The War between East and West, the Non-Aligned and the Struggle for the Salvation of Humanity (Part II)

By Dimitris Konstantakopoulos (*)

Second of two parts. Here you can read the first part The War between East and West, the Non-Aligned and the struggle for the salvation of Humanity | Defend Democracy Press

2. Towards a climate Holocaust 

NATO’s war against Russia, if it continues for much longer, and if steps are not taken to immediately re-create a climate of international co-operation, will ensure the end of humanity due to climate change. As climatologists have repeatedly warned us, the last time being the conclusion of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on climate change, released on April 5, measures to reverse climate change must be taken now, because climate changes are already becoming irreversible. No effective action to reverse this phenomenon will be possible in the future. Earth will enter into another “climate orbit”, where climate change will become self-propelling and will probably lead to a climate incompatible with the preservation of higher forms of life. 

Taking such measures requires a climate of very deep global co-operation and planning on a world scale, which is why it is incompatible with cold and hot wars. The same is true of all major world problems. The sanctions already entail a multiple burden on the environment, while there is a massive transfer of resources, necessary for any green transition (as well as for the fight against inequalities and other ecological threats), to new armaments programmes. 

The deepest irony of the situation is that German Greens (maybe we should call them Blacks?) have now become the protagonists in supporting NATO’s war against Russia, with all its terrible consequences for ecology and the natural environment of the Earth. 

3. Chaos on the planet 

The sui generis world war against Russia that has been unleashed can also cause a major economic and social crisis in both developed and southern countries. 

 This war is already threatening even the most elementary, utterly necessary (even if one is unsatisfied of the results of their action) institutions of international co-operation, such as the UN and the G20. For example, the representatives of three Western states walked out of the last G20 meeting. Mr. Biden has convened an international conference on the coronavirus. Is he going to invite Russia, or he will exclude her? 

None of the major global problems can be addressed without the involvement of Russia and China and imposing sanctions of them will mean Nature will impose much more severe sanctions to everybody! 

Watching what Western leaders are now deciding, one gets the impression that their minds are a few centuries behind. They are living probably at the time the West began its colonial campaigns in America, Asia and Africa. 

After 1945, humanity acquired productive forces and technologies that rendered obsolete not merely the idea of Western domination, but the idea of domination in general. This is why nobody can win this new war between East and West. If we let this war go on and escalate it can only lead to the destruction of mankind. 

If we continue to rely on a civilisation based on domination over other people and unlimited domination and exploitation of nature, if we do not radically and very quickly change the present human civilisation, then the present generation, or that of our children or grandchildren, has a very high probability of being the last to walk on our planet. 

These problems are already evident. In many countries of the world, rising food and energy prices are leading to mass demonstrations and strikes. Oxfam is warning that any progress made in the last 25 years in fighting poverty is threatened, and that hundreds of millions of people will experience extreme poverty and hunger this year. The sanctions war is aggravating the danger of serious famine crisis in eight African countries.  

The crisis will not be confined to the South. It is already manifesting itself in Europe. And we are talking only about socio-economic problems, not about Siberia and northern Canada that burned last year, the floods in Germany and China, the climate famine in Madagascar, the threat of destruction of the Amazon, the lung of the planet, the melting of the Arctic and Antarctic ice sheets, or Athens, which may become the first major city to suffer a kind of “thermal death”. 

For all these reasons, there is no more urgent need today than the fight to stop the sui generis war unleashed by the West. It is not certain that humanity will be able to be saved if this war stops. What is certain is that humanity cannot survive in the long run the prolongation of such a war. 

The political situation in the West 

The policy of war now seems invincible in the West, because it has managed to rally around itself almost all sewtern political forces in the West and the entire complex of Western media, controlled in an unprecedented way by big financial capital (and its main centres in London and New York) and a system of “journalism” under the guidance of the Western secret services, with the British and American ones leading and controlling to a large extent the rest of the European ones. 

Totalitarianism has made enormous progress in the West during the last 50 years and it has undermined whatever very limited real content remains under the form of “western democracy”.   

In this political and “media – information – ideology” situation, where Russia, China and everybody crticizing Israeli policies represent the great Evil, the same way McCarthy was condemning any opponent as a “communist” in order to begin the cold war, the question of “stopping Russian agression in Ukraine” has become more important than any other question (even the survival of humanity itself).  

Western politicians who do not agree with this policy do not find the courage or the capacity to propose alternatives. The Western public (including policymakers) is bombarded with totalitarian anti-Russian propaganda, which is undermining any feedback mechanism and the very capacity of the western system to understand and debate the real situation. 

They are able even to inverse the understanding of causes and effects. They present for example NATO, without the continuous expansion of which the present extremely dangerous crisis hardy would happen, as a guarantor of peace and security. Finland and Sweden are preparing to enter NATO to defend themselves against an absolutely imaginary threat of a Russian invasion and, by entering NATO, to become themselves first-class targets to be annihilated in case of any nuclear conflict! 

In Germany, the most powerful European state, they are presenting Russia as the power ready to unleash nuclear arms against them, exploiting the deep German fear of Russia (memories of the 1945 defeat) not to promote the need of peace but to channel it into aggressivity and hatred towards Russia.    

One hopes that this situation is only temporary and  will change quickly. Economic sanctions will hit not only Russia, but the standard of living of Europe itself. Europeans are being asked to pay a very high price, supposedly to maintain the West’s dominance of the planet, but in fact to intensify the US dominance over Europe and to bring the possibility of planetary catastrophes closer. 

One hopes that this situation will lead, sooner or later, to the emergence of progressive forces, which will insist on stopping this sui generis world war and begin addressing the problems of the European contintent, according to the policy lines of the great European politicians of the post-War period, like General de Gaulle, Willy Brandt, Olaf Palme, Aldo Moro, Andreas Papandreou, Chirac, Villepin and Schroeder, who opposed at differend historical moments and circumstances the drive to world war and fought for a united Europe from “the Atlantic to the Urals” (de Gaulle), able to play a protagonistic role in the world and regenerate the best traditions of European civilisation. 

Of course such a crisis can also lead, as history proves, to the emergence of Fascism in Europe, which can help the escalation of war. (Historical experience and the understanding of social dynamics behing right wing totalitarianisms do not permit any illusions about the direction the Far Right can take, in spite of various rhetorical pirouettes and tactical manoevres. After all, Hitler also gained power pretending he was a Socialist, and was able also to present himself as a friend of Soviet Russia in order to attack it more easily).  

It is impossible to predict with certainty what will happen in the West during the months ahead. But now, under the present conditions, it is the South of Humanity which has a crucial role to play. 

The non-aligned countries can become the voice of humanity 

Given the dependence of western countries on the USA, given also the paralysis of the world institutions like the UN, as they cannot function in an environment of conflict between the permanent members of the Security Council, the movement of non-Aligned, representing today the majority of the countries and of the population of the planet, with an economic and military power much greater than when it was created, has a historic opportunity to intervene in this sui generis world war which begun. 

 It can do it first of all by protecting and strengthening the sovereignty and independence of its members, which America wants to enlist in its camp by using any available method, including blackmail and also by becoming the spokesmen for the general interests of humanity, East and West, North and South. 

The Non-Aligned must now launch an initiative in order to stop the war and advance a compromise peaceful solution to the crisis. 

Under the circumstances, such a solution can be found along the following lines, which must be applied simultaneously: 

– Cessation of hostilities and the beginning of negotiations to find a peaceful solution that recognises the social, national and political rights and aspirations of all peoples inhabiting Ukraine, protects the right of all citizens to live without being terrorised by neo-Nazi gangs incorporated into the actual Ukrainian state, and also the right of Russia to exist in security, not threatened by the surrounding and encircling  Nato troops and armaments. 

– Immediate stop in arming Ukraine 

– Immediate lifting of all measures taken against Russia, including those against states that do not want to apply anti-Russian sanctions. 

–  Lifting of all sanctions against all countries. Those sanctions have always proven ineffective for the aims which are officially “justifying” them. Thay affect mainly the populations of the countries – victims and not their regimes. And last but not least nobody has empowered the United States to assume the role of the ultimate judge and gendarme of the world. Such pretensions always lead to horrible results and the example of the US “unipolar moment” (1990 – 2015) has provided ample confirmation of this fact. 

Under the present circumstances, only the non – Aligned countries can also have a role in verifying the application of any agreement in and on Ukraine. 

A solution of the crisis, like the one described above, corresponds to the highest interests of both the Russian and the Ukrainian people and to the supreme interests of all humanity. The greatest triumphs of Russia in its history have happened when this nation has incarnated in its policies and aims values and visions corresponding to interests much wider that its narrow national interests. And Ukraine has absolutely no future as a western weapon against Russia. 

Such an initiative of the non-Aligned could be also extended in a manifesto, which will be limited not only to the need to stop the sui generis world war which has already started, but will try to formulate the guiding lines of a programme of deep transformation of our world into a more equal, more democratic international structure, with parallel and simultaneous treatment of its major ecological, social and international problems. 

Any country, any state which will become the protagonist of such an effort will enormously enhance its international radiation and prestige.  

 Indonesia, as a founding member of the non-aligned parties, but also the president now of the G20, could play an important role in this direction and convey to the G20 the voice and will of the great majority of humanity. 

It is a historic opportunity for the Non- Aligned countries, for the South and for all humanity, an opportunity that should not be missed. 

 April 2022

( * ) Dimitris Konstantakopoulos is a former advisor at the office of former Greek PM A. Papandreou, former chief correspondent of the Greek news agency ANA in Moscow and former member of the Secretariat of the CC and of the Foreign Policy Committe of the SYRIZA party (which he left in 2015).This text is based on his speech at an international debate organized by the network for the revival of the spirit of Bandug (https://bandungspirit.org/), on the subject of the Indonesian presidency of the G – 20 in the midst of the global crisis, in which participated academics and militants from all continents.

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