By LEONARDO BOFF*
Behind the war that is taking place in Ukraine is the confrontation between the USA and Russia/China
More and more one hears of an escalation in the war between Russia and Ukraine, provoked by Vladimir Putin eventually admitting to the use of tactical nuclear weapons. They don't destroy much, but the radioactivity emitted could make the region uninhabitable for many years. The basic reason is that Russia cannot lose the war.
This situation worsened when NATO, under pressure from the US, extended its offensive action from the Atlantic to the Pacific with the accession of Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand. NATO shamefully submitted to US imperial will. It seems that he learned nothing from the two wars of the 100th century in Europe that claimed XNUMX million victims.
It is known today that behind the war that is taking place in Ukraine, there is a confrontation between the USA and Russia/China in the sense of who holds the geopolitical domination of the world. Until now, there was a unipolar world with the complete predominance of the USA.
Our master in geopolitics Luiz Alberto Moniz Bandeira (1935-2017) in his meticulous book World Disorder: The Specter of Total Domination (Civilização Brasileira) pointed out, of course, the three fundamental mantras of the Pentagon and US foreign policy: (i) one world-one empire (USA); (ii) full spectrum dominance: dominate the entire spectrum of reality, on land, sea and air with about 800 military bases distributed worldwide; (iii) destabilize all the governments of countries that resist or oppose this imperial strategy, as happened in Honduras, Bolivia and Brazil with the coup against Dilma Rousseff in 2016 and later with the unjust imprisonment of Lula.
The US does not give up its purpose of being the only world power. It turns out that the US empire is adrift, however much it still appeals to its exceptionalism and the “manifest destiny” according to which the US would be the new people of God that will bring democracy, freedom and rights to the nations ( always understood within the capitalist code).
However, Russia has armed itself with potent nuclear weapons, with unassailable missiles and vying to be part of the leadership in the process of globalization. He broke through to China with new projects such as “The Silk Road” and as an economic power that has already surpassed the North American one. At the same time, the Global South emerged, a group of BRICS countries in which Brazil participates. In other words, there is no longer a unipolar world, but a multipolar one.
This fact exasperates the arrogance of neocon supremacists who claim that it is necessary to continue the war in Ukraine in order to bleed and eventually devastate Russia and neutralize China in order to confront it at a later stage. In this way we would return to the unipolar world.
Here are the elements that can generate a third world war that will be terminal. Pope Francis, in his clear intuition, has repeatedly said that we are already in the “third world war in pieces”. For this reason he claims in an almost desperate tone (but always personally hopeful) that “we are all in the same boat; either we all save ourselves or nobody is saved” (Fratelli tutti n. 32). It is reason made irrational and maddened. The UN Secretary General, António Guterres, has often repeated: “the only alternative is: the cooperation of all or collective suicide”.
Why did the European West opt for the will to power and not the will to live of pacifists like Albert Schweitzer, Leon Tolstoy, Mahatma Gandhi, Luther King Jr and Dom Helder Câmara? Why did Europe, which produced a great culture and many geniuses, saints and saints, choose this path that could devastate the entire planet to the point of making it uninhabitable? Did you let the most dangerous of archetypes, according to CG Jung, erupt without control, that of power, capable of self-destruction? Here is a mystery of human history to be deciphered.
For it is in this living God and source of life that we place our last hope. This goes beyond the limits of science and instrumental-analytical reason. It is the leap of faith that also represents a virtuality present in the global cosmogenic process. The alternative to this hope is darkness. But light has more rights than darkness. In that light we believe and hope.
*Leonardo Boff He is a theologian and philosopher. Author, among other books, of Inhabiting the Earth: what is the path to universal fraternity? (Voices).
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