The dead peace
We lack memory. I belong to Generation X, almost all of us who are part of this generation have a grandfather or grandmother in our family who lived in wartime. Especially if he or she is European.
That past suffered a series of precariousness and a very hard post-war period that the current generations ignore, immersed in the hubbub of social networks and the abject vanity of likes.
I sometimes wonder: what will become of us if Putin carries out all his threats, what will become of Europe if another big war comes and no one can fire a gun properly or even throw a grenade without blowing their arm off?
In recent months, the intelligence services of a number of countries in Eastern Europe, the Baltics and also the Nordic countries have been warning that Putin, after Ukraine, will wage war against Europe because he will invade the Baltics and the United States will not be there to back up the Europeans.
In reality, the United States always puts in soldiers when it is in its interest to do so. During World War II, then British Prime Minister Winston Churchill used to speak two to three times a day to US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt about the advance of Hitler's troops.
After losing several British planes, Churchill asked his American counterpart to sell him military aircraft, but Roosevelt resisted, fearful that Hitler would accuse the United States of involvement in the war.
In one such call, Churchill warned Roosevelt that, without those planes, London would fall and if Britain did then all of Europe would fall to the Nazis and that alone would mean that the US economy would not be able to expand and grow into Europe. The poverty of Europe would also mean the poverty of Americans.
After much thought, Roosevelt ended up selling them the bombers that were delivered to Canada so that Hitler would not put America on the map of his ambition. The Japanese had already done that, though.
All in all, Trump is likely to leave Europe alone in the face of Putin's threat. And make no mistake, they are not friends, nor are they cronies. Putin is the alpha male of Trump's obsession who has been pursuing the friendship of the Russian dictator since 2013 when he was president of Miss Universe.
On that occasion, 9 November 2013, at Crocus City Hall, the beauty pageant was held. Trump then declared that Putin was his idol, that he was the living political personality he most admired and that he wanted to meet him in person. ‘I want to be friends,’ he said.
Putin did not go to meet him, but, in return, Trump received five beautiful Russian girls in his hotel room as a gift. Underage girls and he ignored them. Putin has the tapes of what happened that night.
Even Putin never imagined that Trump would become president, let alone return to the White House again. The American tycoon intends to play the modern Neville Chamberlain and will fall into the trap of the Russian wolf (history will repeat itself, but this time not with Hitler, but with Putin), which is why the intelligence services warn that after Ukraine other European countries will follow and war will once again be inevitable. Before 2030, Europe will be fighting against Russia and its coalition of allied countries like North Korea.
On the subject
In most European countries there is no military service. Young people are more into Tik Tok and making videos for their Instragram and care little about what is happening in Ukraine or Syria or the Gaza Strip. That is far away from them.
They live their democracy and their peace. That which allows them to go to school or to work every day without being riddled by an enemy army and to return home and sleep peacefully in the silence of the night and not under a battery of missiles.
They believe that peace, freedom and democracy are inalienable to their existence. As if it were breathing. They may not even know the real meaning of each, nor the trail of blood and pain, which lies behind them generationally speaking so that they can sleep peacefully in their warm bed.
Sooner rather than later they will have to wake up from this mirage and know that they will have to fight tooth and nail and even with their lives to prevent a messianic madman like Putin from turning their country into a subordinate.