Your idea of ​​the future? A return to the Congress of Vienna. Forget about Lenin, Stalin or any reference to communist past. He feels like a tsar. And his model is Tsar Alexander, the one who forced the European powers to the Congress of Vienna. The biggest mistake was not taken seriously. Or at least not all the way. Believing that his was a muscular bluster, which at best would have limited itself to bringing the self-proclaimed separatist republics of Donetsk and Lukansk back into the womb of the Great Mother Russia.

But for Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin that was just a taste, the territorial appetizer of a much more appetizing dish: the cancellation of Ukraine as an independent state. Or at least as a state that dared to present itself as an alternative model to the Russian regime, even going so far as to ask to join NATO and the European Union. The westernization of Ukraine posed a deadly threat to Tsar Vladimir. And as such it had to be treated. And squashed. For us Westerners, immersed in an eternal something present with no more historical memory and identity roots, hearing about Mother Russia, about pan-Russianism, is incomprehensible.

But this is happening in the east. Other than a globalized world. What is materializing, on the field, is a way of walls, iron curtains, barbed borders. A world where autocrats like Erdogan, al Sisi thrive and give their cards. And Putin. Nationalism as an ideology. Communitarianism, in this case, as the identity glue that redraws the Russian national borders and redefines state entities. The Congress of Vienna 2.0.

Of course, the one put in place by Putin is a gamble. But it is a calculated gamble. Which is counting on a divided America, which has already raised the voice of his friend Donald (Trump) who immediately made it clear that there is no such thing as fighting a new war in Europe. Putin knows this well. This is why his is a calculated gamble. To create problems can only be … himself.

Its territorial fame. Wanting to redeem the defeat of the Cold War. Ukraine is not a NATO country. She wanted to be, but she isn’t. And therefore Article V of the Constitutive Treaty of the Atlantic Alliance does not apply to Kiev, on the basis of which, the aggression against a member country involves the intervention of the allies. This could happen if Putin wishes to reconquer the countries, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia. Then yes, the clash would become inevitable. A nuclear confrontation. Certainly, the dominus of the situation is in Moscow and not in Washington. Much less in Brussels, on the NATO and EU sides. The sanctions, as they have been calibrated, represent a blow to Putin to his oligarch friends. As well as a belated delivery of military aid to the Ukrainians. Then we spread a merciful veil on the 800 Bersaglieri that Italy has made available. Now we will hear of all the colors of “shot” from the media parlor strategists, of those who do not know what war means, of those who until recently thought that Donetsk, Donbass and Lukansk were territories of a new edition of Risiko.

Putin is not the Hitler of the twentieth century. But this does not mean that he can be considered a reliable interlocutor. He does not negotiate with a piisola aimed at the temple. This is not arms diplomacy, it is state terrorism. No one is willing to die for Kiev. Come a time, for Gdansk. But if history is truly a teacher of life, then we must learn lessons from history that direct us to a future that becomes present. An internal revolt in Russia against the regime’s military adventurism seems frankly unlikely. Anyone who tried to oppose the Tsar ended up in prison, see Navalny, or was killed. And then there is the nationalist card, pan-Russianism, which takes hold on the inside. It has already happened with Ossetia and Abkhazia, and more recently with Crimea. What can work is to build a cordon sanitary around the Russian Federation. Economic, commercial, military.

Yes, even military. Which means strengthening the presence of NATO forces in the Baltic states of the Alliance, for example. Which also concerns a speech that we, we left. And our relationship with the military instrument. That it must be, instrument, and not well. Because when it turned into this, on the ground it left only rubble, failed states, destabilization. Without a strategic political vision there is no armed force that holds. We have seen it in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Libya. And now it could also happen in the East. But as an instrument of diplomacy, the military cannot be excluded, banned, demonized. Because in this way we end up playing the game of Putin and the autocrats who have taken him as a model in the world. This is why we must avoid listening to the philosophers who wear helmets, those who arm ourselves and go. The wicked are too serious, and dramatic, to entrust us to them. And woe to believe those who claim to have the winning recipe. There isn’t one at the moment. Calls for a ceasefire multiply. Such as demands for the immediate withdrawal of Russian forces from Ukraine.

There will be words in the wind or waste paper. The realistic goal for Europe, for the West, is not to win but to contain a defeat. To limit Putin. To work it on the hips. Knowing that the Russian economy is not thriving, far from it, and that if the USSR collapsed in due time it is also because the arms race imposed by Reagan had led to the ruin and undoing of the Soviet empire. In this there is Putin’s gamble. In thinking oneself invincible. And in underestimating his opponents, reducing them to a bunch of spineless, fearful and cowardly. It is therefore necessary to contain. And this would already be a result. As for the fate of Ukraine, it is sealed. The international order has been violated, it is repeated continuously in these dramatic hours. But this order has been undergoing for some time, only out of fearfulness, we pretended not to see, turning our eyes away. Or under the illusion that humanity had rediscovered itself by magic united in facing the “war” against the pandemic virus. It is not so.

Nationalisms reigned even at the time of Covid. The world has turned out to be even more unequal than before. Vladimir Putin is part of this world. He dominates. He is not Hitler, of course. But not even a Saddam, a Gaddafi, an al-Sisi, an autocrat like so many others, even if militarily much, much more powerful and threatening. The Tsar of the Kremlin has more ambitious aims; rewrite history. With the strength of the armies and with an imperial design that brings back the hands of time. The future, in the past. Nationalism and atomics. A devastating mix. For the whole world.