The “harvest” of events over the past ten days has been remarkably abundant. It is not every week that the political equation in the United States, the “leader of the free world,” is transformed, with legislative power shifting from the Republican right to the Democratic liberal camp, while the states of the “Deep South” complete the dramatic leap, altering political maps and loyalties that have endured for a century.
Nor is it every week that “the tables are turned” in Israel, a country long accustomed to the maneuvers, deceptions, and political blackmail of Benjamin Netanyahu, until opponents from across the political spectrum found common cause, at least temporarily, in opposing one of the era’s most formidable figures. It must be acknowledged that this individual reshaped the Jewish state in his own image and according to his personal interests.
Moreover, we are now living through the confusion of a fearful and bewildered world, caught between the “known unknown” and the “unknown known.” Technology has expanded beyond the limits of human comprehension, its restraints, safeguards, and algorithms slipping free. We find ourselves suspended between the open secrets held in the chambers of cyber giants and skies closed to transportation, commerce, diplomacy, and human interaction.
Meanwhile, politicians no longer seem more capable of grasping the consequences of decisions on war and peace than ordinary people are of understanding what is happening around them. Nor can they fully comprehend what might protect citizens, their families, and their livelihoods in the absence of a “safety net” that artificial intelligence has effectively begun to dismantle.
These days, we meet friends and acquaintances who ask about “predictions” concerning a war with Iran. They ask whether President Donald Trump has truly resolved to bring down the rule of the mullahs. Others openly express concern about repeated government warnings, here in Britain, of “something” looming on the horizon that requires caution and stocking up on supplies.
This comes amid a strange and ambiguous atmosphere in which no one knows exactly who the enemy is, what purpose is being pursued, or what kind of weapon is to be used.
Will canned food, bottled water, and batteries really save us? We have become, as the popular saying goes, “like a deaf person at a wedding,” completely unaware of what is happening around us.
Can our democracies convey our questions and fears to those we imagine know far more than we do? After all the experiences of the past, from the Vietnam War to the Iraq War and then the war in Ukraine, can we still believe that our “free” choices at the ballot box are enough to give us governments that are wise, responsible, and honest?
The truth is that today, despite astonishing scientific and material progress, we remain unable to connect one issue to another: deprivation and extremism, religious fanaticism and counter-fanaticism, aggression toward others, and even the contradictions within the same camp.
We lived through long decades of the Cold War, during which the so-called “Free World” confronted the nations behind the Iron Curtain. In those years, many Western “hawks,” such as former US Secretary of State General Alexander Haig, theorized not only about alliances of containment and encirclement but even about the possibility of fighting “limited nuclear wars” (!).
Likewise, in the rush to build alliances and counter-alliances, world leaders, East and West alike, cheapened the noblest principles and justified supporting every form of zealotry and extremism. The consequences included restrictions on freedoms, slower economic growth, the marginalization of talent, and an endless series of proxy wars, all while a major conflict was rendered impossible by the threat of hydrogen bombs.
Yet the great irony was that the historic victory the Western bloc could not achieve militarily was ultimately enabled economically by its own rival, the Eastern bloc.
Thus, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Germany’s reunification, and the collapse of the Warsaw Pact, it became clear that a high proportion of the peoples of Eastern Europe, whom Western hawks had preferred to see “dead rather than communist,” were in fact considerably more right-wing than those of Western Europe.
This became evident not only in East Germany, home to some of the strongest bastions of neo-Nazism, but also in countries such as Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and several former Soviet republics.
Conversely, after the Afghan War, which contributed significantly to the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States and its NATO allies discovered that the “hell” of communism had been easier to deal with than the “paradise” of political Islam, which they had long nurtured as a counterweight to regional and global leftist movements.
But let us return to the present.
Today, doubts and concerns loom before us. Serious doubts and fears that expose the declining capacity of political systems labeled “democratic,” not only in practicing good governance but also in strengthening democracy itself, safeguarding freedoms, upholding justice and human rights, and respecting the rule of law and institutions.
Here, and only here, can we place our confidence in the possibility of preserving a healthy international community, one that protects peace and upholds human values.
