Let's arm ourselves to the teeth
1. Vladimir Putin's imperialist manias are not stopping. For now, no one is stopping an autocrat who should be arrested and tried by the International Criminal Court. On the contrary, Putin is making new and unexpected friends. The surprising understanding with the new president of the United States has caught everyone off guard. Donald Trump, the same thousand-man who threatens to kill all the citizens of Gaza, humiliates Zelensky in the White House, empties NATO of content and warns Europe to fend for itself. If it wants to defend itself, from anyone, it should not count on the United States. No one anticipated this planetary drama for 2025. Brussels' reaction to this Trump-Putin pincer movement has been swift. In the next four years, as announced by Ursula von der Leyen, the EU will invest another 800 billion euros in defence. Fear has won. Arms manufacturers will win a lot. And democracy has lost. The reason? She's been playing hide and seek for a while now and no one can find her.
2. Suddenly, when European well-being was based on three social pillars: health, education and culture, rearmament is once again the priority. Just in case, more missiles, more planes and more weapons to guarantee mutually assured destruction. We are back to the dynamics of the Cold War. We buy new weapons, just so that our powerful arsenal will dissuade the enemy from attacking us. It is, in short, the old dentist joke. That of the patient who, terrified as he is, lying in the chair with his mouth open and feeling the chill of the tooth close by, grabs the dentist by the balls and asks him only one question: "We won't hurt each other, doctor?" We are right there. Arming ourselves to the teeth so that neither Putin nor anyone else feels like breaking European tranquility. It is first-class geopolitics: the spiral of fear has been and continues to be a guarantee of revenue for the arms industry. The consolation, they say, is that the economy will grow thanks to this plan approved by Europe at an emergency summit.
3. Pedro Sánchez, who does not want to be left behind in group photos, launches an unusual plan for Spain to invest 50 billion euros in the purchase of tanks, submarines, frigates and planes. There is no talk of trains because, as has been demonstrated in the last week – and in the last decade – neither Renfe nor Adif would know how to make them work. The railway chaos in Catalonia seems to have been expressly created. It is a bullying of State. With a tenth of what Spain will spend now on rearmament, our trains could operate with Swiss punctuality and Japanese efficiency. The resources, for certain things, come from under the stones and, for certain other things, not even the budgeted investments are met. "Our lives depend on it," said Pedro Sánchez when speaking of the Russian threat, almost with the same serious terms he used five years ago when speaking of the coronavirus. Our lives depended on it too, and then it was true.
4. Felix Bolaños, the minister with three portfolios, maintains that "investing in defence is investing in democracy." This is one way of looking at it. At least, of justifying the penultimate moral indecency. Because investing in defence is also disdaining diplomacy, feeding fears, fomenting hatred and smoking a cigarette in the culture of peace. Suddenly, this explicit support for Zelensky and this investment in weapons like never before since the Second World War, is nothing more than a new exercise in European hypocrisy. To try to look good in public. Or worse still, perhaps it is a way of appeasing the pangs of conscience for not having done enough for Ukraine, or to end the war during the last three years.