Many fear that this war will sooner or later tire Western public opinion and become a habit.
I have to admit that I’m already feeling tired, but I’m not used to it at all.
I am tired in the sense that I feel exhausted, exhausted by the news, by the harrowing images that reach us every day, at any time of the day, from the television media, but also by the comments on them, at any hour of the day, on these News and these images are based.
On the one hand, the punishment, the suffering caused by the death and destruction that has gripped Ukraine and its people: Pope Francis defined a “sacrilegious” war because it violates the sanctity of bodies and life and poisons spirits .
On the other hand, a flood of words that overwhelms the crude eloquence of the facts. The vocabulary of synonyms pales in comparison to the competition of adjectives used to define Putin: as if what’s happening wasn’t enough to condemn him. The antitheses that this war is supposed to show that it also affects us are wasted, between democracy and dictatorship, between law and violence, between reason and oppression, between humanity and bestiality: as if war were not always the same, as if all Wars weren’t always all those things, whoever started them, as if body and life weren’t always the same as whoever owned them. As if to make it clear that there are “only” wars. War is always “sacrilegious”. Apart from saying it always and loudly, wherever wars are taking place and whatever the religion and skin color of the populations who suffer from them: like Pope Francis years ago at every Sunday Angelus and at every opportunity to remember forgotten wars .
And always the same questions: should we send the weapons to Ukraine or not? What else do we need to do: tighten sanctions to starve Russia? to establish the nofly zone? send armed contingents? So tickling the many attempts, not just ideals, to expand the conflict beyond what is necessary to provoke the surrender of Russia and the violent overthrow of Putin.
All of this is part of the logic of the media, which must ignite conflict and antagonism in order to bind the audience to the video and increase its reach. But it also suggests that the media used to wage this war are echoing the same cliche, and that words like stones are now weapons of this increasingly digital war. And it generally suggests that something else might be moving behind an alignment that’s not uncommon but doesn’t seem to have been so pushed and persevered since the end of World War II. So hard that it could push outrageous intellectuals of the caliber of Luciano Canfora, Franco Cardini, Carlo Rovelli.
So I’ve commanded myself to limit the doses of television communications and try to create some sort of map of principles for myself. Where can I orientate myself in this jumble of words and insults.
It’s not much, nor does it answer the many questions the moment raises, but it can be useful for anyone to think about and try to gain their own conviction.
I have tried to summarize the idea I have developed in the following necessarily approximate terms.
(i) If we look from what is happening to what has happened before, we realize that the Ukrainian people are victims twice, of Putin’s war and of the proxy war that the West laid the foundations for and has been taking care of has not to do this disable;
(ii) what and how many reasons were Russia and Putin, the fact remains that they started this war and that in any case this war is “a sacrilege;
(iii) no one can pretend that the Ukrainians did not resist earlier or surrender now to avoid war;
(iv) it is quite understandable that Ukrainians are asking for military aid from the rest of the world watching their war, regardless of what might happen to others;
(v) they cannot even be denied military aid on the basis of the paternalistic argument that any such aid tends to prolong their suffering and destroy their lives and their country, since each people is the arbiter of its own fate and no other People, and not even the rest of the world, can decide what to do with it;
(vi) instead, it is beyond cynical to urge Ukrainians to resist in the face of the West’s ideal and geopolitical visions and the interests behind them, as waging proxy wars when possible is becoming increasingly immoral and “sacrilegious”;
(vii) the extent of any military aid is subject to a limit that is not strictly opportunistic but genuinely ethical and given to humanity, which obliges us to refrain from anything that might engage them in total war, since total war is easy a total “sacrilege”;
(viii) those who collectively care about the fate of the Ukrainian people and assume responsibility towards humanity must work tirelessly and without borders, and most importantly without reservations and geopolitical gains, not only for the development of diplomatic negotiations, but above all with it war gives way to final peace;
(ix) Given the need for the tightest possible ceasefire, there is no hope that an agreement will lead to a final peace unless it includes the West alongside Ukraine and Russia and is thereby not guaranteed along with Russia itself, since those who played a role in this terrible story, cannot continue to act through intermediaries and leave their hands free (as happened in the time of Gorbachev with the terrible consequences of this beginning of 2022;
(x) the solution of the conflict lies primarily with the Ukrainian people, because in the end they will bear its territorial and human consequences;
(xi) the West, however, has preparatory and earning duties;
(xi) as a preliminary step, begin to refrain from any verbal abuse or retaliation that may exceed the point of no return; and it must abandon the calculation of its own convenience and the pursuit of the geopolitical aims inherent in, and in any event spilling over from, this conflict;
(xii) on the merits, if it does not have to impose an agreement on Ukraine that it does not share, at the same time it must not passively accept its understandable intransigence and dose its own political solidarity according to a measure that is definitive indeed combines the sharing of wrongs, suffered by the Ukrainian people, the arguments of Russia, responsibility to humanity and the universal value of peace;
It doesn’t take long to realize that the way things are done, and even more so how they’re talked about, is far from that picture.
For this reason, this map of principles may seem very naïve, if not utopian, especially in the final steps: Mainly because it seems to underestimate the material interests that move under the label of geopolitics.
However, it can serve two purposes. The first is that by reflecting on it, it can help everyone to form their own general measure, to make an autonomous judgment on how the actors of this tragedy move and to see the importance of the prompts, often made by the Mass media come to say the least militants. The second is that it can help anyone to keep thinking about developing their own perspective, able to see outside the box of who is winning and who is losing.
Utopia can sometimes be realistic. Especially when it turns out as in this case that thinking in terms of winners and losers only means staying within the logic of war, inasmuch as today’s victory always prepares for tomorrow’s war, closing a front just for one to open others. .
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