José Antonio Zorrilla, former Spanish consul and diplomat in the networks, has recently attended a lecture on the war in Ukraine (San Telmo, within a lecture cycle on Human Rights). It goes on to say, more or less, that human rights and international relations are not on the same path, that is, that in the latter there is no room for ethics.

Or what is the same, all States are acting in international politics in accordance with geostrategic, economic, national and, in general, crematistic interests when it comes to making and dissolving wars, establishing economic and political relations and dissolving them. “I’m going to take away the innocence,” the headline of the Journal said 16.Las networks have exploded and, in fact, I don’t know why I’m surprised. But I have to acknowledge, I am still amazed at the impact they have on some sectors on the left. And that echo is not, of course, casual, but very symptomatic. Those who share the message basically want to send a message to other sectors on the Left that surely consider it temperate: “Please, to all pacifists and negotiators, understand it once and for all, the world is organized, dissolved and reorganized by war.” Look. Thank you for taking your veil out of your heart.

Because we didn’t know that exconsules like Zorrilla, in the ascending or international sense, and especially when the subjects are the states, recognize the code of war to international issues (as he says in his speech, “without justifying wars, eh,” with making wars, enough). However, when they look downwards and inwards at national and social conflicts within the state, they use a more manoeuvre of Catholicism and a more rigorous code of human rights than the Franco bishops of the Spanish State. To sum up and simplify: for the Spanish State, subject and conductor of history, code of war; for us, every people, citizen or social movement that is the object of the states and the great powers, a strict application of human rights and a rejection of violence. But we applaud Zorrilla’s “realism” for presuming that our innocence is gone destapado.Tout.

Why do we like these kinds of messages? For some wars we advocate political principles (and we use political realism only for explanation); for others, first political realism (and we ignore political principles). One or the other for what we are interested in. And if the framework is geostrategic, it will be swallowed on the left, the same to support NATO or Russia: “The Russian invasion is defensive because NATO has moved its borders to its territory, because it has been endangered by its territorial integrity.” That's what I've heard a lot about with my friends. Why has the Spanish state brought different wars, tortures, GAL and forms of oppression to this country? For the same reason as the previous one: to defend oneself, because he sees his territorial integrity in jeopardy with the survival of our people. Why do the Spanish and French states always put obstacles in the way of the development of the Basque country? Greater diffusion of Euskera, as well as greater diffusion of Basque nationality, as well as a stronger Basque Country, as well as the territorial integrity of two at-risk states. It is a political realism, a fool! I can also introduce a Machiavelli quote by the force of war if you like.

Of course! In politics, at both the international and the national levels, human rights are a lock for the underprivileged, well protected and praised by the media and State apparatuses of the highest, so that any attempt to change the status quo is resolved swiftly, legally and in accordance with human rights. But de facto, there is, there is always political realism and political principles in dialectics. If the only criterion is the first one, one can justify the most cruel barbarity or make the greatest shame. Today Guaidó is president of Venezuela, tomorrow Maduro, because there is a shortage of oil. But if the only criterion is the second, you can't do politics, you can do holy mass. The question is simple: in this dialectic, stablishment can and tends towards Manichaism (acting first and placing the second as a lock – violence comes from wherever it comes from...), but the left does not. It's the "tragedy" on the left.

The mere appeal of political realism (returning to the Zorrilla conference) therefore becomes a political framework that justifies the favourable position of a side. If it does not come behind any transformative reading of the left, it bears implicit all the components of frivolity, the risk that realism will absorb all the position of the left. Civilization is the risk of playing video games, as peoples and citizens as empty pawns. The question and the question is, therefore, something else; what reading does the transformative left of inter-capitalist wars have to make? From this question we have to think of the answer to the shots; critically, putting all the copies on the table, explaining all the nuances, against every mass media disillusionment, criticizing every attempt at doctrine shock, and without concealing the complexity of the history of war, not being naive, but putting on the table the political potential of peace. Because building peace is more difficult than making war, because it requires, as the former Colombian president said, the adaptation of prejudices.

The war in Ukraine has unfortunately left us with the destruction of public debate, demonisation and frivolity. The contempt for the attitude towards peace and mockery, which a part of the Left has bought in its entirety, in the name of geopolitics. And that war has once again revealed to us the shortcomings and miseries of our values, our beliefs and the political system. Also the injustice and brutal precariousness of our globalised and different system.

From the left and from the need for sovereignty, what falls to the left is to think of the path of a fairer world, today more difficult than ever, avoiding simplistic and obsolete schemes and frivolities; both geostrategically and nationally, claiming human rights but without Manichaism or disobedience, and always putting the citizens and peoples (in this case the Ukrainian imperian people) at the centre, against all.