-OpEd-
BOGOTÁ — It seems to be a time of chaos everywhere as we’re forced to watch wars, invasions, indiscriminate attacks, mass migration, dictatorship and destruction. It is as if the world were in a process of destruction, with politicians and rulers ditching decency to lunge at each other, no holds barred.
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The mess is not just in Gaza and Ukraine. Let us not overlook the humanitarian calamity in Sudan, across the Sahel or in Latin America, where several dictatorships have pushed their nations into socio-economic desperation.
That is fueling the harrowing migratory flows that have marked our region in recent years, though we’re still waiting for the full social consequences of our environmental vandalism.
Generations consumed by conflict
Thanks to the Internet, we can see calamities unfold almost in real time, which is barely of use when it comes to doing anything about them. Who can stop the projectiles falling onto apartments in Beirut, Gaza or Kyiv? Worse than our impotence is its opportunistic exploitation by the powers that are all but reveling in the violence, with their brazen, public justifications of vile acts. Where is any significant outrage over the killing of defenseless civilians and, above all, children? Generational futures are being wrecked, but who is taking responsibility?
We’re seeing the end of diplomacy as a way of avoiding wars.
Wrecked, and perversely shaped in the case of millions of Jews, Palestinians and other Arabs, Ukrainians and Russians. It will be decades before these communities can tolerate or live alongside each other again. Today’s madness will thus engulf several generations fated to live in this juncture of history, and is itself the fruit of past hatreds and enduring resentments that fuel more hatred, like a self-perpetuating, infernal machine.
It appears we’re seeing the end of diplomacy as a way of avoiding wars. Quiet conversations seem to have morphed into loudspeaker sermons filled with brashness and incitement. How for example could Israel declare the UN secretary-general persona non grata on its territory, for not reacting to Iran’s missile attack as Israel had expected, without provoking an outrage among the international community?
Multilateralism in a divided world
Like it or not and regardless of its flaws and inefficiencies, the United Nations is the only global body providing a channel for dialogue between states. It should be the means of placating tensions given its global reach, presence in every troubled country and peacekeeping and mediating experience.
Do the great powers prefer a unilateral, hegemonic, order?
Born of the ashes of World War II as a tool to avoid another such calamity, it has today become as impotent as ordinary folk like you and me, thanks in part to the veto power of the five members of its Security Council. Their permanent Council membership no longer reflects the power they wielded in 1945, when they effectively ran the world. What would happen if the UN were to end or dissolve? Many would like that, no doubt, so they can flex their muscles and fire their artillery at will. Do the great powers prefer a unilateral, hegemonic, order? Is that the prospect?
On seeing pictures of the Middle East or Ukraine we may surely feel multilateralism has ended and a collective response to crises is no longer feasible. But we should see multilateralism, or measured dialogue among ourselves, as the only path to living together in peace, and the only alternative to the law of war.
