Not very many people alive today actively witnessed the first and second world wars, the holocaust, the slave trades, colonial terrors, etc. South Africa apartheid ended 35 years ago, and Rwanda appears to have recovered from its genocide at least.
Perhaps for these reasons, I have entertained a naive but common illusion that the waves of large scale global wars are now concluded in the history books, that they are humanity’s horrible past, and that we’ve evolved beyond self-destructives and cannibal instincts.
But these current events have made me reassessed how the world really works, I conclude that wars are never ended, they are only paused. They could be paused for 50 years or 100, but apparently humans have not yet deviced a way to live together without killing one another enmass.
The institutions such as UN, etc. that evolved after WWII are largely experimental, and their limited capacity to harmonise and coordinate inter-nation affairs has just unravelled pathetically before our very eyes.
The world has depended too much on America to play the world’s bride-groom, to take charge. And that role has been so pretentiously managed by the US that the world didn’t suspect its vanity, its weightlessness.
But Trump did it, he exposes America’s inherent democratic infancy and vulnerability more than any president in modern history. He shows us the futility of American exceptionalism.
The Congress has lost its voice, the Judiciary is meek, human rights, freedom of speech and everything we know to be true and stable about democracy are being compromised, and it’s all happening in the United States to whom the rest of the world is looking for global order and democratic leadership.
Now we realise how so powerless the ICJ and ICC are, issuing empty arrest warrants against Putin of Russia and Netanyahu of Israel without any strength to enforce it even in the US.
On Sunday 22nd of June 2025, the UN Secretary General Antonio Gutteres, among his many rhetorics says “peace cannot be imposed, it must be chosen”
That sounds more fancy than useful. Just another way of saying…Oh sorry ye’ people of the earth, our highly costumed International laws cannot be enforced according to morality and nobility, we can only hope and pray that countries willingly obey them, and if they don’t we are just going to sing the dirge, and go to bed…
But where does that leave all humanity if not in a state of anarchy? Donald Trump is on mood swings, UN, ICC, ICJ cannot enforce international laws, Putin is cheered on by Trump’s indifference to buffet Ukraine, China is predating Taiwan, Israel is slaughtering civilians and taking their lands in Gaza as the West claps, US joins the party to take its own pound of flesh on Iran, EU leaders are dazed by Trumpism and his tarrif ammunition, not knowing what to do with a US president that is going rogue, and driving the Western alliance off the cliff, with trade laws, human rights and international laws right in the trunk.
The world has run its full cycle to war, to peace and back to war in one century- 1925-2025. And now we can say WELCOME TO THE PAST
