Pacifist theories and politics do not meet in the globalized world.
On December 10th, the seventieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was celebrated all over the world. The signatures of the heads of state on this declaration began to line up at the bottom of the document on November 4th of that year, arriving to include the majority of the nations of the planet. Today we should honestly ask ourselves whether this piece of paper has been honored or not, and to what extent.
Let’s consider only the most important right, that is, the right to life. As usual, we rely on numbers, which never lie. In the First World War the ratio between military and civilian casualties was 8 to 1, in the Second World War it was 5 to 5, in the wars of the Third Millennium it was 1 to 8. Therefore, the right to life of men, women, and defenseless and harmless children is less and less respected, in defiance of any principle. So, we could consider the Charter of Human Rights a declaration of failed intent.
Weapons for wars? No, wars for weapons.
The first defendant is the arms industry, but times have changed. In the twentieth century, weapons were built to make wars, today wars are made to build weapons. A corporation that sells weapons obeys the only logic that the market allows: maximizing profit, increasing it year by year. However, there is much more. The capital investment, which supports the war industry, and the profits made from it are spread over legal and illegal sectors which have nothing to do with war. Here some examples: drug trafficking, slave trade, political party financing, black funds, etc.
The difference between the past and the present is the following: before war production was a provisional aspect of the economic management of the state. On the other hand, today it is an organic and stable part of it. There are hardly any wars between states anymore, but a generalized state of war over vast areas of the planet, in which a continuous and growing arms trade develops. In short, the war is globalized. Since reasons (ie pretexts) are needed to justify conflicts, the old concept of just war has been recovered, that is, a sort of permanent secular crusade against the axis of evil of the moment. To us the evaluations.
