A big and daunting world

The Tibetan monk told his "chela", Kim, in R. Kipling's novel of the same name, "that the world was big and awesome". And he was not exaggerating in his statement, for he had confirmed it during his journey in search of the Arrow River through early 20th century India.

And today, on a globalised and interconnected planet, this world is still big and awe-inspiring. Even more so. Probably because of the enormous number of new variables at play, much greater at the global level than then. This makes it very difficult for ordinary mortals to reach a place or a critical position with a perspective that allows us to see with some clarity what is happening in the framework of International Relations. And that, if we go by what we are told in the media, is frightening to say the least. Analysts and experts in the field agree on a certain general trend or "mainstream". And this seems to be that, although there is a certain Wilsonian Idealism at heart, it is in reality Realism that presides over the actions of nations on the international scene. Probably as it has always been, and that after the idealistic attempts glimpsed after the two great wars, Realism has been accentuated. And especially in these recent post-crisis and post-pandemic times, which have exacerbated national impulses, the defence of the state itself and every man for himself.

Realism that Morgenthau described with some of the following characteristics: the state as the sole protagonist in international society, the primacy of national interests as the driving force and objectives of international politics, Hobbesian pessimism regarding the nature of man, the non-existence of moral criteria in international relations, the centrality and balance of power, interest defined in terms of power and its increase, etc... which seems to me to be not very far from what we are currently seeing.

So when you've finished reading the experts and you start trying to draw ideas from their writings, you start to wonder how we haven't gone extinct yet, or how long it will be before we do. Meteorites aside.

The survival and pre-eminence of states as the superior good in international politics, above that of humanity as a whole, is a limited perception in the times in which we live. The paradigm of the nation state was superseded years ago, perhaps since the Second World War, when its decline began, because the subsequent development of new technologies, trade, transport and the cross-cutting nature of the problems that affect us, among other things. It made, that everything that happens affects us globally without us being able to avoid it. And although still large, the planet is totally interconnected and its fragility is all the greater, so easy it can be to turn it into a lifeless and conflict-ridden place. We have done a reductio ad absurdum exercise. The greater and greater the influence of the human species and its advances, the greater the selfishness and the return to the "state of nature", now between states, again.

That is, my tribe fighting for resources and in permanent conflict. All this under cover of the idea that states are still fully in force. In reality they are a refuge to which we return in times of crisis and distress. And in which, through the state as an instrument, we once again defend the small, the closed, our citizens, against the survival of the species and of free, diverse, open democratic societies, grouped in strong and decisive supranational structures. In the meantime, democratic societies are increasingly fragile, due to the strength of their detractors, who are interested in leading us down who knows why murky paths, in order to build who knows what kind of world. It is a huge contradiction, which could be fatal for our always uncertain future. But that is where we seem to be again. On a path back to places that were once very dark, where utopia-laden ideologies, now with a strong smell of mothballs and distilled violence, flourish alongside forms of government that are nothing more than masks of totalitarianism.

I remember the Germans of the GDR fleeing from the socialist paradise, being massacred by the "Vopos" when they tried to cross the border or the wall, the citizens of the USSR locked up and dying in concentration camps for crimes they had not even committed, Spaniards exiled for 40 years by a merciless dictator, Chileans murdered by Pinochet for being alleged terrorists and so on, regimes and countries that suffered the delirium of leaders who, full of reason, did what they wanted with generations of men and women. Whose only crime was to think differently in some cases, and in others, not even that, just for the fact of existing, like the Jews and the Armenians for example.

There are hundreds of examples, many of them recent. The 20th century was, from this point of view, a veritable showcase of follies and barbarities. But we seem to have forgotten what happened, the distant and the near, as if these unfortunate examples of bad governance in human affairs had not even existed. And as if cinema, literature, lack of memory, ignorance and time, had turned the past into something imaginary, not into some tormenting and cruel realities, well told by history, but which everyone tries to forget in order to move forward without remembering.

And now, to cloud the picture further, the rampant demagoguery that plagues democratic states further weakens the hard-won ethical and moral values. Our institutions are struggling to adapt to changing times, and the sorcerer's apprentices who always emerge in these circumstances, operating from within the system, act brazenly in the face of populations frightened by the dizzying and continuous changes, where they find a breeding ground to spread their crazy ideas. Many of these ideas have strong similarities with pasts that were fortunately defeated, impossible or drowned in their own inoperativeness. Like the pro-closed and small-state nationalists, refugees in racist, old and rickety homelands, populists loaded with a fireproof moral superiority, dilettantes dreaming of recovering lost empires, puppet warlords with wardrobe values, who put us at the foot of our horses in front of these groups of "quasi" militarily organised states.  Such as state capitalists, half-dictators disguised in electoral costumes full of seams and patches, fanatical-religious states, dressed in medieval sanctity and ancestral customs, puppet kinglets and some other corrupt ones, who would give the lives of their entire populations, in exchange for achieving the ends they have set out to achieve, enriching themselves, in most cases. And those others, who in many cases consider freedoms as weaknesses, and eliminate them as well as diversity, open thinking and all the values that Europe and liberal democracies embody. Which would mean, for them, eliminating contradictions, uncertainty and moral relativism. Because they consider themselves to be the holders of the truth, and in that place, there are no certainties other than those they dictate.

I find the outlook daunting, and at the same time I have the feeling that we are sailing in a dark drift, which does not seem to lead to anything good. And yes, there are steps towards idealism and the search for "perpetual peace", but they seem to me to be less, more fragile, than those towards perpetual conflict. Eternal, I would dare to say, because that is what our silence will be, if the situation of precarious equilibrium is broken by one of the many cracks that have opened up within societies and between societies and others.

It is difficult to fight foolishness, lies and fear with one hand tied behind one's back. But now is the time to step forward, and for those who want to, to hear the message, follow it and use it for their own good. Those who don't must be taught that when they try to bully us, we have the same resources as they do and we can use them. But that we do not do so because that is not the way to a great and welcoming world.