I am surely not alone in the observation that the world is spinning out of control. It’s a disconcerting feeling, to say the least, to even attempt to understand how we got here. Around the globe, we see nations and governments spiral into chaos and disorder. Are we now living in a world gone mad?
You wonder if all this insanity was a result of President Donald Trump’s MAGA madness, of a new world order he actively pursues and promotes. His actions have created ripples and waves across borders, with disastrous results. His trade war with China has affected other economies, notably Canada. The arrest of Meng Wanzhou, CFO and daughter of the founder of Chinese telco giant Huawei, in Vancouver at the behest of Washington drew a harsh response from Beijing—two Canadians in China were jailed on spying allegations, and then another two were put on death row. It also cancelled close to US$4 billion in Canadian agricultural exports.
In Asia, Hong Kong was rocked by pro-democracy protests that sprung from Beijing’s push for an extradition bill in the former Crown Colony’s legislature that would have allowed extradition from Hong Kong to the mainland. The protests have grown more violent and frequent, and a resolution is nowhere in sight.
In the Middle East, a Ukrainian commercial jet was shot down by an Iranian missile. All 176 passengers on board were killed, including 63 Canadians. This, after President Trump ordered the assassination of Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani. Though loathed and hated by much of the Western world for his notoriety and brutality, Trump’s brazen actions to unilaterally act without clear justification, much less any compunction to follow the rule of law, leaves the world at the edge of its seat, unsure of what the future now holds.
These events and developments are, in some way, intertwined. And the absence of even a semblance of the rule of law leaves us wondering just how much time we have left before the world is thrown into further turmoil. This is the frightening reality we find ourselves in now. It may seem so far away for most, but history has taught us that geopolitical events all redound to a single arena of resolution.
Nature has also taught us, as it continues to teach us today, that while we may have 195 countries in this planet, it is, at the end of the day, just one planet. We only need to look at the wildfires in the Amazon, Australia, and the US, or the volcanic eruptions in Mexico and the Philippines, and understand how these episodes affect not just one part of the planet but the entire globe. It’s just one big backyard folks, and we can’t say anymore that we kept our part clean, the other parts are not our problem.
What happens in Hong Kong affects all of us. What happens in Tehran affects us too. And in Kiev, Moscow, Beijing, Manila, and other parts of the planet. How much more convincing will we need to realize that we all in the same boat, and when one end is tipped, the other end topples? Humans can be so dumb sometimes.
