the impossibility of a ghostly “European strategic autonomy” displayed by the French and German bourgeoisies as a geopolitical position of balance between Europe’s own interests, which sometimes still likes to think of itself as a truly independent imperialist pole, and the US imperial agenda. The historical developments that have followed since have turned the tide: today, while the United States is gradually letting go of the catch in Ukraine and the Middle East, at least, it seems – between the difficulties of Joe Biden to making vote the financing to Ukraine, Biden himself, who hardens his tone with Netanyahu’s destructive madness and Donald Trump’s promises to resolve the conflict between Kyiv and Moscow in 24 hours – it seems that now it is the European leadership that has decided, in a suicidal stubbornness, to fight for the Americans while they take time.
The Macronians delusions about sending Western troops to the Russian front were denied by all its counterparts, and by NATO itself (NATO Secretary General Jess Stoltenberg has ruled out NATO’s direct engagement in Ukraine – although the Atlantic Alliance is notoriously training the Ukrainian army) has unleashed a warmongering fury in the Western bourgeoisie, which is quite worrying. The war proclamations from this side of the Atlantic can make us understand the unprecedented nature of the times that await us: Charles Michel, President of the European Council, wrote, on March 18, 2024, a tribune for the French center-left daily Libération, whose content is summarizable, in his words, with a quote that sounds rather like an epitaph: “if we want peace we must prepare for war”.
Funny war the one that is conceived as a banner of peace, especially coming out of the mouth of institutions that celebrate in the loop the wonderful 70 years of uninterrupted peace (NATO recently celebrated its 75th anniversary with joy, a defensive pact that has killed some 30 million people in wars of aggression throughout its existence) while forgetting European involvement, direct or indirect, in the near all the conflicts on a large scale that have bloodied the planet in the happy years of the pax americana, finally over.
It is clear that the balance of power is changing, and it is certainly not in favor of the “free world”, of the collective West. The addition of five centuries of dehumanization of four-quarters of the planet by Europe and its acolytes, of which it is now a good fief just to spend the holidays, will be expensive, and even more so if the conduct of the ruling classes in the West will continue on this attitude. The decompression of the frozen front of the global confrontation is narrowing, among those who have not already warmed, we find Ukraine and the Middle East, where the situation has arrived, inexorably at an irreversible turning point – or Taiwan, where the military fire has not yet broken out. But if on the one hand, we have Russian revanchism which has shown itself ready to overthrow the table of international law, weary of deception and humiliation, or Israel, which does even worse, enjoying its divine impunity and conducting its war-China, which, since its totalitarian Asian barbarism, has defended the global order based on law and rules, while the vanguard of the «free world» has the recurring vice of genocidal ethnic cleansing.
It is important to remember that the countries of the West are not populated exclusively by rich people with varying degrees of racism, because of the latitude of the parliamentary benches where their rich representatives sit. Because Western liberal democracy, which they present as the ultimate completion of centuries of struggle for emancipation, is deserted by more than half of the citizens to whom it is addressed, during the electoral rounds. Compared to some decades ago, political participation – at least in its institutional form – has not only suffered a regression but in its current state, bears witness to a real collapse.
The Western working-class “masses” exist, and they have nothing to share with those who govern them, much less with regard to the destiny that these elites want to impose on them. The first point on which an incompatibility of perspectives is faced is that of the “war economy” whose immediate necessity is declared by the European Community institutions and national governments, since things have gone wrong for Kyiv on the Ukrainian front. NATO has long been asking member countries to increase military spending to 2% of GDP, and the votes in the budget of European national economies are increasing: France, for example, will reach the expenditure required by the Atlantic Alliance, said Minister of Defence Lecornu, in 2024; while the other member countries, more lagging, are struggling to catch up. More money for arms and armies means less money for training, health and public services: this is what “war economy” means; the arms race is a tightening of austerity and social slaughter policies. We are not going to make a list of all the savings made recently by European governments to delight the Atlantic Warlords, but, particularly interesting for students, could be the 900 million savings in scientific research and training announced by the Attal government in France.
Beyond the economic question it remains the fact of the imperialist carnage perpetrated by the West and the military challenge to Russia in which, listening to their statements, the European bourgeoisie are determined to take ever more risks. It has been recalled elsewhere why the real European material interests are opposed to its foreign policy dictated by Washington, in particular on the energetic topic (the Nord-Stream affair is emblematic in this sense). But it is clear how the military escalation would be even more dramatic, and that the European peoples do not intend to risk anything for Washington, not for selfishness but for lucidity. But still, the rhetoric of the governments and the mainstream bourgeois press exposes the absurdity of the “unhistorical” feeling of Europeans, declaring that their superior values of freedom must again be defended with blood, and that we must be aware that these three-quarters of a century of peace will not be free. The European population is lazy, not only do they claim a social state, but they also do not even want to fight and die for the profits of those who exploit them. It would be better to remind them what trench life, is so that they forget the luxury of doing strikes.
The question of solidarity with the Palestinian cause was even more emblematic. The racist leaders of the West enforce their Islamophobic and anti-immigration legislation, when a large part of their working masses come from Muslim immigration (we observe this in France and Germany). At the same time complicity on all levels (political, military, academic) with the Israeli Zionist entity is proudly claimed, provoking a legitimate rage not only in Muslims and Jews of the West, but of course in all citizens who are indignant knowing that their governments are complicit at the same time in the global military escalation and the more than 30 thousand deaths in Gaza.
This internal conflict results in violent and relentless repression – in Naples, Italy a few weeks ago there were major clashes between the anti-tan procession and the police, the same in Rome a few days ago. In Italy, skepticism about Western belligerent politics is highest – 60% of citizens oppose all forms of collaboration with the Kyiv regime, for example.
This only means one thing: if this is what they call peace, the people will make them war, and if they want, as they say, war, the people will succeed in building peace.
Ismaele Calaciura Errante
Bibliography
https://ilmanifesto.it/dal-1945-ad-oggi-20-30-milioni-gli-uccisi-dagli-usa
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/01/20/europe/zelensky-trump-end-russia-ukraine-war-intl-hnk/index.html
Ismaele Calaciura Errante was born in Rome in 2003. He is a double degree student in Philosophy at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne and in Modern Literature at the University of Sorbonne Nouvelle in Paris. He participates in the French and Italian social and student movements.