Alberto Quintanilla Chacón

The End of Globalization and the Emergence of the BRICS

In Peru, Mr. Quintanilla served as a congressman from 1985 to 1992, and from 2016 to 2019. Among his legislative accomplishments was ensuring that mining activity in Peru also contributed to raising the standard of living of the nearby populations. He currently remains actively involved in Peruvian politics.

He spoke in Spanish, with English simultaneous interpretation and subtitles provided. The full proceedings of the conference are available at the Schiller Institute website.

A very good day, friends! I am Alberto Quintanilla Chacón, a former federal congressman from Peru from the United Left and the Broad Front.

Currently, we are experiencing quite a critical situation due to the war between Ukraine and the Russian Federation which in reality is a war between NATO and the Russian Federation. And, like all imperialist wars, this is a war for world hegemony. What we are seeing in the world today is the decline of the first world power, the United States, and we’re also seeing the end of the globalization that we’ve lived through over recent decades. We are witnessing the emergence of a new world order where there is a multipolarity, in which there are various blocs that have a force and a presence on a world scale, and this will lead to a situation of realignment.

It is our hope that war, which is the continuation of politics by violent means, will always be condemned because it is a violence that replaces reason, and we have already had the experiences of the First and Second World Wars in which millions of citizens died, the majority of whom were innocents.

The most pathetic case was how the United States put an end to the Second World War by dropping bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, in which more than 200,000 people died—more than 100,000 in one case and almost 100,000 in the other. We hope that in the future, diplomacy, dialogue and peaceful solutions will be able to push to one side and postpone wars, which are certainly deadly, no matter how much the Geneva Convention is respected, or the use of the atomic bomb and other brutal forms of mass destruction are prohibited.

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Let us pray for peace, and call on all the political representatives of the world, above all in Latin America, to come out in favor of peace.

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What is occurring in the war between Ukraine and the Russian Federation began on Feb. 21, 2022, in which the President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin, recognized the sovereignty and existence of the republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, led by pro-Russian authorities; then on Feb. 24, meeting a political-military commitment, Russian troops entered Ukrainian territory, leading to the war that we are currently living through, and in which there is not yet a clear winner.

But, what we can see is that world peace is the first to be defeated; and the second loser is NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance, which in practice is the mask that the United States dons for these cases. And NATO is the big loser because it no longer receives the gas it used to receive from the Russian Federation to meet Europe’s energy needs. This is also one of the issues.

Secondly, there is a clear winner. After this war, it is clear that we are moving toward a more multipolar world in which there won’t be just one hegemony of the United States, seconded by NATO, but there will rather be a more diverse situation. We hope that this will really create a better environment, so that the United Nations can strengthen diplomacy and conversations as a solution to the political/military problems such that we don’t go to war. War should always be a last thing we resort to, and should be proscribed by peace and by our condition as human beings who have the ability to dialogue and reach agreements without resorting to violence.

China May Be One of the Winners

This current conflict really began due to NATO’s expansionist desires—of course with the support of the United States, which sought to lay siege to the Russian Federation and surround it, let’s say, with certain powers, among them Ukraine. Ukraine had promised not to join NATO because this was a demand of the Russian Federation to avoid being surrounded by NATO. Nonetheless, NATO continued to move forward, creating a very dangerous situation which Mr. Putin, leader of the Russian Federation, sought to resolve through violence.

We hope that peace can begin to gain ground in dealing with these problems, that diplomacy is able to resolve these problems, and that it is recognized that there have been changes in the world panorama such that hegemonic groups, beginning with the United States and the European Union, accept that we are heading into a multipolar world where there will be greater balance.

Let us pray for peace, and call on all the political representatives of the world, above all in Latin America, to come out in favor of peace.

We hope that China, which is apparently not directly involved in this war, will be one of the winners in the economic conflict taking place in the world and that it can really contribute with other economic blocs, such as the BRICS, the Russian Federation, the European Union, China itself, and India to create a world in which differences are resolved through negotiations and diplomacy, and war will be definitively prohibited. No one wants a third world war. We had enough with the First and Second world wars. The loss of human life and the bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima should never again be repeated.

Let us pray for peace, and call on all the political representatives of the world, above all in Latin America, to come out in favor of peace, and to end the war between Ukraine and the Russian Federation, which has brought us to the brink of a third world war which no one wants. Let us pray for peace, understanding, and dialogue, and that they replace violence, death, and the desolation of the world’s population.

Thank you.