And now General Mark Milley, the chief of staff of the American armed forces, suggests dealing with Russia.
The general explains that there has been a massacre in Ukraine: the massacre that I foreshadowed on February 24 in my first speeches on the war. General Milley says about 100,000 Russian soldiers and about 100,000 Ukrainian soldiers have died. 200,000 dead! A frightening figure in just nine months. Without considering that Ukraine is a gutted country, a finished country, with devastation and deaths everywhere. Now I expect the main Italian media to say that General Milley is a “Putinian” and I expect them to investigate his private life in search of possible criminal contacts with the Kremlin. Will we also say of General Milley that he is part of an illegal network connected to the Kremlin which is activated to favour Putin in the crucial moments of the war? Will they say that he is a “hired puppet”?
I love my country very much and it pains me to see that Italy is in such a bad way and that it behaves like a slave country first of all in the mind. In matters of international politics, Italy is a country without true freedom of expression because the power groups that promote policies of death try to prevent any creative thinking about war through preventive censorship. Italian scholars, who also receive a salary from the university ministry to think and find solutions to problems, are forced to be afraid of developing alternative plans and projects to the utterly failing ones that are pushing us towards the abyss. Unlike American university professors, who can say whatever they want, the minds of Italian university professors must not be used to think; only to obey: “This is the NATO line, full stop”. So what for does the Italian state pay these university professors?
The beauty is that this destruction was carried out by the main Italian newspapers and by many of my colleagues who should work for an expansion of the spaces of freedom in our country and represent an example of intellectual courage for young people and respect for ideas of others. How many newspaper editors fill their mouths with the word “freedom” and, on the other hand, are only freedom stifling steamrollers.
Finally, General Milley says, on November 12th, what I said on February 24th. With the difference that, if it had been with Putin at the beginning of the war, Ukraine would not have to recover four regions today and we would be here discussing only the Donbass. Do you know how many Ukrainian deaths it takes to recover four regions? For now, 100,000! Do they seem few to you? Many of these deaths are and will be on the conscience of those Italians who, in these nine months, have always opposed any kind of dialogue with Putin to defeat Russia on the ground.
And now it comes out, through the words of the American Supreme General, what I have always said right from the start: Russia cannot be defeated on the battlefield. And it took so long to figure it out? Did it take 200,000 deaths and the gutting of a country that, hopefully, will recover in a billion years? The main media and party leaders should learn to discuss international security in Italy in a civilized way. They should learn that, in free societies, the ideas of scholars are debated and not demonized. They should learn that, in free societies, scholars are not criminalized, if anything, refuted. Refute this if you can: “Ukraine is fundamentally lost. For every bullet suffered, Russia will fire ten, and Ukraine will be more and more destroyed and less and less free”.
Alessandro Orsini is an Italian sociologist and professor of security studies.
EAST AND WEST 