The President of the Republic warned this Sunday of the extreme complexity and unpredictability of the international situation and considered that the war in Ukraine has pushed reason to the limit, generated enormous emotion and “enormous balance” forces.
Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa was speaking at the end of a debate within the framework of the Belém Book Festival, which was moderated by Pedro Mexia and which included the participation of the former deputy of the Left Bloc José Manuel Pureza and Diana Soller, an expert in international politics .
“The international situation is extremely complex, because nobody knows the epilogue of what we are experiencing, nobody knows the costs of this epilogue and after the epilogue, and nobody knows what the definitive configuration will be in the correlation between the great powers. “of the world”, declared the Head of State when outlining the panorama of the current world situation.
In an indirect allusion to the United States and the upcoming presidential elections in this country, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa said that nobody knows what the internal evolution of the United States will be – and that “is not indifferent”.
“The situation in relation to the other powers [no tempo de Donald Trump] it was substantially different from the current position. There is a power correlation problem here. Europe is the theater where the whole set of current circumstances is projected, but Europe humbly knows that there are realities that go beyond it, realities of war”, he added.
Regarding the war in Ukraine, the President of the Republic expressed fundamental concern. “The emotion was always in politics, only it was disciplined substantially or apparently for the reason. Now it has gone beyond the limits of reason and the most reason can do is try to condition and curb the excesses of emotion,” said the head of state.
For Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, regarding the case of Ukraine, “there are issues that must be addressed rationally, but others in a very emotional way.”
“That emotion is there. It will be said that with the passage of time the ratio increases and the ratio decreases, but this is not so linear. It is not linear in the face of dramatic, complex and brutally visible situations, ”she justified. That is to say, “there is a very great emotion and that emotion forces enormous balances”, she reinforced.
Regarding the internal problems of the European Union, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa said that he has lived “for a long time at a crossroads”, when the national political systems of some member states have “broken”.
“It is enough to look at the structuring of parties of party systems that no longer exist or are fragmented, such as the Italian Christian Democracy or French Gaulism”, exemplified the head of state.
“This crisis of political systems is not unique to Europe. It exists in the American system, as we had the opportunity to see not too long ago. It is a complex problem, different from one case to another, but with an appreciable scope. What is new now is that there is a more intense test,” she advocated.
This more intense test, according to Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, called into question everything that was under debate and in an attempt to balance -here, alluding to the covid-19 pandemic, which is global, and also to the war in Ukraine- .
“The European Union initially had great difficulty reacting to the challenge of the pandemic, but then readjusted and made an effort to adapt. Now, that permanent adjustment effort, with ups and downs, is the European process”, he said.
However, according to the head of state, “this is now added to the war in Ukraine, with the consequences of economic, financial and social crises, in addition to other very recent crises.” “I wouldn’t say it’s a perfect storm, but it’s almost perfect,” he concluded.
Source: Observadora
