Changing dynamics of a modern world, and its brewing conflicts
In the first year of the 21st century, it seemed that the world had learned from the terrible mistakes of the previous hundred years
The dawn of the third millennium could not have been more propitious. The last decade of the 20th century had been an epoch of peace. The Cold War ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989. The Soviet Empire in East Europe had disintegrated. It was followed by the dismemberment of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) itself, which was formally dissolved on December 25-26, 1991. The Balkan wars were winding down by 1999. China’s quest to join the World Trade Organisation (WTO) was on the cusp of consummation. The Washington Consensus had become the economic swansong of the world. The United States had emerged as the hyperpower of a unipolar world and Francis Fukuyama had declared the end of history. The sweet fragrance of democracy was all-pervasive.
In the first year of the 21st century, it seemed that the world had learned from the terrible mistakes of the previous hundred years. World War I, World War II, the Cold War, the unbridling of the destructive potential of the atom, the retreat of imperialism and colonialism from Asia, Africa, Latin and South America, and 285 major armed conflicts between 1946-2000, had been the major milestones of the 20th century.
With the third Industrial Revolution winding down and the fourth one taking off underscored by the evolution of the internet, giant strides in genomics, robotics, nascent innovations in Artificial Intelligence, exponential advances in modern medicine coupled with a substantive decrease in hunger, malnutrition and poverty around the world seemed set for a smarter future.
The development of social media tools such as Facebook, mobile telephony and email was transforming the way people lived, worked and communicated professionally and with their loved ones.
However, as the adage goes, the best-laid plans of men and mice don’t usually fructify as conceived. That is precisely what happened. On September 11, 2001, planes crashed into the World Trade Centre in New York and the Pentagon in Washington DC, inaugurating a new phase in the history of human conflict. It signalled the mainstreaming of non-state actors who by their dastardly and unconventional actions could trigger a chain of events that involved retaliation of epic proportions even against populations who had nothing to do with the original atrocity in the first place. If the casus belli of war was not available, it was invented, creating fear, generating anger and perpetuating misery in major geographies of the world.
What has followed over the next two decades has been an endless litany of forever wars – Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria coupled with regime changes in wider West Asia. The long peace of Europe since 1945 which was intermittently interrupted by the Balkan conflict in the 1990s, stands irrevocably shattered with the Russian aggression on its sovereign neighbour Ukraine in the February of 2022. It has re-energised a moribund North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) that is more cohesive than ever and focused on fighting Russia to the last Ukrainian. The rise of a new wolf warrior China has unsettled large parts of Asia, bringing back a spectre of unwanted hegemony in the Asia-Pacific leading to reactive pacts being institutionalised to contain Chinese belligerence.
The attack by Hamas on unarmed men, women and children in Israel on October 7, 2023, and the subsequent retaliation by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) on the innocent residents of the Gaza Strip has opened up every fault line in West Asia, back to the Sykes-Picot agreement and the Balfour Declaration of 1916-17.
It has set back the ongoing attempts at reconciliation in Greater West Asia initiated by the Abraham Accords between Israel on the one hand and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan on the other. There was also the parallel process brokered by China between Saudi Arabia and Beijing and the unfolding modus vivendi between Israel and Saudi Arabia confirmed by none other than Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud in an interview with Fox News on September 20, 2023. All of this has been put in a state of flux.
Closer home, with the Taliban back in the saddle in Afghanistan after 20 years and the junta in Myanmar back in control, South Asia is straddled by a religious orthodoxy on one side and military totalitarianism on the other. Across the world with the rise of right-wing populism, xenophobic tendencies, extreme weaponisation of social media, failure of the institutions of global governance that was on full display during the Covid-19 pandemic and the retreat of globalisation and liberalisation, barriers, both physical and mental, have only been going up.
There is no greater urgency than tearing down these walls urgently to stop the world from spinning headlong into an unchecked downward spiral. For that, institutions of global governance must be resuscitated and even reimagined and refurbished. What has been missing in action in any global conflict or calamity in recent decades is an efficacious United Nations intervention or response. Rather, the UN has been replaced by multilaterals like G20 and minilaterals such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), which while being important platforms, can’t be a substitute for global responses to challenges such as climate change and the continuing threat of a nuclear armageddon.
Moreover, conflict being the default mental state of humankind is an extremely problematic paradigm. Nothing illustrates it better than the hate, vitriol and venom that is the staple of social media with artificial bots and natural nuts effectively ruling the virtual civilisation.
The world needs a new pact to bring down temperature and that involves surmounting barriers both Westphalian and mental. Can we collectively do so remains moot.
Manish Tewari is a lawyer, MP, and former I&B Minister. The views expressed are personal
