Progress has been so unstoppable that people's mere survival is increasingly threatened. At least that's what emerges from the just-published statements of competent data collectors about the trials of civilization.
Today, only one misunderstanding and one wrong assessment are enough for the nuclear destruction of humanity - UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres warned. And global warming, largely caused by inaction on nature, can lead to the extinction of the human race - the team of the international scientific team announced from America.
Now that this is known, the most powerful forces will do their best to prevent the announced apocalypse - one would think. Even a fool can know what's going on, but someone needs to understand it (as Einstein would say) and take appropriate security measures.
Unfortunately, such personnel are lacking. Due to the war in Ukraine, threats of using atomic bombs are multiplying. And at the same time, air pollution is increasing instead of decreasing.
In the meantime, outrages are pouring in, especially from the most powerful. Moscow admits that the goal of its invasion is to overthrow the government in Kiev. Washington would like the world to be divided into democracies and autocracies (except for those that benefit it). Beijing threatened (while this article was going to press) that the possible visit of the American congresswoman to Taiwan could be prevented by various military actions and turned into a new act of "overthrowing US global dominance" - as the Beijing Global Times reported. And Europe frowns at being forced to give up certain parts of the "welfare state" and in the midst of the summer heat, worries about how it will be heated in the winter if there is not enough gas from sanctioned Russia.
It seems it's time to move your foot from the gas pedal to the brake. The acceleration of competition between the great powers has gained so much momentum that it is harming international relations, democracy, the economy, supply, transport, ecology, and even themselves - it emerges from a series of analyses.
In all these sectors, the situation is extraordinary. The UN Security Council is chronically paralyzed, autocratic forces and manners are growing, inflation is rampant, food, fuel and medicine shortages are spreading, while the corona flares up again, many flights are canceled, and coal is once again called upon for energy extortion.
In none of the members of the big four - USA, EU, China and Russia - is the situation better than before the ongoing tightening of mutual relations, which followed on from the schisms during the pandemic. In that counterproductiveness, they worsened the general situation in the world, to whose prosperity they should significantly contribute.
If they really can't calm each other down, the time has come for them to at least moderate each other. And as soon as possible find a space for cooperation in order to at least mitigate the dangers that have loomed over humanity.
Among the rare encouragements are theses articles in the New York Foreign Affairs. The author finds that even in the Ukrainian war, doses of restraint are shown, although it does not seem so from the mass destruction of the aggressor. Because, the author states, the West and Russia continue to avoid an immediate conflict that would probably be a prelude to the third world war. It also points to the commitment of China and the US to avoid major incidents (such as the one that just went unannounced), noting that the only thing worse than a planned war is one that breaks out unplanned, due to recklessness or due to circumstances.
In these times of all kinds of unrestrainedness, restraint and moderation are rarities whose price increases for the sake of the common good. Extremism, which until recently was mostly a characteristic of only those ready to overthrow the rule of law, has meanwhile crept into many governments that are shaping this century. Practically everywhere, leaders who know how to harmonize national and international interests, the real place of their country in the world and the world in it, are a kind of rarity.
We also miss such a rarity. The government here takes extreme measures with internal dissidents, while trying to convince external big players that it can, which no other small one can, to appease both sides even though they are on a war footing with each other.
With slogans about the "Serbian world" and Serbia, which "will be forced to begin the de-Nazification of the Balkans", the Serbian flag bearers of delusion identified themselves with Russian ambition and propaganda. I guess they thought that we were destined for the status of a regional and wider power even though we are only the "unfinished business" of the real powers.
We have to realize that we are still in a gap. That we cannot treat the world as multipolar, and that our country is unipolar, that we depend on the agreements of great powers, and that we imagine that only one of us decides everything.
In order to get out of this contradiction, we need to do the opposite: to strengthen domestic pluralism, and to choose one side from the outside. Western, if for no other reason, and that according to the ecological principle - that one should live in harmony with the environment because otherwise one will suffer.
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