The general peace that has enjoyed most of the
planet since the end of World War II is due, in large part, to the conception
of international relations as a system where countries are in permanent
dialogue - even if it is to launch accusations -, belong to the same forums
worldwide and often cooperate in common objectives. It is what is known as
multilateralism. A system that, with its failures, has helped to avoid the repetition
of a conflict on a global scale.
However, nationalisms and populisms have introduced
a new way of understanding relations between countries and the role they play
in the world. It is an aggressive discourse that considers dialogue as a sign
of weakness or, at best, as a waste of time. International forums are seen as
incompetent organisms, when they are not a focus of corruption, while
international treaties of a multilateral nature are seen as ties instead of the
foundations of a common peace and prosperity system.
That is why the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel,
has been particularly accurate during the celebration this weekend of the
Security Conference in Munich, warning that these structures that underpin the
world we know "have broken into small pieces" and remembering what many
of the opponents of multilateralism are skimping on their audiences: that those
structures that govern the coexistence of the international community are the
result of "the horrors of war." A battle for which this September
will mark the 80 years of its beginning.
In these eight decades there are many examples of
the very serious human and material consequences of the abandonment of this
cooperation path. Wars, famines or environmental catastrophes have multiplied
their lethal effect as a result of the lack of dialogue or, simply, by not
resorting to international organizations and abide by common commitments.
At a time in history full of uncertainty where the
societies of the planet face a series of common challenges of the utmost
urgency - such as climate change - it turns out that the international
cooperation system is cracking under the pressure of a demagogic discourse. It
promises its constituencies to safeguard them from all their problems by
breaking the braid of dialogue that has taken decades to set up and building
physical barriers. A deadly short-time siren song for global stability that has
already resurrected old threats that seemed, at least, parked, like nuclear
proliferation.
In Munich, European voices have rightly proposed a
redefinition of that multilateral system. Not to bury it definitively as the
current Administration of Donald Trump intends, but to make of dialogue,
cooperation and the existence of common forums to expose the differences the
continuing network that protects the world from an uncontrolled escalation
which would lead to a worldwide catastrophe, as history has already taught us
several times.
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