The most defining feature of the 21st century is that this is an extremely sensitive time of human history when the greatest caution is urgently needed to guide the world to safety from the unprecedented perils of weapons of mass destruction as well as many serious environmental problems.
Unfortunately, since the dawn of the 21st century, instead of caution and wisdom what we have seen is the most irresponsible behavior on the part of some of the most powerful decision makers of the world whose decisions can impact the entire world.
While several factors and forces are involved here, the most harmful impacts have come from the decision-makers based in the leading centers of imperialism, or its collaborators and vassals, in North America and Europe.
While all phases of imperialism have led to highly distressing results, this phase has been extremely sad as the forces of imperialism have also been becoming, in the form of an abbreviation, extremely SAD—stupid, arrogant and dangerous.
The period of unipolar years created by the disintegration of the Soviet Union lasted for about 25 years. During this period, the forces of imperialism became extremely arrogant, and this extreme arrogance led them to behave increasingly in non-rational ways, guided by highly aggressive thinking based predominantly on an everlasting unipolar world dominated by the USA. This thinking in turn provided a cover to hide increasingly massive and systemic corruption based in the military-industrial-politician complex as well as other big businesses, financial speculation and tax havens. Based on this, power got increasingly concentrated in the hands of a small number of very powerful persons, several of them identified with the deep state, making it difficult to bring any meaningful change through normal democratic processes.
As decision making is increasingly in the hands of the top 1 per cent to advance the interests of the 1 per cent (or perhaps 5 or 10 per cent), evidence-based, rational and democratic discourse has to be increasingly not just discouraged but also disabled and discredited so that the 1 per cent decision making can continue unabated. When the discourse of the 1 per cent is not accepted by the people then all sorts of distortions are created in the system so that whatever else happens, the voices of truth and meaningful change are weakened. So the chances of one kind of distorted decision-making being replaced by another kind of distorted decision-making increase, while certain powerful interests continue to be protected from behind the scene. In this system certain forms of corruption despite being extremely dangerous (for example corruptions relating to military-industrial complex) take place quite openly without any effective action being taken against them as many of the most powerful decision makers are themselves involved deeply in these corruptions.
All this would have been highly dangerous in any situation but in a situation of huge accumulation of weapons of mass destruction as well as very serious environmental problems, this become life-threatening for the entire world. Hence what we have seen in recent times is that even the inadequate treaties and frameworks created for disarmament and for resolving the most serious environmental problems have been getting weakened and distorted. Thereby the safety and even the survival of all the people of the world as well as the next generations has been getting very adversely affected.
Hence the most dangerous trends and decision making in the present day world must be checked before it is too late. It must be equally clear that to achieve this the most dangerous decision making by the forces of imperialism, their collaborators and their vassals must also be checked by a peaceful and transparent mobilization of all concerned people of all countries.
In their arrogance the forces of imperialism have been behaving in such reckless ways that the chances of nuclear war and World War 3 have also increased significantly in recent times. This is why the forces of imperialism and their recent behavior should be called extremely SAD—stupid, arrogant and dangerous. They are increasingly unable to even take care of their own interests, increasing dangers and threats for everyone, for foe and friends and even for themselves.
Hence three aspects of the present-day world are very clear. Firstly, the world is passing through very serious and sensitive times endangering basic safety of people and all forms of life. Secondly the forces of imperialism are to a large extent responsible for creating some of the biggest dangers and for standing in the way of solutions. Hence the task of creating a safer word necessarily involves a big peaceful movement of people to weaken and defeat imperialism to create the conditions in which rational, evidence based decisions for creating a safe world, based on peace and justice, can be created.
Of course this does not mean replacing a USA-led world with a China led world or any other kind of unipolar world or dominance. No single country or group of countries should dominate the world and nobody can claim yet to have found any ideal kind of society which best meets the conditions of safety and sustainability, peace and justice. Hence we can say that creating a world based on justice and peace, sustainability and safety, protection of environment and all forms of life is the most noble task for which the entire world has to work a lot as at present the world is very, very far from these ideals. To move and progress in this direction, it is necessary to resist and defeat imperialism and all the terrible thinking and ideas on which imperialism is based.
Bharat Dogra is Honorary Convener, Campaign to Save Earth Now. His recent books include Plant in Peril, Protecting Earth for Children, Man over Machine, A Day in 2071, Earth without Borders and India’s Quest for Sustainable Farming and Healthy Food.
