WORLD WORLDWIDE ITALY News Journal Update - (en) Italy, UCADI #167: WAR OF CHARIOTS (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 The simultaneous announcement that the United States and Germany have decided to

supply Ukraine with tanks raises the level of confrontation on the threshold
beyond which only nuclear weapons remain . The tanks are supplied, for now, to a
limited extent with 31 Abrams and 14 Leopard 2s and it is not known how many more
will be supplied by the countries that own them on German supply, given that
there are 4,000 in the various arsenals, not all of them efficient. However, it
is a fact that those made available will be a quantity necessary to fuel the
massacre of fighters and the destruction of armaments and resources without
making the conflict degenerate towards the involvement of other actors but
without changing the balance on the battlefield. This is the further raising of
the level of the confrontation whose next stage for the Ukrainian government is
the supply of air, missile and naval armaments on which the diplomacy of Kiev
will commit itself which in fact has already asked for the F 16 fighters.
Cynically it is allowed Ukraine and Russia wear out more and more, regardless of
the thousands of dead among the population as well as among the soldiers of both
sides who have so far paid a toll of dead and wounded in almost equivalent
numbers, thus leaving the balance of forces remaining unchanged on the field.
This means that the approximately million Russian conscripts destined to die will
correspond to the same number of Ukrainians, bringing the human cost of war from
the current 400,000 men and women to one million and at least 6/8 million wounded
given the statistic ratio between dead and wounded in this type of war. On the
other hand, the recent enlistment of other soldiers by both sides testifies to
the determination to use the maximum resources, including human resources, in the
conflict.

What has changed

War has moved away from the everyday of the West. Relegated to the back pages of
newspapers and television news, information on the war is "velinara", built on
government press releases, and this above all in Italy, following the indications
of governments which aim to hide the economic costs and consequences of the war
as it does, first of all, the Polish government which closes both eyes to the
fact that its own citizens, already military, are engaged in combat units in the
field, not to mention the "volunteers" coming from other countries, enticed by
the rules of proposed engagement, made possible by the river of funding that
flows towards Ukraine, flooding it as it happens to the delta areas with an
immense river of money.
In this swamp the profiteers, the merchants of death, the speculators who
characterize every war economy wallow and proliferate, with the aim of
accumulating profits, collecting bribes, procuring weapons for now and for the
future, to supply the criminal gangs, to arm coup armies in the many war
scenarios in the world: once the weapons have been placed on the market it is
very difficult to follow their trail and establish whether behind the destruction
of a deposit or a load there is the total or partial subtraction of the loot that
will be then marketed.
Even the Zelensky Government has noticed it and has intervened to contain the
phenomenon by targeting situations of blatant scandal in a country increasingly
bent by the attack on infrastructure and on the lives of citizens and towns,
where corruption and war profits have come into conflict with the suffering of
the population and the sacrifices endured by the
country.
But corruption is not the only sector on which the war affects: with the excuse
of war, the opposition parties have been definitively suppressed by law: the
President is the master, increasingly histrionic and media personality, who takes
advantage of every opportunity to to appear, even at the cost of trivializing war
which is what serious and dramatic also takes part in the Sanremo festival,
between one song and another, applying the formula "let us talk about me, as long
as we talk".
Meanwhile in Ukraine the Autocephalous Orthodox Church, supported by
Constantinople and the US State Department, expropriates the Russian Orthodox
Church, affiliated to the Moscow Patriarchate, even if it is critical of the
Russian intervention, of its assets and confiscates them, thanks to the consent
of Parliament ; thus its historic properties change hands. From January 1, the
monastery of the Caves (Kyevo Pecherska Lavra) which housed the residence of the
Metropolitan of Kiev, the spiritual guide of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, of
the Moscow Patriarchate, which has always belonged to him, is passed to the
competing Orthodox Church, creating a of the objectives of the political
confrontation that created the conditions for war.
But the greatest and irreparable disaster, Putin's accomplice and architect,
concerns the deep soul of the country: Russian aggression has acted as a midwife
to patriotic and ethnic nationalism, which at the moment ensures the stability of
the country, but at the first disappointment, when sooner rather than later the
war will be over or there will be a truce, it will feed the rise of the different
linguistic and ethnic components of the country - Poles, Hungarians and Romanians
- causing their pulverization and sowing new disputes and clashes in the western
part of the country which will mirror what is happening today in Donbas and this
because the existence of a united nation and the erasure of ethnic diversity are
not achieved through common hatred but with mutual tolerance and coexistence as
hatred sows hatred.
The economic interest in dividing the benefits of reconstruction in a deserted
country, polluted by war residues, economically frustrated, will not be
sufficient to guarantee its unity, despite its anchorage to Europe. The seven
million Ukrainians, war refugees, who are organically inserting themselves into
the host countries to become permanent residents and live their lives in the new
contexts, are beginning to understand this.

The collateral damage of war

Meanwhile the war, kept at "low intensity", so that it produces the maximum
attrition of the two victims, Europe and Russia, and strengthens, at least for a
while, the prospects of the US economy and hegemony on the markets and in the
world, does not fail to produce the expected effects. The energy policy of the
European area has changed, reorienting flows and increasing the strategic role of
southern Europe. The cost of production of goods has increased, to the benefit of
the United States, at least partially changing the flow of trade on world
markets, but what the United States did not have taken into account is the speed
with which the Russian economy was able to redirect its energy production towards
the Chinese and Indian markets, enhancing the performance of those economic
systems, lowering the incidence of the cost of energy on each unit of product and
thus making them more competitive on the world market.
In particular, by operating in this way, the USA has allowed China a greater
lapse of time for the prosperity of its economy, so that it can face - if it will
be able to do so - the gigantic effects of the increase in longevity and the
progressive aging of its population, taking into account that the covid affair
has demonstrated and is demonstrating the fragility of its health system and the
non-existence of a welfare system. Therefore, Chinese competitiveness has
increased to the detriment of the US economy.
If this is the context produced by the war, it is easy to understand China's
wait-and-see position, which benefits from the low cost of access to raw
materials, and the overall position assumed by the BRICS on the war, since the
majority of international actors find their convenience in when it is happening
and therefore refrains from supporting one of the parties, especially as the
markets have learned to do without most of the Ukrainian agricultural production
and have taken steps to re-direct the supply flows.

And peace

Europe, politically subject to the USA, whose territory is ideologically,
physically, economically and politically devastated and polluted should have an
interest in peace
: rise to government of right-wing parties, the ever-increasing welfare crisis
and the recourse to individualist policies to protect the stronger classes and
classes, with a consequent increase in social inequality, seasoned with growing
nationalism;
The environment is increasingly polluted and energy conversion is undermined by
the growing economic costs, by the objective pollution of the soil and the
atmosphere, resulting from the war;
Production costs rise inexorably with the increase in the cost of energy per unit
of product, dramatically reducing Europe's share of trade on world markets. The
change in this factor can only affect the level of well-being, put social welfare
in an ever greater crisis, produce inequalities;
The political management of states passes to conservative forces, the rights of
freedom shrink while inequality grows and it is well known that freedom without
equality does not exist.
It is therefore in the interest of the Ukrainian (and Russian) people that this
war ceases as soon as possible even if no actors supporters of peace can be
glimpsed at the moment.

The editorial staff

http://www.ucadi.org/2023/02/01/guerra-di-carri/
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