About wars and peace: freedom or business?

When asked if they agree with the statement that "your country is under threat", 59% of Spaniards believe they do, a percentage that rises to 68% in the EU-27. It seems that defense and security have become the first priority for Europeans . And not long ago,  Gerard Fageda and Núria Sala wondered if it is possible to continue being pacifists in today's Europe. My answer is that we must be, even if this means going against the grain.

Forbes journalist Zach Everson explains that Donald Trump's net worth has increased from $2.1 billion to $6.4 billion since he was re-elected. Those of his sons, Don and Eric, have increased six-fold and ten-fold, respectively.

An unpunished enrichment that grows in parallel with the immense profits of the large transnational corporations of fossil fuels, the so-called 'Carbon Majors'. In fact,  we now know that half of the world's CO2e emissions are the result of the activity of just 32 companies in the fossil fuel business, which are also responsible for and can be directly linked to dozens of deadly heat waves that would otherwise have been practically impossible.

Are current wars fought to export freedoms and democracy, or do they preserve the fossil energy business, the personal enrichment of unscrupulous politicians and the huge profits of the military lobby industries? Are the supposed imposed peaces really peaces?

In fact, there are other perspectives. For example, those of climate scientists, who for five decades have been telling us that the most serious problem we have as humanity is the environmental, ecological and climate crisis, and that they do not have much resonance in the media or on the networks. In 1992, when no one was talking about it,  they published a warning to humanity in which they said verbatim that “a great reduction in violence and war” would be needed and that “the resources that are now dedicated to the preparation and conduct of war will be very necessary for new tasks and should be diverted to new challenges”. There were 1,700 scientists with the most Nobel Prize winners alive at that time. In the second warning, after 25 years, there were already 15,364 voices of science. No one spoke about it.

The voices of science reveal to us four things in particular. The first is that humanity's current great problem is due to global warming, which will endanger the lives of all the peoples of the Earth. It is a global challenge that affects us all and that does not understand borders or countries . The second, that it is the result of predatory human activity, totally disproportionate in the countries of the Global North, and which is strongly linked to fossil extractivism of oil, coal and gas. The third, that the effects will be devastating in the coming decades, especially in the Global South, with deadly meteorological phenomena that will be increasingly intense, more frequent and more unpredictable. And the fourth, that time is running out and that we have only a few years left before falling into the humanitarian climate abyss once the points of no return have been crossed.

And we also have the voices of the silenced, those who cry out from indignity, those of all the marginalized who are as pitiable as we are, the cry of those who have been called expendable. The clamor of many thinkers and artists, the powerful murmur that reaches us from feminisms demanding a break with oppression and domination to move towards liberation and equality. Those who explain to us that true peace comes from the recognition of the dignity of all people and respect for all peoples and the planet. A peace that is that of people, that of speech and negotiation, that of solidarity and global cooperation that we need to face the great challenges that we have and will have.

It's still curious. They tell us that our countries are under threat, and the fact is that the global threat, which is responsible for the economic powers of our country, is global and crosses these ridiculous borders that we have invented to stop people. We are running out of time while governments, following the dictates of the big lobbies, stop climate policies, cut social policies, and decide to dedicate more budgets to suicidal rearmament policies.  

What if we doubted the official speeches and tried to listen to the voices of science? What if it turned out that military solutions cannot solve the problem of the environmental and climate crisis because  defense systems are precisely part of the problem ? Could it be that we have given in to the pressures of the military-industrial lobbies? As science tells us, we need the resources that are now dedicated to the preparation and conduct of war to be able to save ourselves, and we must do so with  policies and structures of global cooperation , because the problem is planetary and of all humanity.

In today's world, we must be pacifists. Knowing, as Rebecca Solnit says, that the future is not an inevitable place but a place we are creating. With hope and remembering that very often change begins with movements and groups that are initially underestimated.

In this historical time where warmongering, authoritarianism and racism are growing, Europe could play a central role . Europe could be the voice of planetary realism, a realism based on facts and on the awareness of the current situation, deeply unjust and inhuman in relation to oppressed peoples, to inequalities, to ecological devastation and to a global warming that will destroy many lives that have not yet been born.

Europe should and could be the global promoter of a new geopolitics of peace and democracy, of multilateralism and global cooperation to solve these immense problems that we will have as humanity, resurfacing as a common home in the middle of a world of authoritarianism. Going from the promotion of business to the lives of people. Promoting dialogue, diplomatic channels and the negotiated solution of conflicts , being coherent and consistent with the founding principles of tolerance, global justice and respect for human rights that inspired the Union.