War at eye level

“We are waging a war against Russia, not against each other.” It was not a simple citizen who made these remarks last week. This is Mrs. Annalena Baerbock, the German Federal Foreign Minister.

The day after this declaration, the German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, announced that he would send fourteen German-made heavy tanks to Ukraine.

The Chancellor of Germany, however, took the trouble to recall his opposition to an escalation of the conflict towards a war between Russia and NATO.

But Moscow did not fail to exploit to its advantage the concomitance of the declaration of the minister and the announcement of the chancellor…

Until now, the countries providing military support to Ukraine have repeatedly claimed that they are not co-belligerents in Vladimir Putin’s war in the heart of Europe.

One step closer to confrontation?

But the reckless statement of the German federal minister could suggest that death instincts are beginning to gain ground in some minds.

I dare to hope the opposite, because this conflict must not stretch out indefinitely. And its resolution can only be resolved on a political basis.

In these uncertain times when crises of an environmental, economic, social or cultural nature assail and grip us, we could do without the vibrations of a threat of escalation towards a global war.

After the horrors of the two world wars that Europe experienced, we said hand on heart: “Never again! “.

Could we wisely talk to each other with the aim of settling our differences peacefully rather than throwing bombs or missiles at each other?

Is this inevitable in a so-called “civilized” world?

Why put up with the fact that war has always existed, that humanity carries its seeds within itself and that we have to live with it?

Shouldn’t reason take precedence over our “hate and death impulses”?

War at eye level

To those who doubt our ability to curb our “death instincts”, I advise reading or rereading the epistolary exchange between two eminent German scholars, Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud, entitled Warum krieg? (Why the war?).

Published a few years before the Second World War by the International Institute of Intellectual Cooperation (forerunner of UNESCO), when Fascist and Nazi violence spread in Europe, this correspondence has unfortunately not aged.

Einstein challenges Freud in particular on the “means of freeing men from the threat of war” and how “to channel the aggressiveness of human beings and make them psychologically better armed against their impulses of hatred and destruction”.

And Freud will reply to him in particular that in the meantime, “we can say to ourselves: everything that works for the development of culture also works against war. »

In these times of crisis, reading this correspondence should inspire everyone endowed with reason…