ROME (IDN) –

XIAN FOX VIX CORP22

The reflections of Roberto Savio touch problems which have roots that
are not recent and have become increasingly serious over time. His
arguments coincide with mine, which are directed both to the present
and to a re-reading of the past in the light of contemporary needs. With
no claim to being exhaustive, the following are a number of
considerations stimulated by Savio's article.
1) When one asks seriously if we are in transition towards a new world,
then it means that in all probability a step has already been taken. The
concept follows the idea, but the real is not rational: it is full of
contradictions. And it is for this reason, and because of the
misalignments between different temporal and spatial scales, that
possibilities for action open up.
On a longer and wider time and space scale, the world in which we live
is marked by two transitions. The first is the one marked by Hiroshima
and Nagasaki, by the development of nuclear arsenals and their
proliferation. With the atomic weapon we entered an era in which
conceiving the end of humanity or civilisation is no longer a mystical
fantasy or a literary vision but a real possibility: humanity can put an
end its history, not through divine judgment or the random motion of an
asteroid, but by its own hand.
That the atomic weapon has not been used to hit an enemy since 1945
does not mean that it has no very concrete effects. It has, and they are
many and pervasive, even though they are often not easily perceivable
in everyday life. The threat of the nuclear weapon always exists behind
the use of conventional forces; and this is formally the last resort to
defend power: which is why – in addition to the United States, Russia,
France, Great Britain, Israel, India and Pakistan – the "national bomb"
is useful for a tyrannical regime like that of North Korea and constitutes
a hope for Iranian theocracy.
Possession of the nuclear weapon shows that the power of the state in
question has an anti-human and potentially exterminating nature. I am
convinced that the fight against all nuclear arsenals, of any state,
should come first in the battle against militarism and imperialism. The
destructiveness of the nuclear weapon is the exact opposite of the
international solidarity of peoples fighting against their oppressors;
defence against nuclear threats is a powerful means of justifying
militarism and gathering consensus around the ruling classes and
political castes.