A Critical Discourse Study of the Discursive-Legitimation of Geopolitical War in Munich Security Conference

 

 

Table 1.  Topoi of Argument Adapted from Reisigl & Wodak (2001)

		No	Topoi of Argument		Example		Ideological Function
		1.	Topos of Burdening		“we were forced to react”		Justifying violence as reactions to their actions
		2.	Topos of Authority		President Trump said “military invention is the only solution”		Legitimizing War as it initiated by Authority (individual or institution)
		3.	Topos of Humanitarianism		“We are saving Lives”		Framing  Military Actions as humanitarian duty
		4.	Topos of Threat/ Danger		“they are terrorists”		Framing the antagonist as evil and dangers
		5.	Topos of Responsibility		“Leaders have responsibility to stop aggressors”		Legitimizing political actions and supporting hegemonic leadership
6.	Topos of History			“they are Nazis”		Framing the self as victims

 

Reisigl (2017,p.52) summarizes the questions used to approach those five strategies and the purpose behind implementing them which are summarized in Table 2. :

 

Table (2) Questions and Purpose of DHA Four Discursive Strategies

 

C.      CDA and Political Representation

The notion of representation constitutes  a fundamental concept within CDA.  Fairclough (2003, p.124) mentions that “representation is always interwoven with power, as discourse not only describes the world but also serves to legitimatize, challenge or transform social relations”. In CDA, representations are understood as shaped and mediated  constructions rather than neutral images of reality (Mayr & Machin, 2023). Thus, they are  selective  practice. Representations are ideology-sensitive influenced by social contexts, power relations and ideological beliefs (van Dijk, 1998; 1998; Fairclough, 2015), which realized by linguistic choices which in turn shape  how groups or individuals are represented.

 

In this regard, van Dijk (2008) states that leading groups strategically use language to sustain power by directing  how individuals, groups, and events are represented. As for portraying war events, this may be represented as “necessary intervention”, “self-defense” or  “defense of freedom” rather than an “aggression”. This representation of war depends chiefly on political speakers’ ideological perspectives. Accordingly, the way events (e.g., war) are framed impact  public opinions and reactions to justify or condemn events like war.  Baker et al., (2008) argues that lexical choices carry ideological implications for example, speakers have a choice between “illegal aliens” versus “asylum seekers” in describing immigrants. Fairclough (2015) mentions that speakers also have  a choice in the syntactic level in using passive or active constructions. For example, “ten civilians were killed” versus “the military kicked ten civilians”. Lakoff (2004) depicts that metaphor used in representing events influence people perceptions for example portraying war as “a game” implying “wining hearts” versus “disease” implying spreading disease”  which in turn frame war as a normal consequence or a problem.

 

Representation is decisive.  It “is one of the obvious functions of discourse…since through language we present view of reality” (Chilton,2004,p.46;Boyd &Llamas, 2012, p.318). For example, the way George W. Bush in 2003 frames war in the Middle East as “War on Terror” which is a battle between “good and evil”. This binary description influence public perception to justify military actions.

 

D.      Ideology and War Discourse

War discourse is a strategic communicative practice through which political actors construct, justify, contest or legitimize military actions. Central to this type of discourse is ideology;  Ideology refers to the socially shared frameworks of meanings through which speakers or writers represent events and actions in the world around them (van Dijk, 1998). Besides, ideologies are “representations of who we are… what our relationships are with other groups, in particular our enemies or opponents, that is, those who oppose what we stand for, threaten our interests and prevent us from equal access to social resources and human rights” (van Dijk, 1998 p.312).

 

CDA aims at uncovering how language contributes to sustain unequal power relations (van Dijk, 2006).  Among the various forms of ideology is the ideology of war,  which often seeks to naturalize power misuse and legitimize control over other people or other territories by strategically misrepresenting the “Others”  through processes of negative other representation (Wodak, 2015).

 

Those representations are manifested in language which reflects the fact that the association between language and  ideologies are closely seen; as Verschueren (2011) argues that the relationship between language and ideology is not  direct; it is realized through choices that a language user uses (Jiang and Cui, 2014). It is this selectivity in the discourse which critical discourse analysts try to uncover in the discourse particularly the typical “discrimination, biases and representation”, then showing their role in power and social struggle (Xin, 2016, p. 22; van Dijk, 2000; Yang, 2023). Consequently, Ideological representations are main focus of CDA where critical discourse analysts analyze how different hidden ideologies are created, spread and strengthened through discourse. Those hidden Ideologies require analyst to  deliberately decode them depending on effective choices of lexical items, syntactic construction, modality and transitivity. Understanding how ideologies are constructed in discourse helps to see how community perceptions of certain social issues (e.g., race issues, immigration, war and peace, etc.) are represented in the media and politics which in turn have an impact on policy-making and general social cohesion( van Dijk , 2020).

 

E.      Gaza and Ukraine Wars in the  Munich Security Conference  

Munich Security conference is held every year in Munich, Germany to discuss most heated issues such as wars. It is the world's largest gathering of its kind (Franke, 2024). The 60^th version of this conference held in 2024 focused mainly on the wars in Gaza and Ukraine. The ongoing struggle in Gaza between Israel reached its most escalation when Hamas attacked Israel on Oct.7, 2023. The Israel response leads to extraordinary destruction, hostages and loss of civilian lives(https://securityconference.org/en/msc-2024/ ). The conflict in Gaza attracts many international discourses which mirrors polarized positions of global representatives; in Western discourses, Israel is usually framed as doing  “self-defense” whereas Hamas  is normally represented as “terrorists”. On the contrary,  In Arab and Middle-East  discourses, the conflict is framed as occupation and Hamas is portrayed as resistance to that occupation (www.dailyparliamanttimes.com). The war of Russia against Ukraine is not seen as a regional struggle, but a threat to the existential of Europe as a whole. It reached its high escalation in 2022 when Russian decided to invade Ukraine. What bothers Russia is Ukraine ongoing attempt to become a member of the NATO. Russia sees this attempt as a threat to its sovereignty(Cahyono et. al. 2022, p. 10).

 

The discourses about these wars attracted many CDA researchers; Philo and Berry (2004) mention that  when the conflict is reported in international arena,  both sides of the conflict  do their best  to stress the validity of their own story in terms of the language they use for the descriptions of what is happening and “who is to blame” (p., 256).

Consequently,   it becomes the arena of discursive battlefield where the language of war is crafted to influence international agenda. When applying CDA to MSC speeches, it will help to show how various  powers structures of politicians influence different conflicts  on a global scale.

A.      Model of the Analysis

In order to systematically analyze the discourse of war in international arena critically,  an eclectic model was used in this study. The basic model is DHA after Reisigl and Wodak’s (2001 & 2009) four interconnected level with further enhancement from Van Leeuwen’s (2008) social Actor Representation model. The four levels follow a  logical flow from topic identification, discursive strategies of nomination, predication and argumentation strategies.

 

The rationale for using Reisigl &Wodak (2001-2009) framework of DHA is that it is “the most linguistically oriented of the CDA scholars”( Wodak & Mayer, 2016, p.21). It also offers a macro-contextual orientation which is vital in “interpreting the linguistic data within their sociopolitical context”. This can only be reached using DHA since it integrates knowledge from other field of study (e.g., history) which,  in turn, offers deep interpretation to “understand why specific discriminatory discursive practices are performed … in pursuit of specific political or social aims”(Wodak & Mayer, 2016, p.268).

 

Besides, the motivation  behind integrating categories from other approaches within the four –level main model of this study is due to the complexity of international political conflict-related discourse as well as the following motivations; Van Leeuwen’s (2008) model of social actor is best suits the second category of Reisigl & Wodak (2001) namely ‘Nomination discursive strategy’, particular with Van Leeuwen’s new categories of ‘Appraisement’ and ‘Functionalisation’ which aid in reveal biased representation.

 

B.      Data Collection and Rationale

The current study implements a qualitative method; a method which Khanday & Khanam (2019)  reveal  its advantage as yielding “maximal information about the problem under consideration” by deeply analysing the data(p., 374). The use of such method could also afford various benefits concerning the scope of concepts and the scopes of explanations of the research problem which in turn lead to have the strengths of qualitative methods (Tzagkarakis & Kirtas, 2022; Maxwell, 2023).

 

The data of this study was selected based on the criteria of purposive sampling and the following criteria (direct relevance to war discourses, speaker’s authority, geopolitical significance, and public accessibility). Consequently, the U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris’ political speeches delivered at MSC in its summit in the year of 2024 were selected. Harris speech is taken from Frank’s(2024) book namely ‘Collection of Munich Speeches’.

 

MSC is chosen since it invites representatives from all over the world even the conflicted actors to discuss urgent matter with direct relations to the globe stabilization.

 

 The conference of 2024 is chosen since it has themes of the war in Ukraine and the war in Gaza as the main dish to be discussed which in turn have direct link to the concept of the current study (i.e., discourse of war). This speech belongs geopolitically to the Global West (Harris speech). This speech belongs to a powerful country which in turn would influence the way war is condemned, legitimized, and  represented in different geopolitical places of the globe.

In DHA, it is important to understand the moment in history in which the speech was delivered, the problem the speech respond to, and all other factors that makes the speech meaningful. Thus, this analysis starts with the historical and sociopolitical background then proceeds with the other selected stages of DHA.  

 

Historical and sociopolitical context- Kamala Harris delivered this speech in the 2024 version of MSC  amidst interconnected geopolitical tensions in Ukraine and Gaza. The war in Ukraine reshaped the NATO  priorities  and the European security policy. The event of the death of  political prisoner named Alexia Navalny  in the Russian prisons influenced Harris speech and the agenda of MSC where it turned the tone of MSC from strategic to human- right oriented. This event is mentioned in the opening paragraph of Harris speech.  There was also anxiety in Europe about U.S. commitment to continue supporting NATO since 2024 was an election year in US so many European were worried about whether America will isolate itself from the NATO or not. Therefore, Harris speech met this worries by reassuring message that the U.S. remains committed the collective defense by NATO. Finally, this speech came amidst international instability and crisis in Gaza, tensions with China and disruptions in global supply chains, and the American internal division Congress political polarization regarding Ukraine war funding. 

 

i.Topic establishment

Defining the topic or the sub-topics of the speech dives the analysis clarity in showing how the ideological influence of each political war speech is achieved. Harris’ speech is centered on the macro-topic of the America’s global leaderships in time of conflicts. Such topic is developed and supported by a sequence of  interrelated micro-topics which visualized in Figure 1.

Micro-Topic 1: Authoritarianism  rejection

Micro-Topic 2: Global Instability

Micro-Topic 3: Isolationism rejection

Micro-Topic 4: America’s support to NATO

Macro-Topic: Reasserting U.S. global leadership amid contemporary  Geopolitical Transformation

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 1. Topics Covered by Harris’ Speech

 

 

 

 

Harris’ speech is directed to legitimize the continued leadership of the U.S. administration. Such leadership is depicted as imperative and strategic in response to global instability in the Middle East and Eastern Europe. The Micro-topics contribute to the argumentative coherence of the speech. In Chilton’s terminology, this speech function as demonizing discourse;  Harris demonizes both internal calls to isolate America external struggles, and external worries of Europe about America’s support to NATO. The speech also functions to victimize the Ukraine by rejecting authoritarianism of Russia.

 

ii.Discursive Construction of Social Actors

The speech of Harris at MSC encompasses a multilayered network of social actors. This stage of analysis involves exploring nomination (how social actors are referred to) and prediction (how social actors are described using various adjectives), and argumentation as observable linguistic practices. These discursive strategies are ideologically vital for legitimizing USA foreign policy regarding geopolitical global conflicts.

The actor analysis of this speech reveals a different nomination and predication strategies which align with the in-group social actors involving the United States, Biden-Harris administration, Ukraine, Ukrainians, Arab leaders as shown  in Table 3. It also involves the out-group social actors encompassing Russia, Putin, Hamas, domestic opposing parties in the U.S., and Iran and its proxies as shown in Table 4. These are the main social actors which are built both explicitly and implicitly throughout the whole speech by reference and predication. 

Table 3. The Representation of the In-groups in Harris’ Speech

 

i.   Nomination strategies of social actors

As for Nomination strategies of social actors,  Table 3. reveal that Harris consistently employs collectivization to construct the in-group social actors which comprise the United States and its allies. They are realized through first-person  plural pronouns ‘we’, ‘our’, national identifiers ‘America’ , the United States,  and alliance-based references ‘our partners’.  This nomination patterns position the in-groups as a unified collective social actors.

 

On the contrary, as shown in Table 4., some of  the out-groups are excluded such as America’ domestic oppositions. This is realized in “there are some in the United who disagree” (Harris, 2024).  This social actor is left implicit. Such concealment has the ideological function of criticizing the opponent without direct confrontation. It also involves  concealing  Iran’s friend such as Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen, by referring to them using vague reference such as “we work to counter aggression from Iran and its proxies, prevent regional escalation” (Harris, 2024).  Other out-group social actors are referred to explicitly; this involves America’s foreign opponent such as ‘Russia’, ‘China’ and ‘Iran’ which are referred to using the strategy of Nationalization. ‘Putin’ is another actor which is referred to using the strategy of Individualization and Hamas is referred to using the strategy of Functionalization by highlighting their role as committing a “terrorist attack” (Harris, 2024). The same is applied to Putin when his role of “an aggressor” (Harris, 2024)  or “an imperialist authoritarian”(Harris, 2024) is highlighted as shown in Table 4. 

Table 4. The Representation of the Out-groups in Harris’ Speech

 

Predication Strategies of Social Actor

As for predication strategies, Table 3. And Table 4. reveal that  there are certain attributes, characteristics and qualities assigned differently  to the in-group and out-group social actors in Harris speech as follows:

The in-group social actors are predicted positively through attributes of leadership, powerfulness, responsibility, strength and braveness, defender of democracy rationale, victims and important partners of democracy. This is identified in examples such as “how America responds will affect the American people, the people of Europe, and people around the world” (Harris, 2024). Besides, positive attributes was condensed in describing Ukraine such as “the bravery of the people of Ukraine, along with the leadership of President Zelenskyy and the 50-nation coalition the United States has led, has allowed Ukraine to achieve what so many thought was impossible. Today, Kyiv stands free and strong” (Harris, 2024). Such positive predication  represents the in-group as powerful and dependable. 

 

The out-group social actors are predicted negatively through threat-oriented attributes. For example, Russia is associated with aggression and murder, as in “Russia is responsible [for Navalny’s death]”, “We have also imposed economic costs on Russia for its aggression”, “If we fail to impose severe consequences on Russia, other authoritarians across the globe would be emboldened” (Harris, 2024).  Hamas is associated with terrorism as in “Hamas committed a terrorist act [of its attack on Israel on October, the seventh]” (Harris, 2024), and Iran is associated with geopolitical instability as in “we also work to counter aggression from Iran and its proxies” (Harris, 2024).

 

The Argumentation  strategies (Topoi)

As for the Argumentation  strategies (Topoi), they are used to justify the predications assigned to the social actors. There are recurring topoi in Harris speech as follows:

 

Topos of Burdening

This topos implies that if any entity is burdened by particular actions or problems, it should be acted against them to reduce those burdens (Reisigl & Wodak, 2001). Here, Harris repeatedly represent the actions of the NATO led by the United States as a reaction to the burdening caused by other aggressors to achieve stability across the globe. Thus, America repeatedly represented as the safeguard of global security and the bearers of alliance coordination and military costs.  This is shown in examples such as “America’s role of global leadership is to  direct the benefit of the American people”, and “the emphasis of U.S. led coalition  to sustain support for Ukraine” (Harris, 2024).  

This topos functions to represent hegemony and dominance as responsibility and strategic necessity rather than a choice.  Ideologically, this topos normalizes the global leadership of the U.S. by representing it as unavoidable.

 

Topos of Authority

This topos implies that “X has the right or the authority to do something” (Reisigl & Wodak 2001, p. 79). This topos relies on institutional or moral authority to legitimize actions and claims related to wars. In Harris’ speech, Such authority is constructed through representing NATO as an institution as in “ [the NATO is] the greatest military alliance the world has ever known”, or the authority is relied on laws such as “Article 5”,  historical event such as the horrific event of “9/11) or authority which is based on collective voice using the collective pronoun “we” to represent the international community in facing the aggressors of others.  

 

This topos functions to transform and represent the unilateral decisions of the U.S. as a global collective will to achieve instability in the conflicted areas. Ideologically, opposing to the policy of the U.S. represented as a delegitimation of the international order itself. 

 

Topos of  Humanitarian

This topos implies that if people around the world are suffering, all types of interventions are morally required. In Harris’s speech, Ukraine and Gaza are represented as suffering and under humanitarian  crisis as follow: 

The Ukrainian are represented as “free and democratic people” who have the right to defend themselves against Russia, and

The Gazans are acknowledged as being civilians who are suffering because of Hamas terrorism.

The humanitarian language is presented in Harris’s speech but in a limited way particularly regarding Gaza. Ideologically, humanitarian topos has the effect of reducing the visibility of violence  or unequal accountability in war. 

 

Topos of Threat:

This topos associates the out-group actions to broader risks. This is explicitly realized through conditionals such as :

“ if we went easy on Putin, let alone encouraged him” 

“if we stand by while an aggressor invades its neighbors with impunity, they will keep going”

This means that aggression leads to regional and global instability.  

 “if we fail to impose severe consequences on Russia, other authoritarians across the globe would be emboldened”.

This indicates that the failure to respond would enable further  expansion of threats. 

Topos of Responsibility

It is one of the means by which responsibility is assigned to individuals. In terms of the van Dike’s Ideological square, the way responsibility in narrated emphasizes the in-group and the out group division. The preferred responsibility is associated with the in-group such as:

“America must stand strong for democracy” 

which emphasizes that it is in America’s responsibility to defend democracy and the international order to stop aggression from whoever dares to attack its neighbors.

Similarly, the responsibility of negative or sensitive actions is assigned to the out-group in order to justify actions. It is realized in this speech through obligation-oriented language in the following examples:

“Russia must pay for the damages it has caused to Ukraine”.

In this example, the one responsible for the damage in Ukraine is Russia. It is narrated in this way to justify any reaction that would be imposed on Russia by the international law.

 

Topos of History

Topos of History or in van Dijk’s terminology “Historicity” is used in this speech to justify current actions by restating historical facts. Among the historical facts mentioned in this speech is past wars, fascism and tyranny, NATO response after 9/11 events. These historical facts provides reasoning for present-day policy without explicit analogy elaboration as shown in the following example

 

The forces of tyranny and fascism were on the march, and then America joined our allies in defense of freedom”. 

 

In this example, the speaker justifies its joining of NATO by using historical facts of previous wars that the forces of tyranny (i.e., Russia) were on the march of occupying Ukraine and some other European territory. Without America’s joining the coalition of NATO, the aggressor would occupy their territory.

The findings reveal that war discourses are negotiated and legitimatized. Political speakers make use of such international arena to produce and reproduce ideologies of peace, war, threats, and shared defense. Fairclough (2003) confirms that discourses containing such themes are seldom neutral, they are ideologically loaded with power relations and strategic use of language; for example, Harris’ usage of lexical items such as “sovereignty, aggressors, defenders of peace” framing their countries as defensive actors resisting aggressions(See also Chilton, 2004).

 

The DHA analysis of Harris speech reveals five dominant discursive patterns in talking about geopolitical wars:

War is not an aggressive choice, but it is normalized as defensive necessity, “to counter aggression from Iran and its proxies” , to counter “the conflict that Hamas triggered on October 7th” and to stop “Russia’s ongoing aggression in Ukraine”  (normalization of war.

 

Historical memory is  instrumentalized to justify military escalations and pre-empt dissent. This is manifested in expression such as “I need not remind the people of Europe of a dark history when the forces of tyranny and fascism were on the march”.  

 

American longstanding role in global leadership is moralized, equating U.S. power and leadership with global stability, security, peace, and unrestricted flow of commerce. Stating that “In fact, when America has isolated herself, threats have only grown”.

 

Authoritarianism is personalized through the social actor of Putin with his related negative predication, making complex geopolitical dynamics simple and defendable using expressions such as “Putin’s war”, “Putin’s aggression and recklessness”, and “Putin’s brutality”.

 

Alliance and coalition politics are naturalized,  framing the social actor of NATO predicated  as unquestionable, inventible and universally beneficial to “prevented wars, defended freedom, and maintained stability”.

 

Together, these five patterns construct a discourse in which a continued war support seems historically justified, ethical and unavoidable.

 

The nomination and  predication strategies together with their justification in the topoi of argument coincide with  van Dijk’s Ideological square;  the in-groups are associated with positive attributes and the out-groups are associated with negative-predication. This is also ideologically represent the in-groups as powerful and seeking to “prevent wars, defend freedom, and maintain stability” while the out-group are presented as a source of threat as in “Russia’s ongoing aggression in Ukraine” or “China’s efforts to reshape the international order”.

 

Ideologically speaking, such nomination and predication strategies in Harris speech differentiate between different social actors; those who promote peace and instability and those who initiate wars. Such prediction has different discursive functions to:

delegitimize the enemy (i.e., Russia).

 

 legitimatize U.S. global leadership.

frame Isolation as irresponsible. 

mobilize empathy and support to Ukraine.

strengthen multilateralism, alliance identity and collective defense with NATO.

justifying US. foreign policy and Israel’s right to self-defense.

Build legitimacy with Arab Leaders for peace effort

This finding of linguistic elements which shape public perception copes with Charteris-Black (2004, p. 28) who integrates cognitive linguistics to “show how metaphors shape public perception of war, revealing underlying ideologies and justifications”.

From a DHA perspective, Harris’ speech characterizes how present-day Western political discourse re-contextualizes war in global security conferences  through historical and moral legitimation relying heavily on the topos of Burdening, the topos of Authority, the topos of Humanitarian,  the topos of Threat, the topos of Responsibility and the topos of History . By embedding military actions within the narratives of security and democracy, Harris speech converts  geopolitical conflicts into civilizational struggle to sway public opinion. This finding copes with van Dijk (2008) concentration on the way used to manipulate public perception and Chilton (2004) take the analysis further to demonstrate the way language is strategically used to justify or condemn war and conflict.

 

 The reliance on the topos of history provides a hegemonic closure of meaning;  this topos invokes fascism, World War II, and NATO’s foundational myths to limit interpretive space for alternative policies such as de-escalation or diplomacy.

 

Moreover, the personalization of danger and threat through Putin and the specification of the Middle East conflict to Hamas align with prior CDA studies showing that the individualization of blame eases complex geopolitical conflicts and smooth  public consent for prolonged war (Wodak, 2009). This copes with Chouliaraki’s (2006) findings that “media representations of war sway public empathy and moral engagement by fabricating narratives that can either humanize or dehumanize those involved in conflicts” (p. 22).

 

Finally, although humanitarian language employed by Harris in the Israel-Hamas segment, it remains subordinated to security necessities. It shows how humanitarian discourse is integrated without challenging leading power structure.

This study has examined Harris’ 2024 MSC speech through the DHA. With the aim to reveal how social actors are referred to, how they are predicated, and how these representations are legitimized through selected argumentative topoi. The study reveals that this speech functions as a discursive legitimation of the in-group war and the legitimation of U.S. global leadership in the time of conflicts. This is achieved through moral polarization and historically-grounded argumentation. The main findings show that there is a constituent pattern of binary representation of social actors; the United States with its allies are discursively positioned as having authority to achieve stability across the globe while the Russia-particularly Putin, Iran, Hamas, China and their allies are represented as aggressive and destabilizing. These binary representations are persistent through systematic predication attributes that assign leadership to the in-groups, while attributing brutality and threat to the out-groups.  

 

These binary representations are further legitimized through a coherent network of argumentative topoi. Those topoi of burdening, authority, humanitarian, threat, responsibility and history legitimize the global leadership of the U.S. as an unavoidable obligation to be involve in the global intervention especially of Gaza and Ukraine to alert against the ideology of isolationism and to legitimize Biden-Harris’ preventive and deterrent policies. Rather than merely describing war events, these argumentative topoi function as a discursive warrant against geopolitical instability which makes in intervention of the NATO led by the U.S. as imperative and historically justified.   

 

This research provides an empirical grounded application of DHA to contemporary geopolitical wars demonstrating the continued relevance of Reisigl and Wodak model for analysing multipolar geopolitical conflicts. Theoretically, these findings have the implication that war discourse can normalize power relations to convert geopolitical interest into moral imperatives. Practically, the findings reveal that the elite political discourse of war can shape and sway public perception regarding legitimizing or contesting war.

 

Even though the current study has come up with interesting contributions, the study has particular limitations in the sense that the study has focused on elite political discourse and has not consider audience perception which would further brighten way these discursive strategies are circulated.   Consequently, future research could integrate multimodal CDA to analyse other media representations accompanying war discourses.

 

Funding: This Manuscripts is supported by nobody

Institutional Review Board Statement: Not applicable.

Transparency: The authors ensure that the manuscript is transparent, that this study has followed all the writing ethics.

Competing Interests: no conflicts of interests are declared by the authors concerning the publication of this manuscript.

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