It is difficult to convince people that journalists know no more than anyone else, that the age of exclusive scoops is now as remote as the Stone Age, and that whenever Trump so much as whispers or raises an index finger, hundreds of journalists and research centers around the world set about deciphering what it means.
People know perfectly well that you know no more than they do. But they want a word, any word, that might reassure them. When they ask whether war is likely, they hope you will say no. And when they ask about the odds of war versus peace, do not tell them you don't know. Just say, "Fifty-fifty." After all, those are the same odds facing NATO leaders and the world's generals.
The only certainty is that everyone is afraid. Never has the world known fear quite like this. The threats are serious. The warnings are grave in the morning and forgotten by the afternoon. Such a barrage of warnings was last seen in the days of China's confrontation with the "American paper tiger," before that giant grew into a power capable of making nations tremble without uttering a word.
The world has never experienced fear quite like what we are living through today, because it is a world adrift, without captains. Without guiding authorities. Without figures who command respect. Without institutions that carry any weight.
Everyone is missing in action.
The United Nations is searching for a Secretary-General who can rouse it from its coma. But what if it finds the secretary and discovers that the trust itself is gone?
Little by little, failure by failure, the United Nations has lost its influence, its prestige and its luster. It began with the brilliance and towering stature of Sweden's Dag Hammarskjöld, only to gradually lose its way in the hands of a succession of weak figures who commanded neither respect nor competence, nor even the credentials to justify their positions.
When the United Nations was established after the war, the world was still in awe of great names: Eisenhower, Churchill, de Gaulle and Stalin. Diplomats, too, were figures of comparable stature: George Marshall, Averell Harriman, Georges Clemenceau, General Weygand, and a whole generation of men adorned with the stars of victory.
How astonishing that the world should be so utterly bereft of great names, yet so overwhelmingly burdened with troubles.
