THE SKY IS FALLING!!! (OR IS IT?)

 

Suddenly the airwaves are reverberating to the sound of war drums. Call-up papers may drop through letter boxes at any moment. What the devil is going on?

Is it merely that a whole panoply of highly paid top brass are in fear of losing their jobs? Not their lives in a war. In fact quite the reverse. Do they in fact see their lucrative jobs disappearing as a brand new geopolitical paradigm takes shape? A new paradigm that relies on agreement rather than aggression, dialogue and debate rather than death and destruction, building bridges rather than burning them? In short, a multipolar world where a general tolerance for modes of governance takes over from the rabid need felt by a section of the world to impose itself on all others.

A great many of us have been scratching our heads recently as talking head after talking head bewailed the end of a West-insured peace at the hands of lesser humans from all quarters of the east who were bringing war. But were they, are they? Is China beating the war drums? Is even Russia, engaged as it is in a military operation that it insists is not a war. No declaration of war has been made and, if truth be told, Russia’s action does in fact remain a limited one, it is not a war. If a war it was Kiev would be a mass of smouldering ruins by now rather than a city where life goes on more or less normally.

What is going on?

Why are these well heeled military mandarins crying wolf so very often these days? What are they truly scared of? Could it be that their comfortable sinecures are threatened? That NATO, an organisation that came within an inch of losing its reason for existence at the end of the Cold War, could be once again threatened by a permanent peace breaking out?

NATO has used the fear button time and time again in recent decades. Like the police without thieves and priests without sinners, NATO without a war or threat of war, becomes redundant. So many career ladders are at stake, so many children and grandchildren need putting through an elite education system somewhere. So much status and self-worth may go down the Swanee if NATO no longer has a place in the world.

And if NATO falls what happens to all those whose salaries rely on NATO, the backroom boys and girls and all those little service industries, not to mention the “defence” industries that rely on new orders coming in. What about all those fine metal vehicles that need maintained and lovingly looked after? The NATO matrix is enormous. Contemplating the whole thing going belly up would simply be unconscionable, would it not?

NATO: MAKING FEAR PAY

The above would be NATO’s mission statement in world where things were always given the right label. Fear has served NATO incredibly well. Many might think there are fears enough to keep it going in perpetuity. However, this would be missing the bigger picture. The unmistakable signs of a wholly different world are emerging and emerging on an almost daily basis.

THE MULTIPOLAR WORLD

A world where one country or even one country and its proxies could dominate everyone else is ending. The signs are clear that multiple nations are shucking off their chains, long held tight by the western powers. They are beginning, one after another to snub their noses at their one time jailers, abusers and exploiters. Now the fear is reversing in direction. It is headed west these days.

The world that nations such as China clearly hope for is a world where trading, communicating, dialogue, agreement and cooperation supersede in priority what kind of system of governance divides nation from nation. That new world seeks the long run solution of maintaining links rather than breaking them with violence. The order of the day is to find ways to understand each other better, not how to batter each other down.

You can perhaps understand therefore why some people in high places are screaming “War!” so loudly now. Fear is certainly in the air. But that fear is not of coming war… but of peace.