This place we now find ourselves in, in history, where Human aggression is recognized as being a universal paramount in the fight for global survival..
Where in the face of Russian warmongering and charging Chinese military expansionism?
Where in the uncertainty of the volatility and utterly predictable intentions of second string nuclear nations, such as North Korea, Israel, India , Pakistan, South Africa and, soon, Iran, there can be no promise of security from the possibility of spontaneous outbreak of nuclear hostilities.?
Where the USA, because of the trajectories of its diabolical, episodic electoral swings, In that every four years the political spectrum and its spinning wheel of alliances and militaristic articulations change to render the nation as predictably unreliable militarily and, essentially, heading towards being a potential fortress unto itself?
Where nuclear NATO and Europe wallow in a quagmire of indecision and bickering between themselves rendering them, collectively, insignificant?
Where emergent South Korea, Taiwan, Japan and several South American nations are currently being backed into a position where they are being forced to militarize, to join the nuclear club for their own survival?
Where the Jihadists will ultimately procure and utilize a nuclear device in the most spectacular manner possible….to further their own ends?
There have been 106 major wars fought since 1945. Many of them brushfire wars between populations within a single or neighboring nation, the like of which are still being fought in countries such as Nigeria, the Congo, Sudan, Syria, Palestine, Afghanistan and Yemen. Wars where people are being brutalized, dispossessed, killed and *****, daily. Where thousands are made refugees having to abandon their homes, their lives and their families in the face of brute force and extreme violence. Wars which are completely ignored by much of the rest of the world. Ignored because they don’t touch the comfortable normality of everyday life, the harmony of an existence without the threat of violent death by marauding gunmen or suicide vest explosives.
We in peaceful corners of the world live in a fool’s paradise because the threat of sudden widespread thermonuclear war has never been so immanent, so poised to erupt, since that of the Cuban Missile crisis of 1962 where Kennedy and Khrushchev were within a hairs breadth of unleashing nuclear armageddon on the world. Sanity prevailed then, a compromise was reached where nuclear armaments were mutually removed from Poland and Cuba and the world entered the phase of MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction). An insanity which berthed the age of Détente.
And so it has been till now. A balancing act where nuclear nations tip toed around each other stretching the limits of confrontation without actually trespassing to the threshold.
Putin has passed the threshold with his extended invasion of Ukraine, He had the opportunity of freezing hostilities and retaining Donbas and the Crimean peninsula for Russia. He twice declined this opportunity and reinforced his attack on the Ukrainian people. Biden’s USA dug in as did the nations of NATO declaring their intention to militarily support the forces of Ukraine for as long as it took to force Russia’s hand.
An impasse which hovers both sides on the very brink of nuclear confrontation.
China skips back and forth playing peacemaker to the UN and brother in arms to its Communistic ally, Russia. Yet all the while China trumpets its ultimate destiny of world ******* by force. Flexing her muscle in the Spratley and Paracell islands of the South China sea where she has expanded coral atolls into fortified military airfields threatening the free trade sealanes between Asia and the world. China now claims the South china sea as her own sovereign territory and patrols this seaway aggressively with armed warplanes and warships.
China confronts the Seventh Fleet of the USA navy over her demand of ownership of Taiwan, the forces are nose to jowel with fingers on the trigger. Taiwan is the world leader in production of microchips, They have the factories and the raw materials, Taiwan own the secrets of the processing. China are desperate to get this technology… and they need it now for further development of their computer and space research development. They have threatened Taiwan with military maneuvers and declarations of intention to invade. The only thing stopping them is the standoff with the USA military. Hair trigger stuff which is so volatile it could erupt at any time.
I gaze out the window here in the beautiful green foothills of Mt. Taranaki in New Zealand. The Tasman sea extends out for miles as a peaceful, shimmering deep blue visage. The air is warm and still in this early Autumn harmony. Birds fly by, farmers till their fields bringing in the season’s crop of maize. Harmony, peace and beauty reign supreme. A masterpiece of order and something of immense value to all who live here and share it……But for how long before it all becomes destruction, despair and subjugation. How long before the aggression and the greed for power reaches out to this far outpost of humanity to crush the life out of it with it’s sudden, vast, violent and toxic nuclear fist?
The way humanity is going right now?…..NOT LONG!
I listened to a podcast recently where this question was put to a number of philosophers, scientists, authors and national leaders…..”When will War End?”
The consensus of opinion was that war has always been a part of mankind’s makeup. Only humans and Chimpanzees wage war and only humans do it with a visceral passion.
When humans wage peace…they get bored! Peace is boring! …genuinely this was a common theme.
The group saw warfare as an inherent part of man’s competitive nature, they saw it as a compilation of greed, ego, lust for power and assets.
When will war end? Certainly not in my lifetime, probably never!
Live with it, they said!
M@Foxglove,Taranaki NZ