It was March 21, we just said goodbye to Father Lachaise to Alain Krivine, comrade of so many fights for social justice, against racism, for internationalist solidarity.
It was spring day, the Norouz festival of the Iranians and the Kurds.The weather was fine, in Paris, with this slowly golden frequent light in this season.The "wind of autan" (the devil's wind) blowed in the south of the country, the sand of the Sahara, carried by the winds of altitude and the play of atmospheric pressures, had fell into fine dust on France and even oncars' bodywork to Paris and had sudden sunsets of orange.But it is the wind of terror was blowing in Ukraine, towards Marioupol, Mykolayiv or Karkhiv ... We mentioned the previous Russian bombings of Grozny (in 1999 in Chechnya) and Aleppo (in 2015-16 in Syria).
Aleppo?Return of the cemetery came to my memory the images of a meeting, a little more than three years ago.It was in Berlin, March 5, 2019.A meeting organized by the NGO Crisis Action (an international organization which acts for the protection of civilians in armed conflicts) where Russians and Syrians found themselves for a Syrian-Russian-European dialogue dialogue.
I had been invited to attend this meeting, as well as some other members of various Dutch, German, French associations ... In this city that I have been attending from time to time since the early 1970s, generally for meetings (yesterday at theEast and to the west, today in this renewed metropolis) and which I had explained to several of the participants who discovered it, geography and the lively or erased memories of wars and adventures of the past century.
I identified some Russian participants, members of the rights organizations with whom we had relations, as well as some Syrians, often left -wing activists.I knew some personally, Russian and Syrian activists, like Mariaal Abdeh of the “Women Now for Development” movement, which had made me discover the importance of the Syrian non-violent movement and groups of women in the Pacific uprising in 2011-2012Before war crushed everything.The Arab Spring had not survived in Syria ...
Some Russians had made an investigation into the activity of their national army in Syria and had the cheek to present it in Saint Petersburg!Russian public opinion were not at all informed of the reality of this war.The charismatic Ekaterina Sokiriananskaia brilliantly animated our debates which focused on the condition of refugees, the possibilities - or the impossibilities - to return to the country, the common actions possible, the importance of information (Syrians and Russians regretting not havingcooperated earlier ...).The Syrians were tired, all and all exiled (even if some planned to return to Idlib), the Russians had more hope, they all returned to Russia or still remained some spaces of free expression ...
The regime of Bashar al-Assad had decided, in 2011 to fight the peaceful uprising of the Syrian population by armed repression.In 2014 he was on the way to losing the civil war despite financial and military support from the Iranians, the Lebanese militia of Hezbollah and limited aid of the Russians.The latter then organized a powerful air intervention, which proved to be decisive.Especially since the Israelis - who were content to bomb some convoys of Hezbollah returning to Lebanon, and the Americans and allies - whose French, busy fighting jihadists in East Syrian and Iraq, have left controlfrom the western Syrian to the Russians, in a completely concerted way with these.
Do the operations of the Russians and their allies in Syria have something to do with that of the Russian neo-testist army today in Ukraine?
Everyone agrees to think that neo-tsar Putin envisaged a large-scale war-with massive attack in the north, east and south, but a lightning war (a few days).With combination of attacks by high precision weapons (mainly cruise missiles, in particular the formidable Kalibr, but also the average ballistic missiles Iskander), air bombings, a cyber attack and commando operations, to destroy the capacityUkrainian anti-aircraft response and centers of civil and military command.Then the tanks had to enter "triumphantly" into Kharkiv and kyiv ... This strategy failed.In addition, the impressive mobilization of Ukrainian civilians has greatly dissuaded the Russians from entering major cities that were likely to be the scene of generalized resistance.
In Syria also there was an impressive popular resistance, in cities like Homs, Hama, the suburbs of Damascus, Aleppo-Est, etc..However, there were important differences with Ukraine: popular resistance was divided over time, with the irruption - partly favored by the Bashar regime - jihadists who have often attached to physically destroying thisresistance.She did not benefit from any anti-aircraft means of NATO countries, nor Americans, Turks, nor French people or any other ... because there was a total Israeli vet to deliveries of such weapons.On the contrary, today's Ukrainian army has anti-aerial stingers and American anti-tank javelins, Turkish drones, etc..In Syria the essential ground troops were Lebanese (Hezbollah), Iranian, somewhat Syrian Bacharists, but not Russian outside of a few hundred killers of the Wagner group in the West, so no predictable reactions of the Russian population in front of thereturn of corpses.The situation is very different in Ukraine where, after less than a month of fighting, Russian losses exceed 10,000 dead.
The failure of the flash war unfortunately means the inevitable development of the terrorist war, consisting in bombing first to break the morale of the population, before considering any control of the field.As was done in Homs or Aleppo.Consequently, the bombing of hospitals or humanitarian corridors is no longer a "collateral damage" in the heat of the action, but a goal in itself.We are already there for example in Marioupol or Karkhiv.In addition, the stock of high precision weapons (and high financial cost) being limited - and it must be kept for other strategic needs, the Russian army is increasingly using classic artillery, ofvery low precision, but no matter whatever we no longer do in the lace.
This war puts a final end to the idea of "deterrence" as it was envisaged in the last century.In reality this "deterrence" there was geopolitically obsolete since the end of the Soviet block thirty years ago, and technically questioned because of the mutations of the systems of armaments.
"Deterrence" was two things.On the one hand, reciprocal nuclear deterrence Mad ("assured destruction guaranteed"), which made that with intercontinental missiles or underwater launcher submarines a frontal war between the two blocks ("Western" and "Soviet") which can lead to the use of "strategic" nuclear weapons meant the end of the world, and therefore was excluded.The confrontation, or negotiation, block, being done through an accounting as sinister as they are illuminated on the number of nuclear heads of each (allowing the planet to destroy several times) then, which is done at the end of the period, to reduce this number.An American and Soviet game in which others played the extras, the British (to pretend to exist), the Chinese (to affirm their real existence), the Indians and the Pakistanis (but only one vis-screws from the other), the hermit dictatorship of North Korea (to survive), the Israelis (to make believe) ... and of course French deterrence, accepted by the immense majority of the political forces of our country, without knowing wellWhat it was, nor what she really served for around sixty years.Visiting the "formidable", submarine machine launcher transformed into a museum in Cherbourg, I understood that this submarine had for decades served in practice to ... listen to the noise of the submarines of others, and to S'Preserve it by hiding under something that made more noise than yourself (ideal: a mackerel bench ...).
On the other hand, political deterrence, once frozen the risk of global block confrontation, a certain grammar of wars management by these blocks.Because of course nuclear deterrence did not mean peace.Everyone could try to take advantage of the wars which did not fail to occur around the world, mainly against colonial and post-colonial oppression, supporting this or that camp but within certain limits.Thus the USSR gave military means to the Vietnamese to resist, but not to the point of destroying the huge US military device, unlike the Americans supported Afghan Fédayins after the Soviet intervention, to support guerillaTo match the Soviet military apparatus.
The fall of the Soviet block has completely transformed the situation.During a period ultimately quite brief, the "American moment", there was only a US superpower, but very quickly the world became "multipolar".
In recent years of the 20th century, the world nevertheless progressed in terms of disarmament agreements, measures of trust, international law, taking up these files where they were blocked with the Cold War (1948-1988) andmaking incongruous the maintenance of the Mad Nuclear deterrence logic, but also questioning the grammar of conflicts.
However, two phenomena must be underlined in this regard:
In almost all military and political staffs, in the majority of intellectuals, vocabulary, and therefore conceptions, not to mention military tactics, have remained those of the Cold War.Which will make the analysis erratic then the political and military interventions in the face of "new wars" whether in Iraq, in the former Yugoslavia and of course in Africa.
From the start the most militarized powers, the United States, Russia, China and a few others like Israel, Saudi Arabia, Iran, will drag their feet, or refuse advances in international law and disarmament measuresthat we have just mentioned.And the United States of Georges W Bush and Russia of Vladimir Putin, will sabotage those of these agreements that their countries had signed ...
And so here we are, not with what some call "the First War in Europe since the Second World War" - which comes up in this case to consider that the wars striking yesterday Sarajevo or Pristina were not in Europe?It is a war with the second army of the world, holding nuclear weapons.Not a war "for the free world" (according to the terminology of the Cold War, even if we can understand that the Ukrainians who actually fight for their freedom use this term), even less a war engaged by Russia against imperialismWestern while the aggressor is precisely Putinian neo-tastal imperialism.
True to the logic of the grammar of the last century, the Western countries (let us specify, the Americans and their little British poodle, then the agency they administer, NATO) announced "that it will defend every square centimeter from the countriesmembers of the alliance by all means "signifying there: in Estonia we could go to the nuclear blackmail, in Ukraine we will do nothing serious.We can be surprised because as all the principles of the strategists have since the 4th century BC and the Chinese Sun Tzu, it is not reasonable to say in advance what we are not going to do.Note, moreover, that a certain military support for the Ukrainians has also existed for a few years, but that it was and had to stay below the red line that would constitute a parity with the Russian means, and therefore that the Americans will not answerNot at the request of neutralization of airspace (no-fly zone), supposing the sophisticated means of destruction of missiles and Russian planes.
For his part Vladimir Putin raised "at level 2" the alert state of his strategic forces (that is to say, possibly implying nuclear), just to confirm his red line, "deterrent"allowing the passage to worry European and global public opinion.However, he did not say what he was not going to do, leaving a doubt about a possible level 3 (use of tactical nuclear weapons (that is to say "low" power, carried byshort -range vectors), or the use of other weapons of mass destruction, chemical for example).And then he made a weird gesture, claiming two bombings of secondary objectives with Kinjal "hypersonic" missiles.
From then on everyone wonders if we are going to a nuclear war.Logically there is no matter in World War.Logically also the use of tactical nuclear weapons with their consequences (number of victims, persistent radioactivity) does not comply with the proclaimed war goals ("free" Ukraine).Chemical weapon even less.Recall that it has been prohibited since 1925 and that even Hitler did not use it (when he had), they were only used by Saddam Hussein (against the Iranian army and especially against civiliansKurdes), and Bashar al Assad against Syrian civilians, without much military effect ... Putinian propaganda on the design by the Americans and the Ukrainians of bacteriological weapons (which no one has ever been able to use on a large scale for centuries) is-St a big lie to justify tomorrow we know what?
We cannot swear anything, since the syntax of the "grammar" of the era of the Cold War no longer really works.In any case, the message of (alleged?) Russian hypersonic shot may be decrypted: a hypersonic missile is undetectable to ultra-perfected anti-missile systems of the Patriot, Arrow or the Israeli-American "Dome" type.Such equipment is not currently deployed on Ukrainian soil and should not be.Note however that if the price of a cruise missile is of the order of million euros, that of a hypersonic missile is thirty or forty times more expensive ... Not sure that the Russians have so much that to send onFuel deposits or trucks providing rocket launchers to the Ukrainians ...
March 24, it has been just a month since the war started.No recent news from certain Ukrainian friends engaged in territorial defense, just a message from Maksim, somewhere to kyiv who tells us today on Facebook, that in the fire of action, he wrote to his mother after a month of war and forgotten to wish his father happy birthday.
The Neo-TSar army marks the plunge, after the failure of the "special operation" flash.Before a second assault phase?In any case we have already switched to the bombs carpet, artillery pounding, incendiary bombs at phosphorus, and as yesterday in Syria to the exponential increase in civilian victims.
Does Putin plan to stop the massacre after taking control of a significant part of the Ukrainian territory?Control the Novouroussya, that is to say all the south and eastern Ukraine, where the Russian speakers are numerous, explicitly claimed by "Grand-Russian" nationalists, including Putin himself (the "NewRussia ”that Catherine II had conquered in the 18th century at the expense of the Ottomans and Polish?) But for that it would be necessary to take not only Marioupol, but also Karhhiv and Odessa, and submit millions of (Russian -speaking) Ukrainians drawn up against him.
So goes this dark spring.And what should we be, to contribute to clarifying the future, our attitude, our action, here far from the fighting, faced with this war?What internationalist solidarity would have said Alain Krivine?(to be continued)
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