Living in a reality different from the one described leads to a loss of meaning. One way to recover this is to break your personal silence and organize your ideas. So, from time to time, despite the pleasure that comes from listening to silence, we must abandon the habit of remaining silent in the face of what is happening and return to “common sense”, which more or less perceives reality as it really is. and react as the mind dictates.

Against this background, explaining the difference between the use of force and the use of violence becomes a necessity to return to the truth that common sense imposes. Because with so much talk about one and the other, they seem to be merged into one whole, a chaos in which the ethical, moral and legal support behind each of them is forgotten.

When people started talking about “asymmetrical warfare” in the middle of the last century, few would have suspected that this concept was developed by some American Marines, in the so-called “asymmetrical warfare.” Revolution of military affairs, could go further than reconsidering the uneven use of weapons or the use of unconventional tactics to harass or defeat the enemy, while others take into account technological developments. However, the reality is that the asymmetries that can be seen in military conflicts today affect the most important part of society: the values ​​that support it; This goes beyond the means or tactics used.

This significant change in the view of war, which so affects the essence of society, can be observed in the approach to armed confrontations that the world of politics carries out and disseminates through the media. According to the recently deceased US Secretary of State, this looked like a political evolution towards a more stable world order. Henry Kissingerindeed it seems to be turning into an anarchic revolution, promoting a return to the old days.

Explaining the difference between the use of force and the use of violence becomes a necessity to return to the truth that common sense imposes.

Since the purpose of wars was no longer to defeat the enemy’s army and target the enemy’s public opinion, the trend became the unrestricted and indiscriminate use of all available means and tactics to achieve power. The reason is that, apart from any “reason of state,” it has ceased to be a search for the common good and turned into a personalized struggle of leaders. This path followed in our time very easily leads to the establishment of political regimes devoid of values, loaded with ideologies and prone to the renewal of personal dictatorships.

Much has to do with everything that surrounds us, with the devastation of personal and social values ​​that allows us to irresponsibly fantasize about a situation, go beyond reality, ignore the facts and plunge into the entelechy of speculation about what today They call it “history”, and this just a modern version of what a century ago was called “propaganda”, without reason, leaving no meaning. This is another clear sign of a return to regimes that, despite their condemnation, remain entrenched in international organizations, free from all control, whose survival is based on maintaining conflicts, if not provoking them, as part of this seemingly extinct “class struggle” ” the most rancid communism.

Thus, it is in this environment, without any control other than propaganda, from which programs of forced acceptance emanate, sectarian feelings of hostility and contempt for everything that goes beyond the proper advertising poster, that the ethical gaps, morality and legality of sleeping societies are filled, where in the international environment, the use of force is confused as the right of nations to defend themselves, with the use of violence by terrorist organizations that are trying to put an end to them or, in other words, internal orders justify access to power at the cost of actually exceeding all ethical, moral and legal limits when dealing with criminals from the past , the present and those who are also announced from the future.

And since in the face of the violence of militant propaganda it is preferable to maintain the sanity of the peaceful mind, it is hoped that, without wishing to mention them, the reader will see that, in addition to distinguishing between the fanaticism of the brutal attack of a terrorist organization and the opposite reason for the use of force prescribed by law, I am telling you about Spain.

Javier Peri Paredes. Admiral of the Navy (retired). Full member of the Academy of Military Sciences and Arts.