What may seem strange or anti-historical is instead necessary: it is time to recover a political vision of the evolving worlds.
The days pass and tensions increase and, with them, the inability of the ruling classes to cope with the growing complexity and interrelationship of global processes. Everything is inextricably linked and political skill is increasingly shown in the ability not to separate state systems and responses to problems.
Mapping the dynamics of planetary processes is a profoundly political fact: the geography we knew is being radically and rapidly transformed and, in it, borders are progressively losing their importance. Borders are used as weapons, in a dead race to defend themselves. If we continue to reason in a-political terms, the outlook can only be one of militarisation of the world.
At stake, as we often repeat, is the political-strategic sustainability of the world, which becomes the possibility for every human being to live a dignified life in open and politically governed societies.
The great ongoing transformation of power relations at the international level cannot take place in a kind of ‘laissez faire’. If the democratic worlds have responded (in very different terms) to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, so have the different interests. The US does not have the same interests as Europe and, within Europe, approaches often go in different directions. If we leave it up to national interests, albeit legitimate ones, we will not be able to build paths of political-strategic sustainability.
Yet we must start with national interests, not neglecting or humiliating them. If ‘nations’ are to contribute effectively to the fate of the world, their originality must be preserved. Politically and diplomatically, it is necessary for the world to give itself ‘new arrangements’ and not make the double mistake of persevering in a merely competitive globalisation and insisting on strategic responses that worked in the world of the ‘cold war’.
Political-strategic sustainability leads to peace, justice and security. But that sustainability needs ‘glocal’ political visions: the urgency is given by the de-generational megacrisis in which we are immersed and which will not wait. We need to govern the ‘while’ of historical processes by looking into the beyond of the future that is already present: history is back.
