The imminent catastrophe

In a recent interview, Jack Ma, the Asian billionaire and founder of Alibaba, has opined that the third world war is likely to erupt due to technological advancements. The Chinese billionaire claimed that the first technological revolution caused the First World War and the second technological revolution caused the Second World War. He added that this is the third technological revolution. Jack Ma did not elaborate his points. However, he advised world leaders to move fast, urging them to repair the roof while it is still functioning.

The richest man of China is not the only one to have warned of a possible global conflict – albeit for different reasons. There are others as well who have been predicting the possible descent of the world into a chaos that might lead to a conflagration. Robert Farley of the Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce at the University of Kentucky has identified Syria, South Asia, the Korean Peninsula and the Baltic Sea as the flashpoints that could draw big powers into a conflict. He believes that in addition to these four flashpoints, the race in cyberspace between China, Russia and the US could also spell disaster for the world.

This year, in March, prominent author Youssef El-Gingihy painted a rather gloomy picture of the world. In an article for The Independent: he said, “In the 21st century, there are three key fronts emerging as the loci for future wars. The first is the Europe-Russia front with a new cold war triggered by the Ukrainian conflict. The second is the Middle East cauldron centred around Isis and the Syrian war. The third is the Asia-Pacific front with a face-off between the United States and China”.

The spectre of a possible conflict has created a ripple of excitement among arms traders – whom pacifists call the ‘merchant of deaths’. They have been working round-the-clock to equip various states with lethal tools of destruction. These merchants – led by the US – first offered Saudi Arabia an arms purchase deal of more than $300 billion. Now Qatar is also being cajoled into buying arms worth around $12 billion. The recent visit of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the second biggest democracy on earth secured a two billion dollar deal to buy drones from the sole superpower of the world. This is in addition to various defence contracts worth over $15 billion that New Delhi has signed since 2008.

Such deals will further stoke tension between states that have already enjoyed strained relations in the past. Last week, India warned China about the border road security threat. Earlier, Beijing made a formal protest by accusing Indian border guards of crossing from the northeastern state of Sikkim into its Tibetan territory to stop the construction of the road. Pakistan is wary of the deal between India and the US. Both states already have strained ties because of the arrest of Kulbushan Jadhav and the violence in Indian-Occupied Kashmir.

Tension is not simmering in South Asia alone. The Baltic, the Korean Peninsula and the Middle East are also smouldering. Instead of easing the growing tension, global powers and their arms manufacturers have seized this opportunity to sell the lethal tools of death and destruction. In a bid to improve the economy, Donald Trump has been signing lucrative arm deals with various states besides hurling threats at nuclear-armed North Korea to appease the military-industrial complex. Such recklessness in international affairs will not only spell disaster for the peninsula but the entire world as well.

The flames of hatred in the Middle East – where Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the US and the European powers have a great stake – must be extinguished. The regime-change formula has miserably failed. It has pushed regions towards destruction and the plotters of such change have not reaped the desired results. At the time of 9/11, the Hindu Kush housed a few thousand extremists. Now they have swelled into hundreds of thousands – from Libya to Somalia and Iraq to Afghanistan. The US and the West need to revisit their policy of war-mongering. What did Washington gain after spending around $4,000 billion on the war against terror that left 1.3 million people dead?

The catastrophes caused by the regime-change formula in Syria, Libya and Iraq should awaken the conscience of the international community. Statesmen need to shun their egos and work towards peace. Riyadh and Tehran should remember that Yemen proved to be a Vietnam for Egypt during the civil war of 1962 and will not hand any victory to the theocratic regimes of the region this time either. For the sake of peace, it is important that Riyadh recognises the legitimacy of Assad while Tehran must invest all its energies in placating the Shia population of Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. If Tehran insists on a majority formula in Bahrain, it will be left with no option but to adopt the same solution in Syria. The two rivals should also resolve their differences over the civil war in Yemen, allowing both the Houthis and the supporters of former president Hadi to have a fair representation in all branches of the state.

Washington must shelf its regime-change project and invest trillions of dollars into the reconstruction of Syria, Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan instead of orchestrating more political turmoil in Venezuela, Iran and other parts of the world. War is such an unbridled monster that eventually grabs its own creator as well. The Austro-Hungarian Empire launched the First World War by attacking Serbia. However, it ended up losing all its pomp and glory. Germany, which was fairly advanced, confidently pushed the world towards another conflagration. But it was in time reduced to ruins.

Far-right forces are ratcheting-up the hysteria of war in Europe, Russia and the US while religious bigots are spewing venom in India, the Muslim world and elsewhere. It is time the international community realised its responsibility and stopped the world from descending into chaos that might trigger an unimaginable destruction.

The writer is a Karachi-based freelance journalist.

Email: egalitarianism444@gmail.com