Biden Is Not Obama

Too many bad things have happened in a short time. The 2008 financial crisis destroyed personal and collective dreams and left us all poorer.

When things were starting to improve, we were struck by the COVID-19 pandemic. Two years of lockdown, masks and many human lives lost.

But humankind’s ability to make things worse is unlimited. No one expected a revival of the military tensions of the 20th century’s Cold War period — a game of power in which peace is the only alternative to a nuclear war of total destruction.

The fall of the Berlin Wall was the icon of a new world order. Gone were the days of the threat of a global military conflict, and it seemed that democracy would spread to the farthest corners of the planet.

But China transformed into a free-market system while maintaining a dictatorship. In the 21st century, it seemed that the main actors in the next conflict for technological and economic power would be China and the U.S.

Vladimir Putin’s case is anachronistic. In the midst of a globalized world, in which borders are increasingly blurry, he comes in with old-fashioned imperialism and engages in a military attack to recover the Soviet bloc.

The extent and violence of this war remains to be seen, but this crisis highlights the danger of the accumulation of power in one person. Fear is the first consequence. The threat of a dreaded nuclear war has begun to spread. In that sense, Joe Biden has had to go out and reassure the American people.

As background, there is a crisis of lack of trust in the leadership. Europe is politically weak and has been slow to react, no European leader generates enough confidence, and Biden, from across the Atlantic, is not Barack Obama.

Paradoxically, fear is a way for the elite, already detached from society, to accumulate more power. People are torn between solidarity with the men and women who are victims of injustice and selfishness that the drama won’t touch their lives.

Putin embodies everything that is hated in a world that abhors the slaughter of human beings. But one man, no matter how psychopathic, cannot be allowed to change the world order and open the door, again, to the threat of total destruction. Without full democracy and freedom, we will never be safe.