France: The Philosophers' Appeal for Peace

11 April 2023

APPEAL INITIATED BY PHILOSOPHERS AND PHILOSOPHY PROFESSORS, STUDENTS AND RESEARCHERS AND/OR FRIENDS OF PHILOSOPHICAL TEACHING, AGAINST THE SUICIDAL MARCH TOWARDS AN ANNIHILATIVE WORLD WAR

Everyday, mainstream media provide a Manichean view of the international situation, from the Donbas to the Korean Peninsula or Taiwan, one reminiscent of that preceding and following August 1914. This narrow-mindedness, opposed on paper to the supposedly pluralistic values of the West, aims at justifying the political, military, ideological and economic escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian conflict, globalizing it on a daily basis in a context wherein nuclear weapons – and hypersonic missiles – can obliterate entire populations, if not humanity in its entirety and all other forms of complex life with it.

WORLD PEACE DESPERATELY NEEDS TO BE DEFENDED!

This irresponsible escalation pioneered by a new warmongering “Sacred Union”, spanning from the right-wing of the Socialist Party and the “Macronists” to the euro-ecologists, prohibits any geopolitical debate by excluding all those who, going against the grain of EU-formatted parties and unions, would dare to state the obvious: past a certain threshold of escalation and provocation, the Atlantic Alliance, followed by its “strategic partner” the EU, will directly face the Russian Federation, if not the People’s Republic of China. The same PRC, the “Workshop of the World”, now the first world economy and a major nuclear power, refused to follow Washington in its attempt to isolate Moscow. When one recalls these indisputable facts and evokes the annihilative consequences of a potential nuclear Third World War, some 78 years after the war crimes at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, our “free thinking” warmongers reject any form of rational debate and are content to merely disparage what they view as “cowardice”. They tend to forget that conformism and political correctness were in fact already firmly on the side of warmongers in August 1914, and that Jean Jaurès – professor of philosophy, and staunch supporter of anti-imperialism, laïcité and the social republic – paid for his unwavering defense of peace with his life. They also tend to forget that in 1938, the upper classes, from the antisemitic fascist forces to the mainstream left, supported the shameful Munich Agreement as one. Right and left-wing atlanticist “mediocrats” condemn, with a certain anachronism, the “Munich spirit” of those who currently bravely defend peace; those who stand against the warmongering doxa and oppose the limitless delivery of weapons, advocate for negotiations and condemn all attempts to enlarge the conflict from Ukraine to Taiwan, from the Balkans to Georgia or Moldova. Us ”de-escalators”, believe the French Republic must immediately reclaim its full political and military sovereignty which still stood under Charles de Gaulle and re-establish its tradition of diplomatic autonomy which it demonstrated no later than in 2003, when Jacques Chirac and Dominique de Villepin refused to support the US-Britain invasion of Iraq. France must indeed reclaim its role as an independent State acting for multilateralism. Instead of disappearing into Washington, London and Brussels’ militaristic and irrational “anti-diplomacy”, our country should multiply initiatives in favour of East-West and North-South dialogue. Above all, a sincere attachment to the French people would require campaigning for de-escalation in Ukraine and all other international theaters which may lead us into another world war, especially in the Indo-Pacific, as in the occurrence of a continental, then global, nuclear war, our country would be amongst the first to be struck Finally, those acquainted with popular internationalism cannot ignore the massive and legitimate rejection of the Euro-Atlantic tutelage in Asia, Africa and Latin America. It has plagued the planet for decades, leaving only ruin, resentment and misery in its wake. For examples, one need only look at divided ex-Yugoslavia, the martyred Middle East, the rising fascist golpes in South-America, or at Libya, a country left utterly destroyed.

THE ANTI-ANNIHILATION REQUIREMENT, AN ESSENTIAL CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE FOR ANY LAW-ABIDING INTERNATIONAL POLICY!

As difficult as it may seem in today’s media landscape, we have the duty – as friends and/or practitioners of the philosophical teaching – to reiterate the geopolitical imperative Immanuel Kant formulated in “Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch,” Preliminary Article N° 6:

"No State Shall, during War, Permit Such Acts of Hostility Which Would Make Mutual Confidence in the Subsequent Peace Impossible: Such Are the Employment of Assassins (percussores), Poisoners (venefici), Breach of Capitulation, and Incitement to Treason (perduellio) in the Opposing State."

"These are dishonorable stratagems. For some confidence in the character of the enemy must remain even in the midst of war, as otherwise no peace could be concluded and the hostilities would degenerate into a war of extermination (bellum internecinum). War, however, is only the sad recourse in the state of nature (where there is no tribunal which could judge with the force of law) by which each state asserts its right by violence and in which neither party can be adjudged unjust (for that would presuppose a juridical decision); in lieu of such a decision, the issue of the conflict (as if given by a so-called “judgment of God”) decides on which side justice lies. But between states no punitive war (bellum punitivum) is conceivable, because between them a relation of master and servant does not exist. It follows that a war of extermination, in which the destruction of both parties and of all justice can result, would permit perpetual peace only in the vast burial ground of the human race. Therefore, such a war and the use of all means leading to it must be absolutely forbidden.”

Here, Kant demonstrates that the refusal of a war of extermination and all which could lead to it, especially if it should result in the abolition of all law and the “vast burial ground of the human race”, constitutes one if not the essential categorical imperative of any international policy claiming to abide by law. It should be noted that this article reconciles Kant’s moral formalism with the unavoidable acceptance of a certain degree of “carnal” materialism: it would indeed be contradictory to authorize, in virtue of who-knows-what law which exists in spite of humanity’s right to existence, a State to play Russian roulette with the very physical existence of mankind, the central subject of any past, present and future law. Therefore, the speeches of television “philosophers” who justify their die-hard military posture in the name of abstract “human rights” reveal their false, anti-humanist and sophistic nature. Indeed as Marx and Engels, two self-described materialists, mischievously wrote in the German Ideology: “The first premise of all human history is, of course, the existence of living human individuals.” 

REFUSE SUICIDAL GAMBLES!

It is certainly not a matter of immediately surrendering when a State wages an unjust war against another country and/or part of its population. Everyone can decide, according to their own political analysis of the situation, to excoriate the Russian intervention in Ukraine and/or condemn the endless bombings of the People’s Republics in the Donbas from 2014 to 2022 by the Kiev regime, its neo-Nazi Azov Regiment, and its repeated infringements of the Minsk agreements. François Hollande and Angela Merkel in turn cynically admitted that the goal of this agreement was to buy time to allow NATO to arm Ukraine and organize its troops in view of facing Russia. Furthermore, how can one claim to be a ”Force of Goodness” and believe to be legitimized to pursue an endless escalation, which can degenerate into an annihilative world war? Is it reasonable to undermine any and all negotiations proposed by a neutral State or by the UN, and to offer Russia as its only outcome a humiliating defeat, one which could possibly be paired with the complete dismembering of its territory… In other words, no State shall ever have the “right” to act like a tipsy driver rushing at another, each betting that the other will weaken first and deviate before the final crash. Similarly, none have the right to further bet that the enemy, equipped with unstoppable nuclear weapons, will finally back down. This kind of stupid gamble, which Kennedy and Khrushchev excluded in 1962 during the Cuban missile crisis, is all the more insane considering that Russia also believes to incarnate Goodness! Whether Moscow is right or not does not matter in our present consideration of the tangible risks of an annihilative world war, as the fact of the matter is that Russia feels surrounded and existentially threatened by the ever-increasing pressure of NATO and the EU at its borders. It is also a fact that the Russian people have already suffered from disastrous pauperization and humiliation following the capitulation of August 1991. Moreover, if, as some claim, the Russian State is indeed one of the worst in history, – forgetting the unilateral debt of May 1945 we owe the USSR for defeating fascism – it would be even more stupid to push it to its limits, as Westerners do, to destroy Europe, at the risk of being annihilated by the US itself. Perhaps some secretly wish for a nuclear winter, using only a small percentage of the nuclear powers’ collective arsenal, to tackle the issue of global warming? They are unable to see that the reconstruction of a habitable planet requires on the contrary the pacific entente of all countries! 

PACIFIC WORLD OR ATLANTIC EUROPE, ONE MUST CHOOSE!

Besides the terrible suffering imposed on the Russian and Ukrainian youth, the current war has also caused a deep social crisis in Western Europe, wherein it serves as an excuse for huge capitalistic profits and colossal military spending. This crisis takes place at a crucial moment, in which the French government is stomping out aspirations concerning retirement pensions and purchasing power held by the majority of its people. Are there no better means in the Elysée’s hands to sustain social protection, wages, education, healthcare, research than exporting brand new Caesar canons? In that case, let us dare to fight the sacred warmongering union and its objectively annihilative speech. Let us remind ourselves, after the philosopher Alain that “the flow of things” spontaneously leads to military one-upmanship (especially when its foundation resides in the almighty Market). One must resolutely “want peace” for it to durably succeed. Let us dare to call for the construction of a Front Against the Annihilative War without fearing the warmongering party which, in order to impose its global hegemony, scandalously asks for humanity to “choose” between, as Marx once said, “an endless dread and an end filled with dread.”

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Original French text:

 Refusons la très suicidaire marche en cours vers une guerre totale d'anéantissement