Opinion Sur
The war in Ukraine represents a crossroads. On the one hand, there are three main geopolitical tendencies that are suicidal. But, at the same time, the crossroads makes us think of alternatives, that is, of a new overcoming world.
The war in Ukraine has put the fate of humanity at stake in the remainder of the 21st century. As Borges would say, we find ourselves in a geopolitical garden of forking paths. Here, I shall give some of the reasons for this assessment.
(1)
Globalization is not over. In many ways, its impact is, in my view, irreversible, both economically, socially, and culturally. But it is true that the globalization that we have known in the last thirty years is in crisis and that the trend is towards its regression and the formation of regional blocs.
Globalization presupposes a world at peace (at least among the central countries), but today the world is at war, or rather wars. The war in Ukraine is not just another war, but a real geopolitical hinge. It has upset all calculations of interaction in the transatlantic world (US-US), in the drawing of the borders between East and West Europe, and in the Far East as well. It has produced a retreat in world trade and a movement in every geopolitical bloc to “live on its own,” especially the desire to substitute strategic imports. Of great significance is the general rearmament of the powers, the diversion of resources to the military-industrial complex of each one and the consequent postponement of great shared initiatives in the field of environmental protection and human rights.
(2)
Each of the terrains of human interaction—economic, social, and cultural—is a field of dispute. There is not just one crack but many. In the economic field, what is in dispute are value chains: production, investment flows, trade, and innovation. In the social field, we witness the different ways in which peoples have become communicating vessels, for the most different reasons: demographic, political, military, and the spread of expectations – a human movement without order or control. In the cultural field, the struggle is between cosmopolitanism (which has ceased to be the exclusive attribute of the elites and has become an attribute of mass) and traditionalism, between polyglossia and monoglossia, between universalism and particularism, between diversity and singularity, between fluidity and fixation.[1]
I will give an example of sociolinguistics and its political implications. Modern nationalism is a phenomenon that emerged virulently in the 19th century, and by the end of the 20th century seemed overtaken by globalization. However, in the 21st century it has resurfaced in several countries, despite and as a response to globalization.
Today the two tendencies coexist in tension. On the one hand, as I said, there are aspects of globalization that are irreversible. On the other hand, the dysfunctions of globalization, in particular the great inequality and social precariousness, have provoked a populist and pass-through reaction and the emergence of nostalgic myths that aspire to return to a fanciful past.
Classical nationalism was based on two pillars: territorial sovereignty and linguistic monoglossia. Its paroxysm is summed up in the slogan of German National Socialism: Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer (One people, one empire, one leader). But these pillars no longer stand. Sovereignty is dysfunctional in the face of challenges that do not respect borders, such as a pandemic. Monoglossia ceases to exist when populations are mixed by massive, either voluntary or involuntary migrations.
An example will suffix to illustrate this. In the New York borough of Queens, there is a street called Roosevelt Avenue that runs through some of the most ethnically diverse neighborhoods on the planet [2]. Going from one block to another is like crossing seas and visiting different continents. In those few blocks, 300 languages are spoken (in the world there are 7,000), which together with the cultures they represent, coexist and overlap in a kind of great cosmopolitan bazaar. What cement binds that crowd together? What dynamic drives the collaboration in this tower of Babel that, unlike the biblical one, is quite harmonious and successful? One conclusion is clear: there is no classical nationalism capable of encompassing this conglomeration of languages and traditions. Only a lingua franca (in this case English) that does not oppress the underlying others and explicit rules of interaction and trade create and guarantee this post-national unity in a micro-territory.
In the face of the visible neo-fascist reaction that today seems to multiply everywhere, this New York example is the true image of the future. In cases like this, the only legal “nationalism” is contractual, among those peoples that the Argentine national anthem in 1813 already called “the free of the world.” And the territorial sovereignty that is emerging in this new world cannot be absolute, but a respectable and respected trust of the general human patrimony. In the general hubbub and violence, the war in Ukraine confronts, in my view, two opposing types of nationalism: imperial and despotic nationalism on the one hand, and libertarian nationalism on the other: submission or self-determination, closed society or open society.
(3)
The geopolitical calculation of the great powers is extremely risky. The main risk they run is to trigger – consciously or unconsciously – a third world war [3]. The great powers today are three: the US, China, and Russia, with a fourth in the making that is already hot on their heels: India[4]. Each of these powers suffers from serious contradictions and internal conflicts. They are very different from each other, but in all cases the temptation exists to redirect or disguise internal tensions with an outward war jump, the effects of which would be unpredictable and highly dangerous. The outward leap of war has been fatal for the regimes of the countries that tried it. But in the past these countries were marginal or peripheral (examples: the military dictatorship in Greece in 1974, which triggered the war in Cyprus; the military dictatorship of Argentina that triggered the war in Malvinas in 1982). At present, a country of greater weight (Russia) has chosen that path with the Putin regime. Now, the other major countries resist military adventurism, but we do not know how long. We do know that both the US and China are weighing alternatives.[5]
(4)
In short, we are facing a triple situation: regionalism of antagonistic blocs, disputes in the main fields of social action, and strategic calculations of great danger. If we look at our planet as the first astronaut in space saw it – in its entirety – the triple situation I have mentioned appears as a suicidal distraction. All the trends, all the conflicts, and all the strategies that are presented to us in the media and in the think-tanks evade and aggravate the planetary challenges, among them: over-population, environmental destruction, climate change, and instead of collaboration, the struggle of all against all (the famous warre – or the nightmare of Tomas Hobbes: the struggle of all against all).
(5)
How to get out of this nightmare? What are the sprouts of sanity and positive trends looming on the horizon? I believe that they must be sought “from below” in nascent local communities with international connections, with forms of participation (and doing politics) that overcome existing institutionalized democracies (mostly captured and isolated from civil society) that do not solve local problems, and with economic forms that overcome the existing monopolistic capitalism, with popular economies and dynamics. To investigate the subject, research and social action networks have already been formed, which we can cite. For now, they are outbreaks, but with the capacity to thrive.[6]
If I am correct that the present tendencies are suicidal, we will reach a point where economic and social development will cease to be the central goal of humanity. The important thing will be to achieve better indices of wellbeing, not of development conceived today as “growth”. This without abandoning the positive characteristics that the existing system has left us but re-directing its achievements.
I propose to review the utopian theses of social philosophy of the 50s and 60s, with other recent contributions of anthropology. They are contributions derived from the so-called critical theory, in particular from the work of one of my former teachers, Herbert Marcuse (Eros and Civilization) and some of his other disciples such as Bill Leiss (The Domination of Nature), together with the work of Bruno Latour (Down to Earth: Politics in the New Climatic Regime), to name a few.
These theories propose a post-capitalist action with a view towards cooperation, social justice, and ecology, locally and globally. They focus particularly on the proposal to work less and do it collaboratively and spend more time enjoying activities such as art, music, being in nature, with local and family groups and all kinds of manifestations of culture. For Latin America, and thinking about the current indigenous movements, an important idea is to approach a form of tribal economy, where the spirit of each natural element has its own value.
[1] You can consult Zygmunt Bauman’s various writings on “liquid modernity.” Z. Bauman, Modernidad Liquida, México-Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2009.
[2] According to a recent article of the magazine National Geographic. See: https://www.nationalgeographic.es/historia/2022/04/la-calle-de-nueva-york-donde-se-hablan-mas-de-300-idiomas
[3] See the opinion of Henry Kissinger in https://www.infobae.com/america/mundo/2022/12/21/como-evitar-otra-guerra-mundial/
[4] See about it Bill Gates’ diagnosis: https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/new-updates/india-gives-me-hope-says-bill-gates-ahead-of-his-trip-to-india/articleshow/98176003.cms
[5] Consult https://www.ft.com/content/30a10c99-fb05-4453-a058-fc4620f161ca and also https://www.jstor.org/stable/2539074
[6] See for example https://ecoosfera.com/medio-ambiente/que-viene-despues-del-capitalismo-5-esperanzadoras-alternativas/ and this other proposal with political corollaries : http://www.democraciainclusiva.org/eobje.htm
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