Are We Sleepwalking Towards Nuclear War?

In late May this year the Global Peace Index 2011 results were released to the public. These were their key findings:

• The world is less peaceful for the third straight year
• Due to an increased threat of terrorist attacks in 29 nations
• A greater likelihood of violent demonstrations in 33 countries
• Arab Spring unrest heralds biggest ever change in rankings, Libya tumbles 83 spots
• Iceland bounces back from economic woes to top ranking
• Somalia displaces Iraq as world’s least peaceful nation
• Violence cost the global economy more than $8.12 trillion in 2010
• US peacefulness shows minimal change

Depressing, but widely predictable, research.

Indeed, I’m sure you would agree with most of these results. And, thinking about it, the world is just going to go from bad to worse. You might frown at my pessimistic attitude or even endorse it. Either way, many argue we are in the ‘perfect storm’ of global conflict possibilities:

·         Dwindling resources – As countries struggle to pay the cost of imported raw materials, will they turn to their war hungry military chiefs? Was Iraq 2003 just that? Things can only get worse as fossil fuels are greedily used up at a frightening pace. Unless science can come up with solutions, war beckons.

·         Global warming – A worrying reality that’s been ignored in these times of awful, but necessary, austerity. Although The West is making some progress, China is building one coal station a day. Global warming may lead to a war of water in arid countries, especially South America and the Middle East. To add insult to injury, analysts are predicting a Middle Eastern arms race, global warming or not.

·           Arab Spring  - Although only short term in the grand scheme of things, Libya and Syria in particular have faced the wrath of government brutality. Will it end, or enter into a new phase of government crackdown? Only history will tell.

·         Changing power – We live in a time of developing economies powering on at full steam, whilst the old world of the west stagnates. However, the USA’s military stubbornly refuses to stand down, blinded by the thirst for power and serving a country that many believe is ‘on the way down’. And, as we know, when someone is threatened their first instinct is to fight back. ‘Losing is not an option’ may be a typical Hollywood cliché, but that’s a policy that American presidents may choose to follow in the next 100 years. And that’s something that’s almost guaranteed to get ugly.

These theories are backed up by Cambridge expert, Nicholas Boyle, who believes that 2014 will be the deciding year of the 21^st century.

“Everything, in the end, may depend on whether America can act more imaginatively to that decline than Britain was able to do in the years before 1914”, he claims.

"My thesis is that we have got another crisis to come, and you can already see that in the questions being raised over the debts of nations rather than private credit debts.”

If the 21^st century does leave a legacy of poverty and debris behind, it will just follow the pattern of history. For example, in the last 500 years there has always been war and violence in the early part of their respective centuries. In fact, each period of violence started between the first 14-17 years of the new centuries. From world war 1 to Napoleon, it’s all part of one big pattern, according to Professor Boyle.

Whether we are in the calm before the storm or at the start of a new era of global cooperation, the 21^st century will be a substantial challenge to a brave new world. Bring it on.