Boaventura de Souza Santos: Can Europe survive this moment?

Article by Boaventura de Souza Santos originally published on the website Globetrotter Published on February 10, 2023. Translated from the original English and adapted by Rubens Turkienicz exclusively for Brasil 247.

A new-old ghost looms over Europe – war. The most violent continent in the world in terms of the number of deaths caused by wars during the last 100 years (not to mention the deaths suffered by Europe during religious wars and the deaths inflicted by Europeans on peoples subjected to colonialism) is heading towards a new war.

Almost 80 years after World War II – the most violent conflict to date, which led to the deaths of between 70 and 85 million people – the war that is on the way could be even more deadly. All previous conflicts, apparently, began without a strong reason and were presumed to last for a short period of time. At the beginning of these conflicts, most of the prosperous population went about their normal lives – shopping and going to the theater, reading newspapers, taking vacations and enjoying casual conversations about politics. Whenever a localized violent conflict arose, the prevailing belief was that it would be resolved locally. For example, very few people (including politicians) thought that the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) – which led to the deaths of more than 500.000 people – would be the harbinger of a wider war – World War II – despite conditions on the ground pointing to it. Even knowing that history doesn't repeat itself, it's legitimate to wonder if the current war between Russia and Ukraine isn't a harbinger of a new, much larger war.

Signs are mounting that a greater danger may be on the horizon. At the level of public opinion and dominant political discourse, the presence of this danger is surfacing in two opposing symptoms. On the one hand, conservative political forces not only control ideological initiatives but also enjoy privileged reception in the media. They are polarizing enemies of complexity and calm argumentation, who use extremely aggressive words and make inflammatory appeals to hatred.

These conservative political forces are not bothered by the double standards with which they comment on conflicts and death (for example, between deaths resulting from conflicts in Ukraine and Palestine), nor by the hypocrisy of appealing to values ​​that they deny in their practice (they expose the corruption of their opponents to conceal their own).

In this current of conservative opinion, right-wing and far-right positions are increasingly intertwined, with the greatest dynamism (the tolerated aggression) coming from the latter. This tactic aims to instill the idea of ​​the need to eliminate the enemy. Elimination through words leads to a predisposition in public opinion towards elimination through physical force.

Although in a democracy there are no internal enemies, only adversaries, the logic of war is insidiously transposed to presume the presence of internal enemies whose voices must be silenced first. In parliaments, conservative forces dominate the political initiative, while left-wing forces, disoriented or lost in ideological labyrinths or incomprehensible electoral calculations, revert to a defense that is as paralyzing as it is incomprehensible. As in the 1930s, the defense of fascism is made in the name of democracy; the defense of war is made in the name of peace.

However, this political-ideological atmosphere is signaled by an opposite symptom. The most attentive observers or commentators are aware of the ghost haunting Europe and, surprisingly, they converge in expressing their concerns regarding the topic. In recent times, I have identified with analyses from commentators whom I have always recognized as belonging to a different political family from my own: conservatives, moderate right-wing commentators. What we have in common is the distinction we make between issues of war and peace, and issues of democracy. We may disagree on the former and converge on the latter. We all agree that only the strengthening of democracy in Europe can lead to the containment of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine and, ideally, to its peaceful resolution. Without a vigorous democracy, Europe will continue to sleepwalk towards a new war and its own destruction.

Is there still time to avert catastrophe? I would like to say yes, but I cannot. The signs are very worrying. Firstly, the far right is growing globally, driven and financed by the same stakeholders who meet in Davos to look after their business. In the 1930s, they were far more afraid of communism than fascism; currently, they fear the revolt of the impoverished masses and propose violent repression by the police and military forces as the only answer. Their parliamentary voice is that of the far right. Internal war and external war are two sides of the same monster, and the arms industry profits equally from both wars.

Secondly, the war in Ukraine appears more confined than it actually is. The current scourge afflicting the continent – ​​in which, 80 years ago, so many thousands of innocent people (most of them Jews) died – looks very much like self-flagellation. Up to the Urals, Russia is as European as Ukraine, and with this illegal war, in addition to the loss of innocent lives, many of whom will be Russian-speaking individuals, Russia is destroying the infrastructure it itself built under the former Soviet Union.

The history and ethnic-cultural identities between Russia and Ukraine are far more intertwined than with other countries that once occupied Ukraine and now support it. Both Ukraine and Russia need to place a greater emphasis on their democratic processes to end the war and secure peace.

Europe is much larger than what Brussels can see. At the headquarters of the European Commission (or NATO headquarters, which amounts to the same thing), the logic of peace according to the Treaty of Versailles of 1919 prevails, not that established by the Congress of Vienna of 1815. The former humiliated the defeated power (Germany) after the First World War, and this humiliation led to a new war 20 years later; the latter honored the defeated power (Napoleonic France) and guaranteed a century of peace in Europe.

The peace being proposed today is that of the Treaty of Versailles. This presupposes the total defeat of Russia, as Adolf Hitler envisioned it when he invaded the Soviet Union in 1941. Even assuming this occurs at the level of conventional warfare, it is easy to predict that if the losing power possesses nuclear weapons, it will not hesitate to use them. There will be a nuclear holocaust. American neoconservatives already include this eventuality in their calculations, convinced, in their blindness, that it will occur thousands of kilometers from their borders. America First... and they will be last. It is quite possible that they are already thinking about a new Marshall Plan, this time to store the atomic waste from the ruins of Europe.

Without Russia, Europe is only half itself – economically and culturally. The greatest illusion instilled in Europeans by the information war of the last year is that Europe, once amputated from Russia, will be able to regain its integrity with the help of the US – which takes very good care of its interests. If only Europe knew how to look after its own interests.