There are no virtual wars without deaths. At the moment of truth, war in the 21st century is not the war in cyberspace that we have been told so much about. Russia will attack the computer systems of the countries that oppose it, no doubt, but in a sense it will do so in the same way that it attacked power plants in the 20th century, as a simple element of the general plan. The war has begun in a European country, Ukraine, at dawn on Thursday, February 24, 2022, just as it began in the last century or the previous one: with the invasion of the attacked country; with bombs, artillery, planes and soldiers marching behind the tanks; with destroyed buildings and dead civilians and soldiers. This time the facts have contradicted Jorge Luis Borges: the dates of history are not secret, as he wrote, but rather it arrived as planned, with televisions, radios and computers anticipating it with great fanfare.
When a war breaks out, said another writer, Albert Camus, people say: it won’t last, it’s too stupid. And no doubt a war is certainly too stupid, but that does not prevent it from lasting. “Stupidity always persists, we would notice it if we didn’t always think of ourselves.” And of course, this war has found Spaniards once again thinking of themselves, capturing their attention with the formidable gesticulation of an internal fight in a political party whose two main leaders did not have the common sense to listen to the radio or read the international sections of the newspapers before launching themselves at each other’s necks.
They are hopeless now, but perhaps they can still show a little respect to their fellow citizens at a time of such uncertainty. Spain is a member of the Atlantic Alliance, a military pact of mutual defense for which the Russian invasion of Ukraine is a crucial event, and the President of the Spanish Government is participating and will participate in the coming days and weeks in meetings in which to decide something very serious: how to respond to Putin? The reasonable thing would be for Pedro Sánchez to have a chief of the opposition to summon to inform, explain and ask for an opinion. And that the head of the opposition listen, give his opinion and offer all the support and discretion possible.
And perhaps it is also possible to know what the other parties present in Congress think. In the first hours, the clear condemnation of Vice President Yolanda Díaz was heard, for example, but Vox’s was very weak and artificial. It is not for nothing that Putin is a well-known financier of the European extreme right. (Does Puigdemont have anything to say about the meetings, months ago, of his representatives with members of Moscow espionage?).
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Ukraine wages war “because they wage it,” as Azaña would say. The Ukrainians fight because they fight them. It is a country under attack, in flagrant violation of international law. The president of Russia, Vladimir Putin, is the one who has chosen war, with two absurd justifications. One, for domestic consumption: we defend Russian-speaking Ukrainians from “genocide.” And another, for the external: we need to have a security space. Does anyone think that he will achieve it with a war in Europe? Perhaps one of the greatest experts in the area, Anne Applebaum, is right, and Putin’s fear is more ideological than military: he panics not that Ukraine joins NATO and endangers its security, but that the sector of the population ukraine that calls for true democracy and fights against corruption will one day achieve its goal and place a formidable mirror next to the Russian border.
NATO and its main partner, the United States, said before the invasion that they would not send troops to fight alongside the Ukrainians, and Putin said Thursday that if there is “interference” in “his” war, he will have a “devastating” response. ”, alluding to their tactical nuclear weapons. Europe seems to hesitate because it is aware of what this war implies and because of a certain disbelief regarding where it has come to. But if it turns out that the Western response (funny how an almost abandoned term has been revitalized in the 21st century) is insufficient, that the future is like the past, and that we are no smarter than those who came before us, no one can be sure of the evolution of events.
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