Square wars over peace
Dialogue between the deaf in the Italian squares on peace. Federico Guiglia's notebook
The invocation of peace is the same for everyone. But as soon as we discuss how to get it in Ukraine tormented by 8 months of war, the roads are divided in two: stop the sending of weapons to Kiev so as not to fuel the war with war, hoping for a "possible peace"? Or continue to do so to help those who defend their own nation attacked by Putin's army, because only those who resist can deal on an equal footing with the aggressor, not for whatever peace, but for a "just peace"?
There has been concrete evidence of the crossroads between possible peace or just peace in the two distinct and distant manifestations, one in Rome, the other in Milan. With the opposition of the center left in turn split on the opportunity to participate in the first or second: in order not to be mistaken, members of the Democratic Party have seen themselves in both.
Among the hundred thousand marchers in the capital there were also the leader of the M5S, Giuseppe Conte, opposed to sending weapons. And there was the contested (from the square some even called him a fascist) Enrico Letta, who as leader of the Democratic Party has always supported the policy of the previous Draghi government in favor of aid, even armed, to Ukraine to defend itself.
If in Rome "the people of peace" were accompanied by many rainbow banners and by different associations, although all united by a basic pacifism and the awareness that one cannot be equidistant between Putin and Zelensky, in Milan the promoters Calenda and Renzi – but also Moratti and Cottarelli were present -, they claimed a precise choice under the banner of the flags of Ukraine and Europe: the resistance and not the surrender of Kiev. Full support for Zelensky in harmony with the line of the European Union that the Italian Draghi himself helped to determine. And that now Giorgia Meloni's executive, on the eve of the sixth measure to continue supporting the Ukrainians, is preparing to confirm. “But first the text must pass through the Chambers”, Conte warns.
Therefore, the question of how to go in search of lost diplomacy, a question everyone hopes for, is destined to live amid political controversies, as the clash between Conte and Calenda suggests. "I did not understand if the square in Milan is for peace or for war", the former jokes. “There is no peace without freedom, it would be enslavement”, the second replies. Everyone talks about peace in dialogue between the deaf.
(Published in The Arena of Verona, Il Giornale di Vicenza and Bresciaoggi)
www.federicoguiglia.com
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/pace-guerre-politiche/ on Mon, 07 Nov 2022 06:30:29 +0000.