The world has been moving in the right direction when it comes to armed conflict

Jun 22, 2021 Letters

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DEAR EDITOR,

The world’s achievements versus its non-achievements continues to be a matter for public evaluation and discussion worldwide. Of utmost importance is the fact that not since 1945 has there been another world war. The Second World War cost humanity 25 million lives.
That no third world war has occurred, is a positive development considering the deadly nature of the arms race and the extent to which sophisticated nuclear weapons populate and proliferate the world today. Since Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which resulted in the loss of 150,000 lives humanity has been saved another nuclear catastrophe.
But the world has not been free of wars nor threats of war. There has been a number of local wars and threats of war including: the Korean War, the Arab-Israeli war, the Bay of Pigs Invasion, the Vietnam War, Turkey’s invasion of Cyprus, the US invasion of the Dominican Republic, the Suez crisis, the war in Lebanon, the US invasion of Grenada, the national liberation wars in the Horn of African, the US invasion of Panama, the Gulf War, the war between Ethiopia and Somalia, the war between Libya and Chad, the war between Morocco and the Polisario Front, the Argentine/ UK war over the Malvinas, the Iraq-Iran war, the US invasion of Iraq, the wars in Kosovo and Bosnia, the war against ISIL; the wars in Afghanistan, South Sudan, Syria, Myanmar, Yemen, the Palestinian/ Israeli War, and the war in the Tigre Region of Eritrea.
To these must be added the separatist and secessionist wars that took place in Nigeria and the Congo, the separation of India and Pakistan, the struggle for the independence of Bangladesh, the genocide and mass killings in Cambodia, formerly Kampuchea, Burundi, Rwanda, Mali, Chad and the Ivory Coast. The military coups in Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Nicaragua Paraguay and Uruguay were no exceptions.
In the course of these events millions were brutally murdered or simply disappeared.
In the meanwhile, mass kidnappings continue unabated in Nigeria. These unfortunate developments aside, the continued commitment by world powers to the policy of ‘No First Use’ of nuclear weapons is of strategic necessity for the maintenance of world peace, international security and cooperation. The extension for another five years of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) is to be welcomed. And China’s declaration in response to the so-called ‘China Threat Theory’ that its military capacity is primarily for defense purposes was reassuring in response to concerns expressed by leaders of the G7 countries at their recent meeting in England.
Of great significance too is the diplomatic initiative by the Biden Administration aimed at encouraging Iran’s return to the Joint Comprehensive Action Plan aka ‘The Iran Nuclear Deal.’ Clearly, this is a step in the right direction. It is hoped that the new Bennet administration in Israel will abandon the belligerent stand adopted by the Netanyahu administration and recognise the wisdom of engaging in rapprochement with Iran.
The much anticipated Biden-Putin Summit held in Geneva was a caricature of the old Greek proverb; ‘the mountain laboured but produced a mouse.’ The summit produced more areas of divergence than convergence although the baby steps in search of strategic ways in which the two nuclear powers could, for sake of peaceful co-existence, try to establish ‘a stable and predictable relationship’ could turn out to be a ‘hard road to travel’ in light of domestic politics and the mood of the US Congress towards Russia. The ‘glimpses of confidence’ seen by the Russian President in terms of Russia-US relations should be viewed in the context of a new narrative introduced regarding global politics where some see autocracies co-existing alongside democracies.
China will not disappear nor will the USA. The two socio-economic systems they represent will continue to compete and under conditions of peaceful coexistence the two systems will prevail. The debate regarding which side will win will continue, but hopefully, the name tags associated with different social systems such as autocracies versus democracies, reminiscent of the Cold War era will become something of the past.
Of great significance is the tremendous advances made in space exploration by the United States and China. It is reasonable to expect that future generations will be the principal beneficiaries of what can turn out to be unimaginable discoveries that neither Michelangelo, Copernicus or even Karl Marx ever imagined.
But while we continue with life on earth, greater efforts must be made to find global solutions to the 26 million refugees world-wide, the 690 million who suffer from hunger, the 842 million who face starvation, the 247 million drug users, the 800,000 men, women and children trafficked every year, the 185.8 million unemployed world-wide, the hundreds of terrorists organisations spread across many countries, the threats of global warming and the 0.4 percent of people in poor countries who are yet to be vaccinated against the COVID-19 virus.

Yours truly,
Clement J. Rohee

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