European elections 2024, on the brink of the abyss
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1th June 2024
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14th June 2024
While in Gaza and Rafah there is fighting, people are dying, civilian victims exceed 36.000 and a million Palestinians no longer know where to go, condemned to hell by a violent fury that comes close to a genocide, the Biden administration rightly all to get a truce plan off the ground and to free the hostages, which sees the participation of the highest exponents of his entourage.
The president of the United States himself has explicitly and repeatedly referred to the three-phase effort of this agreement, putting his face and his voice behind it for Israel and Hamas to conclude a ceasefire agreement. And all this despite the hypocrisy of previous US vetoes at the UN and the sale of weapons to Israel which has never stopped.
At the same time, however, in Europe the Biden administration is doing everything to fuel the war in Ukraine with a continuous escalation, the Atlantic alliance is transformed from defensive to offensive and, on the indication of its secretary, asks to be able to use weapons NATO to strike targets in Russian territory.
The USA, Germany, Finland, Sweden, the Baltic States, Poland, the Czech Republic, Denmark, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Canada and France expressed themselves favorably. Those against include Italy, Spain, Belgium, Hungary, Turkey, Slovakia and Bulgaria, at least for now.
Peace or war, it depends on political convenience
Such a contrasting attitude It's hard to understand, maybe the suffering of Gaza is different from that of the Ukrainian people? Do the missiles falling in Gaza hurt more than those falling in Ukraine? Maybe the pain of those who mourn the victims of wars is different? Maybe the hatred accumulated between the parties is different? So why this attitude of seeking peace on the one hand and escalation of war on the other?
It is not understandable why this negotiating desire should not also apply to the war between Russia and Ukraine, where killing and destruction have been taking place for 10 years and where there is no evident progress on the field towards a victory for one of the two sides, after hundreds of thousands of dead soldiers and wounded on the battlefields.
But paradoxically, in this case, lies continue to be spread liberally, to justify the war, the achievement of an unattainable victory, repudiating any political solution wherever it comes from and obstinately pursuing the path of war and weapons, in a process of destruction and exasperation of hatred.
Biden's dualism
Definitely a reason more serious is related to the fact that Biden is interested in ending the war in Gaza due to the negative electoral repercussions that the issue that his government continues to supply weapons to Israel has on the Democratic Party, effectively endorsing the destruction of the Palestinian people, violating the international law and delegitimizing the United Nations.
Biden he is a politician and his goal is to get elected. He is trying to thread the needle between offending progressive Democrats (who threaten to withhold votes) and pro-Israel financial heavy hitters (who threaten to withhold money). He misjudged the political impact of the Gaza war and is now trying to catch up, but in fact by running for re-election when there were better candidates, Biden has jeopardized the future of American democracy.
More war in Europe
On the contrary, for Ukraine, the priority interest of Biden and the USA is to continue the war to favor the expansion of the military alliance on Moscow's doorstep, weaken and divide Russia, as defined in the "American national security strategy", which sees Russia as an immediate threat.
Proof of this is the blocking of a peace agreement already agreed between Russia and Ukraine, but stopped by Great Britain and the USA in May 2022 in Istanbul, which would have provided for the neutrality of Ukraine and the autonomy of Donbass. This context also reflects a great weakening of the political and economic development of Europe, which is now a prisoner of war.
Desire for escalation
For the Secretary General of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, this decision to strike Russian territory with NATO weapons is normal, because – he recalled – the United Kingdom has been supplying Storm Shadow cruise missiles for a long time without any restrictions. So it's been that way for a long time. It has always been this way for a long time.
Now, however, the ratification of several states, belonging to NATO (more than a dozen), poses a problem with respect to the very status of NATO which becomes an offensive alliance.
Zelensky wanted to thank the allies and, in particular, the United States for President Biden's decision on Ukraine's use of NATO weapons. It is a positive step, he said, but in response to the limits placed by the US and Germany on the use of weapons on Russian territory, Ukraine must be able to use "powerful" long-range weapons, capable of hitting targets deep in the Russian territory. Maybe it will be the next red line to fall or maybe it has already fallen.
NATO, the defensive alliance becomes offensive
Marco Tarquinio, former editor of Avvenire who has just been elected as an MEP, rightly argues that NATO's transition from a defensive alliance to an offensive military alliance would require its dissolution.
After the end of the Cold War NATO has changed strategic objectives and has done so at an intergovernmental level without going through debate and ratification by Parliaments. Then he says that with the invasion of Ukraine ordered by Russian President Vladimir Putin, NATO entered a phase of high-intensity war, which included Macron's phrases about boots on the ground and then Jens Stoltenberg's phrases about targets to be hit on Russian territory.
Never before had they gone this far the two large countries (France and Germany), which are part of the group of the six founders of the EU, and which together with Italy have constituted the triple foundation of the common European home for decades. Finally, US President Biden said that Russia can be bombed with American weapons, putting the American atomic umbrella in direct conflict with the Russian one.
We are on the edge of the abyss
A dance on the edge of the abyss: Moscow's military doctrine provides for a response, including nuclear, in the event of an attack carried out on the territory of the Russian Federation. And Article 5 of the Atlantic Pact provides for the military solidarity of all allies towards each member country and, according to this logic, any country can take sides and demand the solidarity of others. Or Putin could respond, at which point NATO either fights back unitedly or is virtually disbanded.
We have changed NATO for the worse, let's disband it and create a new defense system. It can't be done in a day, but it's better to be clear that in just one day, with this NATO, we can fall into the nuclear abyss dug by Putin's war and increasingly fueled by an offensive NATO.
We are on the edge of the abyss, but the issue of war is ignored by the political forces in these European elections. We talk about something completely different, but peace and the risks we are running are once again marginalized and ignored.
Stoltenberg's Gambits
Stoltenberg, undaunted, continues along the line that has never worked and will never work, in the logic that if you want peace, prepare for war, stating that the more we prepare for war, the sooner it will end. He says he is firmly convinced that Ukraine needs predictable financing for the future: the allies have given 40 billion a year and a similar commitment is needed for the future, and this by definition means giving fresh money for weapons.
Stoltenberg claims that Putin is responsible for the escalation because he is opening new fronts in the Kharkiv region.
This thesis is curious, after 10 years of war it is the state of affairs that one of the contenders tries to prevail over the other, as Ukraine had prevailed in other periods. Consequently, as the war has evolved in Russia's favor, the secretary says, NATO support must also evolve, and adapt.
No, dear Stoltenberg, the truth is that war does not evolve, war is always the same, but since you want to win the war, instead of looking for negotiated solutions (which you never wanted), you change the rules, distort the statute of NATO into offensive alliances, without passing through Parliaments, in the deafening silence of intellectuals, artists and information. And if anyone tries to wake us up, he is immediately put behind bars or ignored.
Ukraine in NATO?
Blinken also increases the war dose, stating that Ukraine will become a member of NATO: our goal now is to build a bridge, very solid and very well lit, to bring Ukraine closer to NATO. He adds that a solid support package for Ukraine will emerge from the Washington summit, which will strengthen cooperation with NATO and support for Kiev, and which will advance Ukraine's integration into NATO with tangible steps.
Even US Secretary of Defense Austin he will talk to Zelensky about the targets to be hit with US weapons: they will meet on the sidelines of the Singapore summit, to discuss the possibility of expanding the geography of Ukrainian attacks with American weapons on Russian territory: it seems that Biden's limitations have already been exceeded.
Zelensky the ventriloquist
It's obvious now that Zelensky has become the ventriloquist of the USA and Great Britain. Even his words are most likely dictated by intelligence, by his loyal supporters of war at all costs. Now Zelensky is also lashing out against China, accusing it of working on the failure of the peace summit in Switzerland. But Biden will probably also be absent, because he is busy raising money for his party in Hollywood.
Maybe even these words of Zelensky are part of a discrediting of China, which had offered itself several times as a mediator and which is the West's next adversary. Among other things, China had already declared that the summit without Russia made no sense, as the counterpart with whom to constructively discuss a peace agreement was absent.
The USA in Taiwan
In the East, Chinese Lieutenant General Jing Jianfeng, speaking on the sidelines of the meeting in Singapore, where US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin hailed a "new era of security" for the Asia-Pacific region, said the United States is trying to build an Asia-Pacific version of NATO to maintain its hegemony in the region.
In the same meeting, Defense Minister Dong Jun complained to his American counterpart Lloyd Austin about the actions of the United States towards Taiwan, which he considers to be a serious violation of the principle of China's unity.
An international peace conference is urgently needed
An international conference would really be needed for peace, cooperation and security of peoples, which faces in a multilateral and peaceful way the new challenges of global security, inequalities, climate change and the new problems that the globalized world and the emergence of new economies requires.
But we don't talk about this either for the European elections, because it would highlight many lies that have been told to us.
Francesco Masut
