A reflection on anti-militarist politics before nation state war, before the russian invasion of ukraine, by Àlex Guillamón, for El salto diario(09/03/2022).
Whoever invented the term nation-state surely did not intend to describe reality so literally. But, certainly, today it is not the nations that own states, but the states that own their nations. The path from the Soviet Union to the current Russian Federation is a clear example: no matter how radically its political, economic and ideological wrapping has changed, the hard core of authoritarian state nationalism has preserved the historical continuity of Great Russia. We don’t have to go that far though, for we also have examples much closer to home.
The hard cores of the nation-states appear on the scene whenever it is necessary to “continue politics by other means”. They are sanctuaries in the shadows where the flame of supreme authority, unscrupulous and merciless violence, highly concentrated patriarchy, are cultivated and reproduced. Reasons of state allow them to retain ownership of the nation at any price.
The other defining characteristic of nation-states is their rapport with the elites that concentrate economic power. Beyond the liberal rhetoric, in reality these elites require the services of nation-states — legal, financial, fiscal privileges, public infrastructure, diplomatic, military, etc.— to materialise their position in the territories and to continue accumulating profit unlimitedly.
With the current supply crises, we are witnesses to how capitalist globalisation is reaching the limits of the availability of many inputs —both energetic and material— that are its physical base. And the dispute between the large business complexes to access them implies a climate of conflict between States or coalitions of States for the exclusivity over the territories in which they are located.
Nations do not have to be like oil and water, mutually exclusive. It is the constant compulsion of this framework between the nation-state and economic elites to dominate territories that prevents the possibility of sharing sovereignties where diverse communities coexist. As if it were a matryoshka doll, we have seen it with Russia versus Ukraine, with Ukraine versus Donbass, and we will surely see it in Donbass versus the remaining Ukrainian population. One’s own security is experienced as permanently threatened by the simple existence of the neighbouring community, and the only way to preserve it is by its subjugation or elimination, or the perversion of democracy exercised as a dictatorship over minority populations.
Superpowers playing Russian roulette
Ukraine has become one of those points of friction between global superpower-states. The Pentagon and NATO —instruments of subordination of Europe to their strategy — have played a long game of harassment in their commitment to the expansion of territorial control on the borders of the Russian Federation. The state nationalism of the Russian Federation, for its part, has responded with its strategy of imperial recomposition towards the former Soviet republics, with the support of the Londongrad elite. Both blocs argue for their expansionism as self-defence, thus reaching a point where the security of one implies the insecurity of the other.
As Chomsky puts it, “Russia is a kleptocratic oil state dependent on a resource that must drastically diminish or we are all finished.” Something similar could be said of all the other powers, but it is that much more accentuated in the case of Russia. And in this risky game, the state-power with a more pressing and unrestrained governability is the one that has ended up shooting first. NATO bears its share of the responsibility, for taking the game to the limit. But the ultimate responsibility belongs to those who have calculated, planned and unleashed the large-scale killing machine of their nation-state on the people of Ukraine, accepting as a valid price the devastating human and ecological catastrophe that this entails.
To whom and why does our positioning matter?
Santiago Alba Rico wrote an interesting article recently where he exposed the restlessness on the left due to the difficulty of positioning itself in such a complex situation and in which the material aggressor is neither the US nor the European Union, our favourite villains. It’s not just that we have a hard time positioning ourselves, he says, it’s that we even have a hard time knowing what to think and what to ask for.
But for whom and for what is our positioning important? In the first place, we must be aware that we are facing a historical dynamic, such as the one described above, which deserves nothing more than a change to the whole thing. The question is not whether or not we agree with a certain move by one of the superpowers at stake — for example, the shipment of weapons —, it is that we are and must be outside of this game. And, when we join the fray, that it is not the same to speak from the position of an activist as to speak from within political institutions, ignoring which we fall into the delusion of grandeur, so frequent on the left, of pretending that from within the institutions, that we were doing something.
The harsh reality is that in this case the position of the left is required by power to provide blank checks for reasons of state, contributing to the social acceptance of measures inserted in strategies beyond our reach, which remain expressly protected against public knowledge and the possibility of being influenced, not only by ministers on the left, but even by the leader of a government.
Obviously, our positioning is crucial, but its usefulness lies further down: in the dispute over the social story, in the construction of values ??and critical thinking in the areas in which our opinion may have an influence, directly or indirectly. In this sense, the role of people who hold institutional positions does entail more responsibility, but not so much because of the position itself, but because of the greater leadership of opinion that it entails.
Indeed, we need a position focused on promoting a collective, transformative and peace-building critical reading of supreme violence, its causes and consequences. To prevent the next wars that may be looming, if this escalation of arms that is sweeping Europe is consolidated, resurrecting the nauseating si vis pacem, para bellum. To prevent the debate about war from being made upon the denial of the climate, energy and ecological emergency in which we find ourselves. Returning to Chomsky, “this catastrophe has taken place at a time when all the great powers, and indeed all of us, must work together to control the great scourge of environmental destruction that is already taking a disastrous toll, and that it will soon be much worse if great efforts are not made quickly.” To denounce the growing trend in nation-states towards authoritarianism, racism and necropolitics, as ways of governing these emergencies in favour of large corporations. To build a retaining wall against imaginary glories and human sacrifices, heroes and deserters, the return to the rhetoric that inflamed Europe in 1914.
Pressured by the media factories of emotions, we have seen politicians and pundits, even from the left, pontificating pornographically from their position of comfort and privilege, about taking up guns to defend Ukraine. We have also heard that pacifism is a backward idea, from the last century, an ethical perversion of progressivism, as if things were valued not for their fairness, not even for their effectiveness, but simply for being advanced or backward.
This producer of disposable sensitivities and moral imperatives is the same one that manufactures indifference to the war in Yemen —in which we continue to export weapons to the Saudi tyranny to bomb the civilian population— or to the more than 60 armed conflicts that exist today on planet Earth, or in the face of non-European people who are rejected fleeing Ukraine, or those who are killed by the European Union in the Mediterranean for fleeing those conflicts.
What do we ask for
If there is concern for what we ask for, then we can say: we ask for the demilitarisation, denuclearisation, decarbonisation, depatriarchalisation of our lives and our territories. We want more social sovereignty against the dictatorship of the mega-transnationals and the rubbish of nation-states. We want to build ways of sharing sovereignties and territories among peoples, detoxifying our coexistence of exclusivism. These must be our cards to play our own game: the survival of humanity in the face of the challenges of the global crisis. And we do not accept moral lessons, or the crocodile tears of necropolitics.
The courage, heroism and glory of this century in the face of all forms of tyranny, invasion and war must be mass popular resistance, non-cooperation and civil disobedience, like that of the more than 13,580 people detained in Russia to oppose to war knowing what they were risking, or the thousands who resist in Ukraine as best they can and according to their moral imperative, this yes, is totally respectable. Because life itself holds a great deal of power to overcome adversity. With collective determination, perseverance and intelligence, any tyranny is beatable, amendable, rectifiable and reversible; almost everything, except death.
Is pacifism a thing of the past?
A reflection on anti-militarist politics before nation state war, before the russian invasion of ukraine, by Àlex Guillamón, for El salto diario (09/03/2022).
Whoever invented the term nation-state surely did not intend to describe reality so literally. But, certainly, today it is not the nations that own states, but the states that own their nations. The path from the Soviet Union to the current Russian Federation is a clear example: no matter how radically its political, economic and ideological wrapping has changed, the hard core of authoritarian state nationalism has preserved the historical continuity of Great Russia. We don’t have to go that far though, for we also have examples much closer to home.
The hard cores of the nation-states appear on the scene whenever it is necessary to “continue politics by other means”. They are sanctuaries in the shadows where the flame of supreme authority, unscrupulous and merciless violence, highly concentrated patriarchy, are cultivated and reproduced. Reasons of state allow them to retain ownership of the nation at any price.
The other defining characteristic of nation-states is their rapport with the elites that concentrate economic power. Beyond the liberal rhetoric, in reality these elites require the services of nation-states — legal, financial, fiscal privileges, public infrastructure, diplomatic, military, etc.— to materialise their position in the territories and to continue accumulating profit unlimitedly.
With the current supply crises, we are witnesses to how capitalist globalisation is reaching the limits of the availability of many inputs —both energetic and material— that are its physical base. And the dispute between the large business complexes to access them implies a climate of conflict between States or coalitions of States for the exclusivity over the territories in which they are located.
Nations do not have to be like oil and water, mutually exclusive. It is the constant compulsion of this framework between the nation-state and economic elites to dominate territories that prevents the possibility of sharing sovereignties where diverse communities coexist. As if it were a matryoshka doll, we have seen it with Russia versus Ukraine, with Ukraine versus Donbass, and we will surely see it in Donbass versus the remaining Ukrainian population. One’s own security is experienced as permanently threatened by the simple existence of the neighbouring community, and the only way to preserve it is by its subjugation or elimination, or the perversion of democracy exercised as a dictatorship over minority populations.
Superpowers playing Russian roulette
Ukraine has become one of those points of friction between global superpower-states. The Pentagon and NATO —instruments of subordination of Europe to their strategy — have played a long game of harassment in their commitment to the expansion of territorial control on the borders of the Russian Federation. The state nationalism of the Russian Federation, for its part, has responded with its strategy of imperial recomposition towards the former Soviet republics, with the support of the Londongrad elite. Both blocs argue for their expansionism as self-defence, thus reaching a point where the security of one implies the insecurity of the other.
As Chomsky puts it, “Russia is a kleptocratic oil state dependent on a resource that must drastically diminish or we are all finished.” Something similar could be said of all the other powers, but it is that much more accentuated in the case of Russia. And in this risky game, the state-power with a more pressing and unrestrained governability is the one that has ended up shooting first. NATO bears its share of the responsibility, for taking the game to the limit. But the ultimate responsibility belongs to those who have calculated, planned and unleashed the large-scale killing machine of their nation-state on the people of Ukraine, accepting as a valid price the devastating human and ecological catastrophe that this entails.
To whom and why does our positioning matter?
Santiago Alba Rico wrote an interesting article recently where he exposed the restlessness on the left due to the difficulty of positioning itself in such a complex situation and in which the material aggressor is neither the US nor the European Union, our favourite villains. It’s not just that we have a hard time positioning ourselves, he says, it’s that we even have a hard time knowing what to think and what to ask for.
But for whom and for what is our positioning important? In the first place, we must be aware that we are facing a historical dynamic, such as the one described above, which deserves nothing more than a change to the whole thing. The question is not whether or not we agree with a certain move by one of the superpowers at stake — for example, the shipment of weapons —, it is that we are and must be outside of this game. And, when we join the fray, that it is not the same to speak from the position of an activist as to speak from within political institutions, ignoring which we fall into the delusion of grandeur, so frequent on the left, of pretending that from within the institutions, that we were doing something.
The harsh reality is that in this case the position of the left is required by power to provide blank checks for reasons of state, contributing to the social acceptance of measures inserted in strategies beyond our reach, which remain expressly protected against public knowledge and the possibility of being influenced, not only by ministers on the left, but even by the leader of a government.
Obviously, our positioning is crucial, but its usefulness lies further down: in the dispute over the social story, in the construction of values ??and critical thinking in the areas in which our opinion may have an influence, directly or indirectly. In this sense, the role of people who hold institutional positions does entail more responsibility, but not so much because of the position itself, but because of the greater leadership of opinion that it entails.
Indeed, we need a position focused on promoting a collective, transformative and peace-building critical reading of supreme violence, its causes and consequences. To prevent the next wars that may be looming, if this escalation of arms that is sweeping Europe is consolidated, resurrecting the nauseating si vis pacem, para bellum. To prevent the debate about war from being made upon the denial of the climate, energy and ecological emergency in which we find ourselves. Returning to Chomsky, “this catastrophe has taken place at a time when all the great powers, and indeed all of us, must work together to control the great scourge of environmental destruction that is already taking a disastrous toll, and that it will soon be much worse if great efforts are not made quickly.” To denounce the growing trend in nation-states towards authoritarianism, racism and necropolitics, as ways of governing these emergencies in favour of large corporations. To build a retaining wall against imaginary glories and human sacrifices, heroes and deserters, the return to the rhetoric that inflamed Europe in 1914.
Pressured by the media factories of emotions, we have seen politicians and pundits, even from the left, pontificating pornographically from their position of comfort and privilege, about taking up guns to defend Ukraine. We have also heard that pacifism is a backward idea, from the last century, an ethical perversion of progressivism, as if things were valued not for their fairness, not even for their effectiveness, but simply for being advanced or backward.
This producer of disposable sensitivities and moral imperatives is the same one that manufactures indifference to the war in Yemen —in which we continue to export weapons to the Saudi tyranny to bomb the civilian population— or to the more than 60 armed conflicts that exist today on planet Earth, or in the face of non-European people who are rejected fleeing Ukraine, or those who are killed by the European Union in the Mediterranean for fleeing those conflicts.
What do we ask for
If there is concern for what we ask for, then we can say: we ask for the demilitarisation, denuclearisation, decarbonisation, depatriarchalisation of our lives and our territories. We want more social sovereignty against the dictatorship of the mega-transnationals and the rubbish of nation-states. We want to build ways of sharing sovereignties and territories among peoples, detoxifying our coexistence of exclusivism. These must be our cards to play our own game: the survival of humanity in the face of the challenges of the global crisis. And we do not accept moral lessons, or the crocodile tears of necropolitics.
The courage, heroism and glory of this century in the face of all forms of tyranny, invasion and war must be mass popular resistance, non-cooperation and civil disobedience, like that of the more than 13,580 people detained in Russia to oppose to war knowing what they were risking, or the thousands who resist in Ukraine as best they can and according to their moral imperative, this yes, is totally respectable. Because life itself holds a great deal of power to overcome adversity. With collective determination, perseverance and intelligence, any tyranny is beatable, amendable, rectifiable and reversible; almost everything, except death.