Civil war feared, if there, why not elsewhere?

Sep 03, 2022 Editorial

Kaieteur News – If in a place like America, why not lesser advanced, less organised, and less lawful societies around the world? If the spectre of another Civil War is feared in America, then what hope is there for avoiding that same ghastly shadow in still more divided, more hostile, and more unmanageable countries? The outlook doesn’t leave much room for optimism, and worsens when every side dig in their heels, refuse to give ground, and prefer confrontation than a reasoned way out of looming conflict.

In a recent poll, 2 out of 5 Americans believe that the political climate will deteriorate so severely that there is the likelihood of Civil War within the next decade. As polls go, 40 percent of any population thinking along these lines is a terrible place for any country to be. It means that the social environment is in a most precarious state, with some fateful crumbling into chaos pending. In America, ideological divide, burning racial tensions, calculating leaders, and an all but paralysed partisan system have only gotten more visible, and more pronounced, since the 2020 elections, and the January 6 riots, attempted coup, insurrection, or whatever fits. Still, there was flickering hope.

“We can join forces, stop the shouting and lower the temperature. For without unity, there is no peace, only bitterness and fury. No progress, only exhausting outrage. No nation, only a state of chaos. This is our historic moment of crisis and challenge, and unity is the path forward” (New York Post, August 30). The one giving voice to those confidence enhancing words was a leader known as a unifier, the incoming President Joseph Biden. Rather sadly, he has failed, fallen short of the high promise of unifying a divided, agitated nation.

Donald Trump, the American leader that preceded Joe Biden in the White House, though vilified by opponents and their people as a destructive force of the first order, is still held in the highest esteem by his own huge army of millions of devoted followers. It should be instructive and uninspiring that these are the convictions and passions that rage in today’s sharply divided America. The exchanges are heated, obvious distinctly edgy, and fraught with dangers that are not imaginary.

Clearly, this has to be a source of grave concern if this is the state of things in civilised and managed America. The issue of interest (and anxiety) is how much hope could there be for peace and stability, and the necessary degree of unity and harmony that serve as the foundations of continuity in weaker, more shakily perched countries. There is Libya in a state of upheaval, and in Iraq sectarian animosities just will not cool to those levels that allow for clear heads and receptive hearts. Matters have calmed for the time being in Sri Lanka, Nigeria lives with brooding tensions that are more of an attack and retreat strategy,and nearby Venezuela somehow hobbles by in a slightly lesser state of decay. Wherever we look, it seems that temperatures boil and threaten to flare into the uncontrollable.

It should be noticeable that in most of the countries identified above, except for Sri Lanka, enormous oil resources are a common denominator. To be sure, it is an article of faith that oil makes many things in the modern world possible and fuels many economies of the world. And just as surely, oil also is the fuel for old memories to be dredged up, past histories to be polished to suit new visions, and war-like postures to take hold. Oil is the context and a fixture from which hard national conflicts emerge. The heavy intolerances and bigotries that had remained beneath the surface before suddenly find new energies and new directions, and these are all because of the presence of oil.

Guyana now is the owner of immense oil resources. Nevertheless, Guyana is still the unhappiest of habitats for raw hatreds and seething resentments. We don’t know what is in our future, but whatever it is, the arrival of oil did not lend itself to a comforting state of peacefulness. Wherever there are insiders and outsiders, haves and have nots, and oil is around, then trouble is always in the vicinity.

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Civil war feared, if there, why not elsewhere?

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