By RUBEN BAUER NAVEIRA*

Comment on the article by José Luís Fiori “The hope of peace and the permanence of wars”

In a recent article posted on the website the earth is round José Luís Fiori signals, without however making it explicit, that the world is on the verge of a great global war (not least because this is something that cannot be made explicit, firstly because seeing something that no one else sees risks ending up testifying against the very credibility, second because the consequences of this war will be catastrophic to an unimaginable level for the immense majority of humanity, or even for its entirety).

The uniqueness of this war in relation to all that preceded it is that it is known, in advance, which nuclear weapons will be used. Had it not been for this “detail”, the war would have broken out long ago. The prospect of massive nuclear retaliation, even in the face of a devastating surprise attack (the US concept of “First Strike”), has so far operated as an effective deterrent. And it will continue to be so, until the point is reached where Americans (by “Americans”, I mean the so-called “1%” and “Deep State”) understand that they no longer have anything to lose, in terms of maintaining its economic hegemony over the rest of the world.

It is clear that the war could be avoided if the North Americans resigned themselves to becoming just one more nation among the others, all subject to rains and thunderstorms (read: without their national currency being considered the reserve universal value for the rest of the world). However, this is absolutely out of the question, for reasons that would require a whole other argument.

Thus, the war is always on the “almost”, throughout successive episodes that clearly make up an increasingly accelerated military escalation towards the facts, such as (among several others) those in Kosovo (the Pristina incident in 1999 ), in Georgia (in 2008), in Ukraine (the Maidan and the Crimea, in 2014), in Syria (since 2015), again in Ukraine (the frustrated invasion of Donbass in 2020), in the successful but hidden Iranian retaliation in 08/01/2020 to the assassination of General Soleimani, and more recently in the South China Sea and Taiwan, as well as the ongoing “gas crisis” in Europe.

The fact is that both Russians and Chinese have already announced to Americans and the rest of the world, loud and clear, that there are red lines that cannot be crossed (that, apart from what they certainly also did confidentially, and even tougher , through diplomatic channels), and also announced to the Russian and Chinese populations that war is inevitable, sooner or later (in contrast, the North American population – as well as the Western populations in general – is kept in the most absolute and suicidal ignorance).

The position of the Russians and Chinese is to “gain time” – and to arm themselves more and better in the meantime. The North American position is to strike while preparing to attack, which was being done in a cumulative and managed way (to avoid the nuclear risk) with the use of third parties (“proxies”), but from now on it will be increasingly done with armed forces. (the American withdrawal from Afghanistan is included in this context, basically a repositioning of troops towards China).

Returning to Fiori's brilliant article, he sought in history, in elements such as the Peace of Westphalia in the XNUMXth century, to illustrate the long-term trajectory (more than four hundred years) that will fatally end up leading us to a new global war, in the face of which this brief summary regarding the short term (less than twenty years) is a mere mirror on a fractal scale.

*Ruben Bauer Naveira is a retired civil servant, activist and author of the book A new utopia for Brazil: three guides to get out of chaos (http://www.brasilutopia.com.br).