by ASHRAF JEHANGIR QAZI
To be weak is to be wrong/ To be right is not enough/ To be good/ You need to be strong.
We are at a turning point of regional and global history because of several seminal developments. The moral, institutional, political, and economic degeneration of the US. The berserk aggression of Israel, which has finally destroyed the credibility of the US as a force for regional and international stability.
The realisation among Arab elites that they can no longer rely on a trade-off between national humiliation and external protection against Arab streets. China’s recognition that its diplomacy will not significantly postpone a day of reckoning with a fearful and implacable US. The emergence of a vast Afro-Asian Muslim playground waiting to be co-opted by the East as deliverance from the West. India’s failure to transition from regional power status to international power status, and become a credible partner for the US against China.
Above all, climate change in the Anthropocene age, in which human activity becomes a principal determinant of the rate of global warming and the fate of plant and animal species, including human beings. Because of the irresponsibility of the principal industrial powers, climate change will shortly become irreversible.
Management of and adaptation to climate change may at most delay, but not avert the demise of human civilisation — possibly within this century. As a result, Noam Chomsky observed that far from the noblest of God’s creatures, mankind will be the stupidest and most short-lived of animal species. All of the above is reflected in the last reset of the Doomsday Clock, which at 89 seconds to ‘midnight’, is the closest yet to doomsday. The next reset next January will be even closer.
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