Wars are not about armies, fighter planes, missiles, and strategies. Wars essentially mean death and destruction; wars inflict unimaginable miseries on innocent citizens, who are neither combatants nor have a say in the politics leading to conflicts. They suffer. Their dreams shattered, lives ruined, homes and livelihood destroyed, they are doomed to wander for survival. Millions and millions suffer unspeakable agony because someone or a good few people acted in insanity, or based on mean power calculations, without caring for the cruelties their political machinations will entail. Mankind has suffered countless conflicts, as bad as the Second World War, which killed around sixty to eighty million people. Recent military invasions, from Iraq to Afghanistan, have failed to yield desired results, emphasizing the futility of armed conflict. The less said the better about Israel-Palestine violence which is a shameful illustration of inexplicable civilizational madness.
Ukraine has witnessed shocking devastation as Russian forces bombed cities, including civilian habitations. Missiles have rained on schools and hospitals; while the official estimate puts the number of civilian deaths at around a thousand, the toll could be much higher. The scale of tragedy can be assessed correctly by the destruction of cities like Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Mariupol. Around three million Ukrainians have fled their homes and entered Poland, Slovakia, Romania, Hungary, and Moldova. Though these neighbouring countries demonstrated exceptional compassion to the evolving humanitarian crisis, the massive refugee problem they will face in the future is bound to create unforeseen complications. Apart from hunger, livelihood, and shelter, the struggle and pain of millions of refugees cannot be explained in words. Human beings around the world should have an idea about the suffering of fellow humans, except probably the brutalized politicians who plan and execute such carnage.
Warfare experts who deal in artillery and strategies need to pay some heed to these details: the sick, the orphaned, the homeless need care amidst firing and fear. Those fleeing for life need food and shelter. Reports suggest surrogate mothers are waiting in bunkers for people to take their newborns. Where will the newborns go? Have they arrived on earth to hail Vladimir Putin’s nastiness? Have they arrived to suffer the avoidable consequences of Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s false bravado? Have they arrived to decode the pretentious machinations of US-led NATO? Or, they arrived to lead a normal life in a civilized world where joys and tears of human existence aren’t created by warships and missiles? When will the leaders learn? How many more wars? How much more brutality?
According to the United Nations Development Programme, primary data indicates that 90% of the Ukrainian population could be facing poverty and extreme economic vulnerability. Generations will bear the scars of this political madness. If the war drags on, it will affect the global economy and exacerbate the hunger crisis. It will push prices of essential commodities in most nations, while many countries rely on Russia for their energy requirements, Ukraine is a major exporter of food grain. Disruption in food and oil supply chains affects the world. The impact on financial assistance to people suffering famine, pandemic and other diseases will also get affected.
Global leadership has failed once again. The expectations that post-Covid international order will be more sensitive and more sensible, less greedy and less cruel, have evaporated in the air. Diplomacy and tolerance have been crushed by military might and intolerance. What doctrine the new global order seeks to promote - that the powerful will trample the weak under their feet? That the sovereign nations can be mutilated at will if a maniacal ruler in the vicinity is itching to play morbid games? What is the worth of America and European nations’ pledge to protect democracies? The message from the recent conflicts is simple - despotic leaders cannot be trusted. Democratic leaders with uncontrollable greed and amorality cannot be trusted either. The jingoistic cry of nationalism isn’t the panacea for rising poverty and inequality. The world requires leaders with commitments to peace and justice; leaders who would take the moral way out of a complex situation. Dirty tricks of expansionism, looting natural resources by violating the territorial integrity of sovereign nations, false conflicts to sustain the war industry should have been discarded by the civilized world by now. Learn from history; another world war in the nuclear age will trigger unimaginable devastation. In short, the world needs to reinvent the spirit of Mahatma Gandhi, the sage who had the insight of anticipating the consequences of violence.
