The US at War

The President of the United States, Barack Obama, has distinguished himself among modern leaders of his country for being invested in peace; ever since he was a candidate on the campaign trail, his close collaborators thought that he had an instinctive aversion to resolving international conflicts through the use of force. From the moment his country became a world power, an international political event took place due to the short time in which the U.S. went from being a colony to being an independent and powerful country, which began to rival European and Asian powers and surpass them; it had to take on, at the same time, a role of supremacy and force in the world. That great power is usually divided between hawks and pacifists, or between isolationists and those in favor of addressing every problem militarily, whether to expand the country or to act preventively against others, as it did in two world wars. The tendency of that world power to close in on itself comes from its own geopolitical reality and from the fact that never, until the attack against the Twin Towers in New York, had its territory been seriously threatened by an external enemy.

Despite the good wishes and expressions of peaceful coexistence among nations President Obama frequently makes, which earned him a Nobel Peace Prize in advance because intending to [peacefully] govern a country involved in low-level military conflicts in several nations around the world was a surprising political turnaround, which heralded new times and civilized achievements by attempting to leave behind weapons and to advance global détente, official peacemaking policies do not always prosper. As the legendary Chinese leader Mao said when he hosted a visit by President Richard Nixon and his secretary of state Henry Kissinger in Beijing, when the latter spoke about peace, the skeptic Chinese leader answered, pointing at his fingers for one, two, three generations? War appears to have always been linked to human beings’ existence on Earth.

Now, when Barack Obama talks about war in the Middle East against the budding Islamic State, Mao’s statement acquires terrifying significance. The U.S. has decided to intervene in Syria, where a portion of the militias that seek to establish a new Islamic State through force of arms are concentrated in areas where, in antiquity, they had a prosperous caliphate. There have been over 195,000 dead in Syria due to the civil war, and every day there are huge mobilizations of thousands and thousands of human beings who flee in fear from the cities, to escape the massacre with their families into neighboring countries. The same is happening in Iraq, a split country that fights to avoid losing some cities and to reclaim others with the help of the U.S.

Obama has been emphatic; it is a war against the Islamic State, which, as we know, is a political project that has advanced thanks to religious preaching and weapons, under the momentum of the fury of militias made up of local and foreign agents, some of whom are Europeans who have joined the fundamentalist cause. Their motives are diverse; what distinguishes the adversaries is that they are the product of regional political contradictions and of years of antagonism, as well as good or bad interventions by great powers that, in these countries that are tied to oil to a greater or lesser degree, have modified borders and interfered in their culture without gauging the consequences.

Today, the world powers find themselves involved in a new war against terrorism that will have international repercussions and which, according to experts, will be long. Syria has spent over three years in a civil war; official forces have been able to survive and recover territory, but they are exhausted. Will Washington limit itself to bombing the jihadi, or will it bomb the government? That question is making the rounds in the foreign affairs offices of the world powers and in the region. What will Russia do if bombs fall by mistake on the base it controls in Syria? What will be done by other nations, over whom the bombardments would surely extend? In today’s world, the terrorist war and counterterrorism do not respect borders.

At this moment, the warships that sail on the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf are launching Tomahawk missiles and bombs made in the U.S. over Syria and Iraq. It is a story that repeats itself, with the difference that at this opportunity, the conflict may expand and have global impact.