PUSH a man to the wall and he will fight back. Or in today’s parlance, he may send a drone your way. This is common sense. Try telling this to Mr You Are Fired, AKA American President Donald Trump, who is all Twitter sound and fury. But most times, signifying nothing.
No, we are not saying that Iran is behind the drone attack that shut down half of Saudi Arabia’s oil installation. Not at all. Trump has, and is hinting at retaliation of one sort or the other. All we are saying is this: asphyxiating one nation with sanctions and arming another with lethal weapons will only push the world closer to war.
We like to think nobody likes war, but the behaviours of some modern-day pharaohs say otherwise.
Perhaps a history lesson is in order. David Hendrickson, who teaches history at Colorado College and is the author of Republic in Peril: American Empire and the Liberal Tradition, reminds us of such a blundering behaviour in a time past in his Tuesday article in The American Conservative titled “This Wasn’t How Trump’s War on Iran Was Supposed to Go”. Like how the Austro-Hungarians asphyxiated the Serbs in 1914, the American warmongers are strangling the Iranians now.
The result then: World War 1. Hendrickson phrases his warning thus: “When you declare your intention to asphyxiate another country, you’ve committed an act of war. Retaliation from the other side usually follows in some form or fashion. You can then advance to your ruin or retreat in ignominy.”
This Leader is no George Friedman scenario-seller. Friedman — the founder of Geopolitical Futures, an online publication that analyses and forecasts the course of global events, and author of The Next 100 Years — has been travelling the lecture circuit telling people that World War 3 will happen, but wisely not predicting it.
We hope it doesn’t. But then again, it only took a bullet to the head of Archduke Franz Ferdinand from the gun of Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip on June 28, 1914 to start World War 1. A drone may just do it for World War 3.
We like to think World War 3 is not inevitable. But two things must happen to avoid it. First, the pharaonic hubris of the imperial powers and allies must end. So must edicts from Washington or Tel Aviv. Trump’s “locked and loaded” tweet must surely go down as Washington’s hauteur at its worst.
Why this disdain for the other, we ask. Sanctions don’t deter; they inflame. Why incense people to rise up in rage, only to blame them for their fury? Isn’t one Iraq enough? Isn’t shattered Syria sufficient to show how the mighty misprize humanity?
Next, the United Nations must start living up to its Charter. The power brokers — the permanent five of the Security Council — must go. They are the reason why the UN is not able to be humane. All 74 years of it.
This is a serious charge, but examples cry out in anger around the globe. You will find them in Rwanda, Congo, Myanmar, India, Israel, the Middle East and elsewhere. Repair this shame, and the world will cease to be in a muddle.