Not everything is political. The first courage is to seek happiness, because it’s the best way not to bother your neighbor. But in times of war, you have to have the courage to choose sides. Also, for many of us, the present conflict in Ukraine concerns us and, let’s face it, exhausts us.
In Hate speech (Plon, 2004), the late French philosopher André Glucksmann reflected on our ways of taking a stand during a conflict. “When faced with a conflict, there are two approaches,” he wrote. The first “deals with discord from its origin: whose fault is it”? The second focuses attention downstream and no longer upstream: “Instead of asking why we have come to this, she is looking for a way out. »
Whose fault is it ?
Some say that the bases of a negotiation towards peace are to be found in the causes of the conflict. They go back in time to the early 1990s: the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the victory of capitalism, the rise of Russian oligarchs, American arrogance, broken promises on NATO expansion , etc. This thread would help to understand — without excusing — the insane anger of the President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin.
In short, the United States, NATO and the West would have a great “moral responsibility” in starting this war.
We knew the West had a broad back. But at this point? Because the question is: can a nation’s desire to be part of the European Union or NATO justify the bombardment of its population? The geographer Rodolphe De Koninck gives us the most sensible answer in The duty of March 12: “Such a pretext in no way justifies waging a war of aggression from another age, particularly deadly”.
What does that mean? Before February 24, 2022, the day of the invasion, we could believe ourselves clairvoyant and legitimate in declaring, like Mélenchon in France or like the American political scientist John Mearsheimer, that the expansion of NATO is not desirable, that the the UN should be the only international institution with legitimate force, that the United States should cease its expansionism, etc.
However, after February 24, 2022, the day of the invasion, those who do not budge risk finding themselves in bad company, with the imperturbable Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, Sergei Lavrov. The Kremlin spokesman makes an obsession of it: “The United States has established its hegemony over all of Europe. We are now at a crossroads in modern history that reflects the battle for the future of the world order” (statement March 16, 2022).
According to him, the Russian Federation should at all costs act as a counterweight to Western excess. This objective alone would justify the invasion.
Only, we would like to ask the Russian minister in whose name he is so keen to counterbalance the West. Indeed, what the Russian leaders seem to forget is that the neighboring populations — and no doubt a good part of the Russian population itself — do not see things the way they do at all. Indeed, what do Poland, Hungary, Finland, Sweden, Ukraine and all the other neighboring countries want?
Vladimir Putin hears nothing. Our questions and objections are in vain. The side that might have had our sympathy suddenly becomes the side that does the irreparable. The bombardments intensify, the cemeteries extend as far as the eye can see and 12 million people are displaced.
The analysis comes up against a wall: “incomprehensible is the decision of the Russian president to invade Ukraine”, writes political scientist Michel Roche in National Action and in L’Aut’journal.
How to get out?
Incomprehensible, you say? Let us then turn to the second approach: how to end the conflict? First, an observation: we did not know how to prevent or draw the red line. Why ?
Our political misfortune stems from the way the United Nations Organization was constituted. In the absence of a strong international institution, despots can operate with impunity (reminder: there are currently 25 conflicts in the world, only humanitarian officials know how to list them). Added to this international impotence is our ignorance of the triggers of human aggressiveness and our ignorance of the dialectic of deterrence.
One day we will have to master the art of disarming. First, we should learn to decode hate speech, built on denial (it’s not me, it’s the other).
You will then have to learn to draw a red line. I recall that indicated by André Glucksmann in his major work, The strength of vertigo (Grasset, 1983): “Sovereignty, today, is marked by the faculty of prohibiting the other from prohibiting us from punishing him. I am sovereign if the other is not, all things considered, no less vulnerable through me than I through him. In other words, it is forbidden to forbid the human community to punish the aggressor.
However, as we have not been able to draw a red line, we have yet to hear the shocking conclusion of a courageous Ukrainian fighter, Valentyn Ilchuk, quoted in The duty April 22: “The only way out of this war is to win militarily. »