Mankind and the world have travelled a long and tedious path to achieve what we enjoy today as various amenities in modern-day life. While travelling this path, nations and mankind have since time immemorial witnessed immense struggle and destruction. Apart from wiping out of civilisations due to natural calamities, world history is full of incidents where nations have waged war over other nations and people have suffered immeasurably. A pragmatic and comprehensive opinion can definitely be formed about the overall reasons behind such undesired happenings such as craving to expand territorially, gain more power, more wealth or more resources and may be even getting unquestioned subjugation of individuals or community of people. Mankind understood the futility of all these actions influenced by desires and took a wise decision by coming together to form the United Nations and ratified an idealistic charter with a new hope to see a peaceful and harmonious world community post World War II.
We are witnessing a change again and it is important that we understand the nature of this change and respect it, rather than keep denying it. Earlier, great players in sports dominated for longer periods and similarly in the fields of other professional activities such as movies and corporate, but now the times are changing and the period of domination is shorter and in most cases shared between more numbers of such professionals. Era of kings was denounced and so, we thought, was the era of dictatorship. World was supposed to turn more humane and considerate and if we analyse holistically it has. We can give numerous examples how the world has changed for better since the WWII in form of various nations growing economically providing succour to their populations, increased trade between nations thereby ensuring availability of all worldly goods at all places in the world and also research and provisioning of medicines for longevity and addressing health issues worldwide. The list goes on however, what we failed to undertake is taking adequate steps to guard against any such catastrophic occurrences of the past by timely and appropriately modernising the world organisation and providing it more teeth. The core issues need to be resolved first before we embark on a journey to world peace and that is where we are failing. Basic tenets of any relationship are trust and honesty. Display of these tenets by various nations is a must for long lasting reliable friendship and cooperation.
Challenge of Covid-19 is a biological emergency that humankind is facing now. We have overcome greater conflicts and destruction in the past and we should be assured that we would also overcome this one while ending up more resilient and strong for any such eventuality in future. More pertinent concern at this juncture would be to zero on to the causes of the same. This emergency is just one way the overall threat to mankind has manifested. There could have been many other ways however; the main threat is that we are not able to cope up with the challenging and changing times morally and ethically. This is more serious and in case we fail, then more and more such situations would be confronted by mankind in future with devastating results. As individuals we have adjusted to the change and are more considerate of views of partners and children. Families have become more understanding to the demands of all members and so is the requirement of all nations to be obliging and cooperative towards the needs of various other counterparts in the world.
Nations, same as individuals, are bound to have ambitions or the potential for growth would be suppressed. This somehow cannot be overarching on other nation’s interests. This basic prerequisite must be understood before any individual, family or nation sets a target to be achieved. Fair competition is a precondition prior to embarking on competition. The saying that all is fair in love and war has lost its relevance in the modern world as there is supposed to be no place for war. If we give place to war for resolving our differences then we do not deserve to be called a growing society and modern world. We would be failing in our responsibilities to our coming generations in case we give them a world which , rather than travelling towards a more prosperous future, has been pushed and relegated to the thoughts of the past. World cannot afford to have a war whether kinetic or cold and accordingly all the intentions of leaders of nations of the world should be to take adequate steps to ensure that there is no war.
Utopian or idealistic world is achievable and humankind must keep striving for it. The theory of realism and functioning in shades of grey must be discouraged worldwide. Evil in all forms must be destroyed and purity must be given ascendancy. While it is understandable why these things came into play during the course of our history but in the modern world, wherein we have achieved so much during the course of development these evil thoughts and behaviour have no place. Systems must function and laws must be upheld without bias or prejudice uniformly. Values, ethics and morality must be given priority over achievements, showoff and dominance. World must start celebrating ethical and moral behavior by nations and ethical nations must never be dominated and allowed to be perished or subjugated. Emphasis should be given to Giving rather than Getting. This is the only way forward for a prosperous humanity and a peaceful world as propagated in the preamble of the United Nations Charter.
When a nation bases its plan for growth on its own understanding of historical happenings then it must not infringe into territorial integrity of another nation. If in history some territory was with someone then during other periods it was not. We must have a start point for all assumptions of territorial demarcations and that should be, when the world order changed after WWII and the United Nations was formed with adoption of the UN Charter by most countries of the world. Nations signing that charter cannot claim that the basic premise of the country at that time was incorrect. If China has different perceptions of territorial demarcation of nations of the world then so do others but that cannot be termed as morally right or ethically correct? Also an effort to subvert other countries basic territorial integrity must be contested by all nations’ signatories of UN Charter unequivocally. Nations and leaders of the nations must respect other counterparts and should not violate other nation’s sovereignty or integrity quoting their own national interests.
Great Chinese civilisation with rich history and heritage is showing signs of being chained in its own archival thoughts and selfish intentions. Expansionist plans of China implemented by their previous rulers and now by the Xi Jinping regime is virtually challenging the status quo of the world which existed after WWII. Imagine if Europeans and British harvest such plans and start putting it in place, even China would be colonised again. It is naïve to believe that by mere military occupation people can be subjugated in modern era that denounces inhumanity and slavery. Forcible religious conversions are also detested uniformly throughout the world. It is quite perplexing that the most populous country and the second largest economy of the world would embark on fulfilment of a mission that is full of contradictions in the modern world. Too many rules and laws of the modern world have already been violated with impunity such as humanitarian, territorial and in the oceans. Morally and ethically China has failed to live up to the standards desired of P5 nations. Not only that, today they have unholy alliances with damaging plans of religious subversion and territorial gains as if the evil is contemplating to once again destroy humanity. World has to find a way to deal with this complex situation non militarily to ensure no one in future harvests such ambitions which encroaches on someone else’s rights and privileges. World community and the United Nations have to make such belligerent nations understand that territorial claims based on selfish intentions and misconstrued history have no place in the modern, civilised world.