Pedro Baños gives us an interview following the publication of the book This is how the world is dominated (Ariel). Baños is a colonel of the Army and a graduate of the General Staff, currently on reserve. He has been head of Counterintelligence and Security of the European Army Corps in Strasbourg. He has participated in missions in Bosnia-Herzegovina (UNPROFOR, SFOR y EUFOR) and today he is one of the greatest specialists in geopolitics, strategy, defense, security, terrorism, intelligence and international relations. GINÉS J. VERA
What makes an army colonel, in the reserve, to write a book and also, this book about the keys to world power?
Well, it was at the request of the Ariel publishing house., who proposed to me to write a book on geopolitics. Since it gave me absolute freedom to choose the theme, It first occurred to me to do something timeless, something that had a certain timelessness, that it wasn't something that would be immediately outdated, and from there came these 27 geostrategies. And then, since they gave me this opportunity, I thought it was the right time to convey what geopolitics is to all citizens, make it wildly popular. This that belonged to the arcane, to this secret world, or as I say, to esotericism only within the reach of initiates, which in a way it was, popularize it in such a way that, first, everyone could understand it. Because I believe that in this globalized world everything that happens affects us, That's why I thought it was very important for the population to understand it., because we have to be alerted to the dangers that are coming our way, of the threats that we are going to have, which are often state, and many times, also, to try to get the population itself to put a stop to them in some way. Because there are situations that we cannot allow, such as the Syrian disaster.. We see right now what is happening with Türkiye, that is attacking a part of Syria, almost as if it were a country that is allowed to intervene at its free will. We must prevent these disasters from continuing to occur by all means.. Not only because it directly harms Europe, of course, but because there are hundreds of thousands of people who suffer or die in these conflicts.
In the book he collects 27 geostrategies, some are new but others are as old as the desire for ambition or power in man, Isn't that so?
Actually they are all old, what varies is the application through technology, what evolves. But the spirit of all of them is very old, in fact, I give examples from the most remote antiquity, since there is documentation, from the Peloponnesian Wars or the Punic Wars. Because in the end the constant that remains is the human spirit and it is what will be maintained no matter how much society becomes more technical., more robotic, always behind those robots and those techniques there will be a human being. That's where those eternal strategies come from.. In the end I end up giving current examples, What was happening in the Peloponnesian Wars is happening right now. If we see the war between Athens and Sparta it is nothing more than the same situation that today we can apply to the United States and China. The fear of a power that is emerging, that is gaining economic strength and that is beginning to scare what until then was the great power.
At first it may seem that these geostrategies are international in scope., but on an individual level, As an ordinary citizen, how does it benefit us??
It benefits us greatly, because we are seeing that those geopolitical interests, These geoeconomic interests lead to disasters that ultimately affect us all.. The first thing, It should affect us as people., prevent other human beings from suffering and, besides, suffer for reasons that if we were in the same situation we would suffer exactly the same; those forced migratory processes that what these people do is nothing more nor less, as i say, Which is what any of us would do.; but, besides that, even from a selfish point of view, we see that this is harming us, We see that the migratory movements that have occurred mainly, although not exclusively, from Syria are deeply cracking Europe., that there are countries that refuse to welcome them, failing to comply with the Brussels directives, that means a cracking of the European Union.
We see that everything affects us. In addition to the economic burden that this entails. It affects us absolutely everything and in an increasingly direct way.. And I think we should be aware, nowadays, this confrontation that is going to be increasingly more pronounced, and this is stated in an open way by the National Security Strategy of the United States between the United States., China and Russia, It means that it will also affect us because in the end we are allies of a great country that is the United States that has its own enemies and that drags its allies into its confrontations., as we have seen what has happened in Afghanistan, as has happened in Iraq or in other scenarios.
Information is power, it is usually said, To what extent is there opacity and lack of information on purpose from governments so that citizens are unaware and can subject us??
Information is power, both what can be achieved by knowing the news or data and, indeed, also as an instrument of dominance, control of the towns. This is also a traditional thing, it's not a new thing, not even much less. But today this is much more pronounced because we are systematically bombarded by information, is what I call, we are 'infotoxic'. It is an absolute 'infotoxication' that mixes, besides, in an absolutely sibylline way the truth with the lie to convey to us a fiction that often has nothing to do with reality, but they convince us of it and, besides, in such a way, with that systematic bombing, that we become totally convinced that it is so.
And it's more, They don't just want us to convince ourselves that it is like that, But we also bitterly criticize anyone who dares to doubt those positions that are instilled in us because, Of course, We are so aware that the truth is what we have been told that someone who doubts must be a discordant element and must be expelled from the system. Technology allows this to be done on a planetary level and, besides, be done in a constant way. And we have seen it, to go into conflicts where there was no need but, Of course, because there have been processes of demonization of countries and leaders of those countries that, obviously, convince the population of the need to intervene in them, and we see that they intervene where they want to intervene.
There are absolutely terrible disasters in Africa right now., we could talk about Somalia, we could talk about South Sudan, we could talk about the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where wild things happen every day and, instead, no one wants to intervene there because there are no interests, especially interests that benefit the great powers that run the world.
