The Ghosts of the 1930s: Can We Avoid Another Global Catastrophe?

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Leonardo AI

Welcome my usual and new readers to my blog. The topic that we deal with this week is the history repeats itself.

And it is that through the years we can see how history tells us that certain patterns are repeated.

Our parents, our grandparents tell us about those times in which they lived and had experiences and did things. I personally believe that people can not learn if they do not have their own experience. It is necessary that the person learns by himself to be able to have that assessment and see that those things happen.

That is a serious problem that is imprinted within our nature. Referring to what the topic of this week is about, history warns us that these patterns, these conflicts, economic crises and political errors are repeated when there is no learning, when we do not learn from them. Analyzing all the current dynamics in the world, the historical period that resonates most strongly is the 1930s, the period prior to the Second World War.

There are specific opportunities for us to avoid that fate. The parallels that strike me and that I point out with the 1930s is, for example, territorial expansionism. When the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 evoked the annexation of the territories of Nazi Germany, which was Austria-Czechoslovakia, the response at the beginning of the West was unlimited sanctions that reminded us of the policy of appeasement that failed to contain Hitler.

That is on the one hand, expansionism, and on the other, the economic crisis that became fashionable with authoritarianism. All the inflation that we have globally, the inequality that is escalating, is growing, and social malaise, as in the period of 2008 and after the pandemic, is currently feeding populism, hate speech, and everything that happened after the Great Depression in 1929. The same pattern is being repeated, if we realize it.

There is also an international fracture, seeing how institutions such as the UN, the WTO, and the polarization that exists between blocs, for example, the United States, China, Russia, and the West. This also has an analogy and replicates the fragmentation with the 1930s, when the United Nations was a great failure, preventing the war that occurred at that time. Now, we have a big question, a big question with this.

How do we prevent this from happening again? I believe that cooperation must be strengthened globally, among all nations. The UN Security Council must be reformed to limit vetoes in case of aggression, as with the proposal of Spain. Support international courts, the CPI, to investigate war crimes, such as in Ukraine, and the so-called war crimes that have occurred here in Venezuela as well.

We must use a lot of diplomacy, create networks, networks that alert conflicts early on, such as the Ibero-American Network of Mediators, or the Group of Friends of Mediation, which is promoted by Spain and Turkey. We must include young people and women in peace negotiations. This will reduce the incidence of conflicts.

More women in the UN, more women on a face-to-face level in different organizations. This will help prevent conflicts in the negotiations and achieve peace, which is what the world currently needs. Another important aspect is to improve economic policy, to avoid austerity measures such as in 1937, which deepened the recession, and to alleviate the debt of vulnerable countries such as Venezuela and other countries.

Historically, the crisis of 1929 showed that punishing a country economically is feeding extremism. People and leaders of other countries become extremists. There is also an educational aspect.

We must not be simplistic in education. We must not create a label and say that Hitler is equal to being bad. We must analyze the origins of Nazism, the causes of Nazism, the economic crisis, the national humiliation, the disinformation.

All these factors were what caused everything that happened. This gives much more context to be simplistic and not really educate and teach how things happened. We must use local examples, such as the Spanish Civil War from 1936 to 1939, where we can clearly see the risks of polarization and fake news.

We must reject fatalism. We must not believe that history is not a cycle that can be avoided, but that we humans model history. We must anticipate and act in anticipation of things, as happened with the scientific community and COVID, where solutions based on historical evidence were applied.

We must demand that leaders and politicians be ethical. Citizens and all media must demand preventive policies, not reactive ones. I sincerely believe that Latin America and Spain, with all the memories of the civil wars we have had, can be the leaders to make this change.

Remembering that the utopia is on the horizon, so that it does not stop walking, as Eduardo Galeano said.

And this is what I can say about this week's topic.

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