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But really “peace is above all deterrence”, as the Prime Minister claims during her visit to Lebanon? Is it really essential to push for military investments by taking resources away from healthcare, schools and the environment? Before expressing an opinion it is worth taking a look at the numbers. The latest available data from Sipri tell us that in 2022 global military spending was 2,200 billion dollars. NATO spent 55% of it, i.e. 1,230 billion, of which 877 were spent by the United States (71%) and 355 by the other NATO countries. And Russia? 86.4 billion. In short, the Atlantic Alliance invests in weapons almost 15 times more than the Russian Bear. An overwhelming war potential which, however, does not seem to have intimidated Putin in the slightest. And it’s been like this for years.
A recent Greenpeace report explains that the NATO countries of the EU have increased military spending by almost 50% in the last ten years: from 145 billion euros in 2014 to 215 in 2023. In a decade the public spending of the same countries has increased by 35%, the purchase of weapons by 168%. “Peace is not built with the good feelings – warns Giorgia Meloni – of those who sit comfortably on the sofa.” The prime minister certainly wasn’t thinking about the pacifist caravans of the #StopTheWarNow network which in two years brought food, medicines and generators to the Ukrainians. To the Pope John XXIII volunteers in the Syrian refugee camps or in Colombia. A “A bridge for…” engaged in Iraq. To the Emergency doctors who treat war victims in Sudan.
Certainly the “peace of deterrence” is useful for the turnover of the war sector. And it is very reminiscent of that “pax Romana” that Tacitus had explained well: «Ubi solitudem faciunt, pacem appellant», where they make the desert, they call it peace. Here, to the negative peace of terror, which has its maximum expression in the mutual blackmail of the nuclear apocalypse, it is more than legitimate to prefer the positive peace actively built by politics, diplomacy, peoples, civil societies and communities of believers .
