Commentary
The pacifists disinterested in peace
Are we, the staunch pro-Europeans and anti-nationalists, really sure that the banner of the current EU, reduced to arms and new walls, represents the right defense of democracy?
There was a great demonstration March 15 in Rome's Piazza del Popolo – but who was “the people” that was rallying? What is its political value if one could earnestly take part either with NATO flags, as some urged, or with peace flags (but not with the flag of the Palestinian people)? Can one possibly avoid the suspicion that the call for the march, so ambiguous on the subject of Ukraine, was amenable to be bent towards the purposes of the unshakeable current direction of the leadership of the European Union?
What else can one think when seeing the blue flag with stars of the current ReArm EU being waved? The close proximity of the demonstration to the decision by von der Leyen and the 27 EU countries to start an €800 billion rearmament mega-program for all member states – not exactly “common defense” – is alarming. The rules of the Stability Pact and cohesion funds have been set aside, and one is allowed to do for war preparedness what was strictly forbidden for health and welfare. So much for frugality – let's fill up the arsenals.
And so it happened that, for the purpose of countering Trump's wavering moves to offload the costs of NATO onto the Western allies, we have decided on a monstrous fund to buy U.S. weapons, the only ones on the table, hiding the fact that we are going into a barely concealed scenario of double spending, with more money for weapons for each state and more money to the Atlantic Alliance, and towards a prospect even more devastating for the European social pact, and the condition of its democracy: the launch of a war economy that turns every form of material and immaterial production into a new weapon. Fewer cars, more tanks: not exactly the Green Deal.
The Made in Italy brand will work towards the production of new fancy fighter-bombers, perhaps with the unlikely and risky hope that all this will increase GDP and employment, instead of raising the chance of armed conflicts and violence, along with a transformation of the value foundations of our constitutional democracy – and not only because of Article 11 of the Constitution, which repudiates war as a means of resolving international crises, but because of the obvious transformation of the substance of civil coexistence. Because the goal of Europe as an armed fortress – a different conception than its foundation as a bulwark of peace after the recent experience of World War II – only fuels the growth of the right and of new fascisms across the continent. So, there was a great demonstration in Piazza del Popolo on Saturday, but it does not answer any of these questions.
Instead, the only news is the misguided response of British Prime Minister Starmer, who followed Macron in convening a meeting of some 25 countries allied with Ukraine to form a “coalition of the willing,” dredging the muddy waters of history to revive a term that does not bode well, to say the least – it’s enough to look at the destruction and massacres we took part in with the rest of those “willing” to invade Iraq in 2003, when Ukraine was also one of the “willing” countries.
But we can set aside the judgment on all the “willing” and the “humanitarian” wars we have pushed for in the last 30 years, from Somalia to the former Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya or Syria. What exactly are they “willing” to do now, when there is still not only no lasting peace, but not even a truce or a tentative ceasefire?
Starmer, Macron and Zelensky set out to make a list of participants in a possible peacekeeping operation. That's why the British PM is convening an “operational meeting” in London on Thursday, at the level of a military summit, with allied countries willing to discuss a future deployment of “boots on the ground” and “planes in the skies” to ensure Ukraine's security after peace agreements are reached.
But that is precisely the issue: to guarantee a possible ceasefire, would it be possible to deploy military forces from NATO countries, which, through intermediaries, have been supporting Ukraine with arms since 2014, as former NATO Secretary Stoltenberg recalled? Would we be willing to accept Belarus or North Korea for such an armed mediation role, which have supported Putin with arms?
The idea of real armed forces on land, sea and air ready to intervene to safeguard the ceasefire is nothing more than a continuation of the war with our armies; it is an “Iraqi” solution: the infamous “no-fly zone” of the victors who are free to strike at the vanquished. But here, the situation on the ground is quite different. In addition to the stalemate, there are the dramatic difficulties of the Ukrainian army, not only because of a lack of weapons, but also because of desertions.
Here, an interposition force must either be truly neutral, and therefore able to stop every provocation and expansionist aim of Czar Putin, or, like the Iraqi “willing,” it will only pour fuel on the fire of a new world conflict. Only the United Nations, though vilified and attacked by Trump as well – although he will be forced to reckon with the UN and the Global South – still has this international power and right to conduct a mediating operation, above the level of the warring parties, including by the deployment of force and blue helmets. One can only hope that the “willing” who rallied in Rome are nonetheless against playing war games.
In conclusion, we must also ask ourselves: are we, the staunch pro-Europeans and anti-nationalists, really sure that the banner of the current EU, reduced to arms and new walls, represents the right defense of democracy? In Belgrade, in southeastern Europe, a veritable ocean of protesters took to the streets on Saturday from all over Serbia – a new generation along with the older generation, all against corruption.
After the tragedy of the collapsed rooftop in Novi Sad in November 2024, they have been protesting for four months against the malfeasance of a government of privilege and cronyism, fueled by predatory Chinese investments with French subcontractors, by Emirati investments to take over the center of the capital, by contracts from Germany and the EU to exploit lithium in the Jadar region, by the sale of dozens of Rafale fighter jets handled directly by Macron, and by the Trump family, cronies of those in power in Serbia, buying up the remnants of ministries bombed by NATO in 1999. At their protest on Saturday, as in these four months, there was not a single EU flag to be seen.
Originally published at https://ilmanifesto.it/i-pacificatori-disinteressati-alla-pace on 2025-03-16