José Manuel Purez warns of the imminence of a world war

O professor of international relations at the University of Coimbra (UC) José Manuel Pureza warned today, in his last class, to the imminence of a world war that will destroy humanity after the “total ruin” of international law.

With the title “The end of the world, who knows, its breaking up”, the left-Block academic and coordinator delivered late this afternoon at the School of Economics of the UC, where he has been teaching for 34 years, his last structured lesson in peace, international law and university, which were his subjects of study during these years.

“ The pieces of the third world war diagnosed by Pope Francis are coming together very quickly and giving reason to the ever more intense perception of the imminence of a world conflict, which we know to have a destructive capacity of the whole of humanity,” he stressed.

Recalling that, for the first time since the 1970s, there are no legally binding limits on the strategic nuclear arsenals of the United States and the Russian Federation, José Manuel Pureza stressed that these nuclear powers continue to strengthen and modernise their nuclear arsenals.

“There are several other indicators that have been mobilized by reference institutions to demonstrate that global war is at the door of humanity, but I think the most disturbing is this: despite the general awareness that spreading a war will easily climb to the nuclear level and destroy us all, it is not enough to stop the hegemony that the best we have to do is arm ourselves.”.

In a class of about 50 minutes, before the auditorium of the School of Economics of the UC, it considered that the long period of European peace was structural “before being a political-military”, based on a social contract.

According to José Manuel Pureza, the common discourse at the moment is that “international law has died at the hands of speeches and unpublishedly rude practices of the leaders of the major powers, who announce without the slightest rebuttal to legal figures we thought were archived, such as occupation or blockade and who make war of aggression a first possibility and genocide a simple tactic, throwing into the trash all that international law has been repeatedly enshrined”.

“ The ruins of what has been calling the international order founded on rules, which allegedly prevailed since the end of World War II are the ruins of the rules, say the most listened analysts ", said the professor of international relations, who delivered the last lesson with a red carnation next door.

For the academic, there are all the reasons to look at the present time “and see in it the time of ruins, in which the genocide of Gaza (Palestinian) is the epitome of this hecatomb of international law”.

“ In this genocide, beyond superlative inhumanity, we condense the denial of everything that international law establishes – the prohibition of reprisals and actions of alleged self-defense hugely disproportionately, the differentiation between military targets and civil population, the protection of essential human rights both in time of war and peace, the prohibition and punishment of war crimes and crimes against humanity and the right to self-determination of peoples,” he said.

The academic pointed out that the ruin of the international order is no longer now and that the United Nations has been used in recent decades by the great powers as an instance of legitimation “of its decision to resort to countermeasures of armed force” according to its interests.

According to José Manuel Pureza, the thesis “is so widespread that international law has collapsed in the last two years, masking the whole reality of the second half of the 20th century”, considering that it is today “what has always been – a field of dispute and a right of the strongest states to regulate the relationship between them and to submit the least strong states to the order protected by them”.

Before finishing the lesson, in which he was applauded standing by those present in the auditorium, he criticized the “surrender” of the university to a model that makes it “uncritical”.

Graduated in law and doctorate in sociology, José Manuel Purez, 67 years old, was also a researcher at the Center for Social Studies of the UC, where he coordinates the Center for Studies for Peace that he created, in addition to having been linked to the Nova University of Lisbon before joining the UC in 1992.

He leads the Left Block, a party for which he was once a member and vice-president of the Assembly of the Republic.