What a time… Even before COVID-19 has been completely eradicated, humanity is facing a new global peril. We saw it in the reflex of amazement, almost of terror, which led 141 countries at the UN to condemn the aggression of Ukraine by Russia which reawakened the fear of nuclear cataclysm.
Posted yesterday at 10:00 a.m.
That said, on closer inspection, this shared vision appears like a mirage. Rather, it is five very different wars that we must talk about, depending on whether we live in Ukraine, Russia, Europe, North America or the rest of the world.
From Ukraine to America
It is first in Ukraine that the war obviously hits the hardest, this young liberal democracy being remartyrized by the Russian sister nation. The key words here are courage and success, as Ukrainians have so far been able to thwart Vladimir Putin’s will to destroy their state and enslave their nation.
They discover themselves more than ever Ukrainians and Europeans, at the cost of a mass of refugees, deaths and destruction which we cannot rule out that they announce even worse. Ukraine, its army, its president embody democratic civilization in the face of these growing authoritarianisms and totalitarianisms that threaten it.
This war of a Putin who got it all wrong, or almost, is also a tragedy for a Russian people who are also oppressed, who will long pay the price in their prestige, their standard of living, their youth.
Nothing is certain then that we cannot exclude either an internal turmoil carrying Putin away in sound and fury, or a rallying of the Russians around the leader of their beleaguered nation.
This attack on a democracy on its doorstep is also a war for Europe. At the time, the case gave him an unexpected cohesion and tone, leading him to impose severe sanctions on Russia that will hurt the latter, but also the European countries themselves. Because they will be the ones who will pay more and more the price if the conflict is prolonged in a Europe accustomed to its comfort, without army or gas, more than ever dependent on the United States.
Finally, in our North American continent whose inhabitants feel protected by geography from the most dramatic consequences of this war, the latter is experienced by proxy, a bit like a reality show where emotion is king. The price of gasoline is rising, as is the role of the United States with its eternal temptation to arrogance.
unloved West
Still, this is dangerous, because the initial broad condemnation of Russian aggression in Ukraine by the rest of the world cannot overshadow the fact that it is not true that Russia is completely isolated in this matter.
Among the 35 countries that abstained in the vote at the UN are heavyweights in global geopolitics and demography such as China and India, while a country as close to Westerners as Morocco preferred s Absent Twice Rather Than Record His Conviction.
The war in Ukraine brings out how little the West is loved in the world, how much resentment there is against the privileged few whose sympathy is total for a tragedy striking a white and Christian nation, making them forget that other war, for equally spurious reasons and with terrible consequences, that the Americans waged in Iraq.
Not to mention Yemen, Ethiopia and the ongoing food disaster in the southern Mediterranean.
But let’s stay positive. Powerful Russian allies like China, which have no interest in prolonging the conflict, may tempt Putin into moderation, possibly helping him save face.
nuclear danger
It is a good thing in the face of the contradictory messages of a Russia which announces to us one day that it gives up conquering the whole of Ukraine to concentrate on the east of the country, but bombs the west the next day .
Joe Biden, meanwhile, has not been afraid to foolishly provoke Putin by calling him a clog to overthrow, regardless of the fact that the Russian president has his finger on a nuclear button that he will be all the more likely to use. that he will be backed against the wall. On the strength of his regular exchanges with Putin, Emmanuel Macron has fortunately rectified the situation.
Because we can never repeat enough that the great danger common to the five wars in Ukraine, a danger that becomes more and more trivialized as time goes by, remains the use of nuclear weapons, even very small range ones, for tactical purposes.
Once the universal taboo prevailing since Hiroshima in 1945 was lifted, the world would enter for a long time into a much more tragic era, while countries in latent conflict such as India and Pakistan, Israel and Iran are nuclearized or on the way to be, like more and more others.