ROW Episode 30

In this episode we look to the war in Ukraine as evidence of the operation of two distinct yet simultaneous processes of disintegration and integration and explore how both processes seem to be driving humanity to the same goal of recognizing its essential oneness.

Transcript

Sovaida: 0:08

Hello and welcome to Reimagining Our World, a podcast dedicated to envisioning a better world and to infusing hope that we can make the principled choices to build that world. In this episode, we look to the war in Ukraine as evidence of the operation of two distinct yet simultaneous processes of disintegration and integration, and explore how both processes seem to be driving humanity to the same goal of recognizing its essential oneness. Delighted to have those of you who are able to join me be here with me. All right, let's dive in. As I've watched the unfolding disaster in Ukraine, I've been struck by the following three things. The first is how clearly we can discern the operation of two distinct yet simultaneous processes, a process of disintegration and a process of integration. The second thing I notice is that both processes, integration and disintegration, are gaining in momentum. They're both accelerating. And the third thing that strikes me is that both processes seem to lead to the same outcome. They have a shared goal, which is the tearing down and sweeping away of those barriers that have hindered humanity from attaining the next step in its collective evolution towards its maturity, towards its collective maturity. And that step is the step of the recognition of its oneness and eventually the building of its Unshakeable unity. You may recall way back when, in one of the earlier episodes, we talked about this idea that very often when new things are about to be born in life, in nature, in the world, we see these two processes at work, and the analogy that we used then was that of the caterpillar that transforms into butterfly. I'm not going to recap all of it, but we talked about the cocoon, that where things get really messy once the caterpillar has gorged itself enough, having eaten and eaten, and then it wraps itself in this cocoon. And then it literally starts to exude enzymes that lead to the destruction of its own body. So it's eating itself or, throwing acid on itself and disintegrating. And it's a chaotic goopy, disgusting process. But at the same time, we said that there are certain things called imaginal disks within the body of the caterpillar that we don't see, but that are these small groups of cells, each of which correlates to a part of the butterfly that is to emerge. And while this process of disgusting disintegration is going on, at the same time, these imaginal cells are starting to proliferate rapidly and turn into the parts of the butterfly. And when both processes have reached their climax the disintegration is complete and the integration, the development of the parts of the new butterfly is completed, then we're ready for this new creation to burst from its cocoon. I want us to bear that analogy in mind as we explore the ideas today in the context of what we're learning with this horrific war in Ukraine. Let's begin by examining the processes of disintegration, first of all. We don't need to belabor them, right? We know what they are. We're seeing the indiscriminate killing of innocents, including pregnant women, children, old folks, the bombing of hospitals and schools and holy places and homes and apartment buildings. The fact that half the children of Ukraine have been displaced. 3 million refugees in the course of one month alone have had to flee Ukraine. These are just some of the evidences of disintegration. As I say, we don't need to belabor them because we get plenty of information in the news. The more interesting question for today's purposes is in what way is this horror creating awareness, and what kind of awareness is it creating? Honestly, it seems to be rudely tearing from our eyes the scales that we have had in place apropos of a number of things. The first is the reality that we're very slowly and painfully starting to recognize, in undeniable fashion, the interdependence and interconnectedness of humanity and our essential oneness, that we all need each other. And that what happens to one of us, or to one country, affects those, the rest of us, or those of us in other countries. We're seeing this reality unfold, both in the effects of the conflict in Ukraine, and in the responses that we're crafting to it. For example, in the realm of energy, we're seeing that this conflict has created instability in energy markets, resulting in shortages of critical energy, oil, gas, coal in many parts of the world, resulting in turn in a spike in prices that affects the cost of transportation. Even in the United States, people are worried about not having enough money to be able to get to work and back because the cost of gasoline has gone up so much. And in other parts of the world where people by and large are so much poorer, one can only imagine the impact. The rise in cost of transportation also affects the price of goods and commodities, which then exacerbates inflation, which we've already been suffering from, and that again has a direct effect on the lives of you and me and ordinary people everywhere. To top it off, when central banks increase their interest rates, it also hits folks. Especially the poor folks suffer more than others. That's one area where we're starting to see that what happens in Ukraine doesn't stay in Ukraine, but affects the lives of ordinary people everywhere. Another is the food crisis, the looming food crisis that has been triggered by this conflict. Many of us have not focused on the fact that 33 percent of the world's wheat comes from the bread basket that is Ukraine and parts of Russia, but mainly Ukraine. 17 percent of our corn worldwide comes from there and 32 percent of our barley. In addition, the United Nations estimates that up to 30 percent, a third of Ukrainian farmland could become a war zone. Now, how is this affecting countries? Many countries rely for their staple on bread. And this is true in many parts of the world. The price of bread is going up rapidly. It's spiking. And we know from history, and not such the distant past, that the rise in the cost of bread leads to instability. In fact, it is what triggered the Arab Spring and all the turmoil and tumult. Now, the sanctions that we've imposed, so not just the conflict, but the sanctions that have been imposed in an attempt to end the conflict and to squeeze Russia, are also a cause of further pain, not just for Russians, but for people everywhere. Let's look at a simple example. A good chunk of the world's potash based fertilizer comes from Russia. And the price of this fertilizer has gone up by 40 percent. Without fertilizer, crops don't yield as bountifully and so we end up with a shortage of food and again a spike in food prices. To demonstrate the interconnectedness, I found this fascinating. The fertilizer in Belarus, which is also subject to sanctions during this war, is critical for major crops like soybeans. Brazil, which grows a lot of soybeans, imports most of its fertilizer from Belarus. And then it turns around and it sells most of its soybeans to China, which uses the soybeans to feed its livestock, cows, pigs, and chickens. Now that the prices have gone up, there's less fertilizer, fewer soybeans less food for the livestock. The price of meat is also going to go up, and there's going to be less crop yield. In summary, the United Nations in March of this year has told us that without this fertilizer, and we're just talking about fertilizer, 7.6 to 13.1 million people around the world could go hungry. Another instance where we see this interdependence and the fact that what occurs in one place affects us everywhere: the impact on poverty, education, and the pandemic. There was an interesting article written in one of the South African daily papers, The Maverick. It noted that the war in faraway Europe will be felt in every village and town of South Africa Even before missiles have been fired, they said, it will take a dreadful toll by diverting billions of dollars into rearmament instead of putting it into tackling poverty, pandemics, education, inequality, and the burgeoning climate crisis. Another piece of evidence that we are so interconnected is the nuclear threat. The danger of nuclear war is escalating with every passing day. And here's a fact that very few of us focus on. Even if we had a war that was limited geographically and limited in duration couple of days, it would, according to experts, result in 10 years of no summer. That would mean no crops. That would then leave one billion people of the world's population hungry. And then we have the threat of the use of other weapons of mass destruction like chemical and biological weapons and it's crazy to think that NATO is now sending equipment to the countries that are next to Ukraine, members of NATO, in order to test the soil and the air to see if chemical weapons are used. So the effects are not going to be confined to an area. Again, the effects are going to be global and are likely to also drag the rest of humanity, starting with NATO and the United States, into a war with Russia, resulting in presumably then a third global war, which is something we all really want to avoid. In short, one of the lessons that we should be learning from all of this is that is that the old game that we have played for such a long time of trying to maintain the equilibrium between various national interests is a futile game, because we live in a world in which we are basically so interconnected, we are a single organism. What we need to recognize is that we sink or swim together and that our interests are essentially fused. Which, by the way, was an insight that Jean Monnet, the gentleman who was the founding father of the European Union, recognized when he made his proposals for the creation of the European Coal and Steel Community, that is the foundation of what we know today as the European Union, and it is what brought peace to Europe until now, right? The peace in Western Europe is still intact so far. What we learn are that the interests of all nations are fused. I just wanted to Hammer that home. Now, the second thing that we learn from from this Ukrainian horror story that we are all watching is that our global institutions and laws and the systems we have in place to counter an act of unprovoked aggression that flouts clear international law with impunity are completely inadequate, because they were designed for a period of in which humanity was still immature. Times have changed, we have become more interconnected, and we now need systems that are designed and fit for purpose to take the reality of today's world into account. So we need to create institutions that are capable of reacting to challenges like territorial aggression quickly and effectively before the rot sets in. We're seeing how ineffectual the Security Council is in the discharge of its really primary responsibility, which is to maintain peace or to restore it rapidly. And we're also seeing that tools that we've had in our toolkit, like sanctions, although they can be effective up to a point, cannot be truly effective unless they're applied universally, unless everybody's on board with them. And we're seeing the effects of this not happening. There are a bunch of countries that have refused to impose sanctions. We've got countries with their own interests to think of, like China and India or Iran or the United Arab Emirates. They each have their own calculations about why they won't sign on to sanctions. The third lesson that we're learning from this disintegration is that our old habit of tackling global challenges with short term thinking and with taking into account narrowly crafted nationalistic self interest doesn't serve us anymore. Instead, we need to take the long view, be proactive and act on principle. Why is it we're learning this from the Ukraine crisis? Here's one way. One of the reasons we're in the pickle we're in now, this Catch 22, where there is this horrific war and the nations, like NATO, are afraid to jump in and help because they don't want to start a world war and they don't want to trigger a nuclear crisis, so we're kind of Catch 22. The reason why we're here is because of choices we've made in the past. This has a long story. One can start a long time ago, but even if we just go back to the 90s with the two wars fought in Chechnya, the world stood by and watched and did nothing. Then in 2008 we let things slide when there was that several day conflict or war over the two breakaway provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia in Georgia. Then Syria happened. The civil war in Syria and chemical weapons were used, from 2013 onwards. In 2017, we know that sarin nerve gas was used and chlorine was used over a long period of time. Again, the international community stood by and let things slide. Instead of coming together, standing in solidarity, and acting with determination to stop the horror there. In 2014, we had another opportunity with Crimea, with the illegal annexation of Crimea, and we stood by and let it happen. The natural takeaway from this series of events is for a nation to say,"Okay, I can act with impunity. And there's no deterrent system that is effective. There is no standing army representing the international community. There is no system of collective security. When people draw red lines in the sand, it's just words. It's not followed by action. And so that means I can do whatever I want." In some sense, we shouldn't be surprised to find ourselves now where we are with this war in Ukraine. And really the big question I'd like us all to keep in mind is, okay, we are where we are now. We're in a horrible situation, but let's start, as we deal with this situation, let's also start thinking proactively about,"What can we do so we don't find ourselves in a similar situation five years from now, 10 years from now, 15 or 20, where the stakes might be even higher?" We see this principle of thinking short term play out in other areas. Also, energy. The European Union entered into a deal with Russia to get two fifths of its energy resources from Russia. Even though it knew that Russia has in the past used energy as a means of holding countries hostage, if they don't like the policies they're pursuing. It makes no sense when you think about it, unless you're thinking very short term, like we need energy now, so we'll just do what it takes, and then we'll think about the consequences later. But now here we are. They're having to rapidly unravel that, and the United States has promised this past week to help the EU wean itself off its reliance on Russian energy sources and supply a certain amount by the end of this year, and the EU is planning to wean itself off completely by the year 2030. Between now and then we have another eight years. So what they're going to do, we're just going to have to cobble things together. The next thing that disintegration is teaching us is that the suffering is instilling a sense of responsibility in our leaders that has hitherto, frankly, been lacking. There's been a huge abdication of responsibility for the welfare of the world and its peace and security. And what was fascinating was seeing President Zelensky's call for the creation of new institutions that are capable of averting war. In his speech to Congress this past week, he says, today the world does not have such tools. And it's so true. Our current systems of global governance are not capable still of stopping this conflict. He says, old institutions don't work. So we need new ones. And he's called for a U24, which is an interesting idea, right? U stands for United for Peace, and 24 means that within 24 hours, a coalition of countries that want only to maintain peace in the world would have devised a system--collective security-- that is capable of responding to a crisis within 24 hours. That's what the 24 stands for. So here we have it, folks. This is the beginning of something that has been my dream for ages. I've been going on and on about it for 20 years. I've written five books that have covered the subject amongst many others and people always thought I was crazy, but unfortunately now we're seeing that the world is absolutely has to come to this. This system was really envisioned in the 19th century in the writings of what I believe is the world's biggest peacemaker, Bahá'u'lláh, who came from Iran of all places--almost hard to believe-- who talked in the middle of the 19th century about the need for creating a global system of collective security and an international standing force. How amazing is that, right? Anyway, we're also seeing this growth in the sense of responsibility of governments and nations and what's happening with countries that have hitherto been neutral like Sweden, Finland, and Switzerland stepping to the plate in order to help with the Ukraine war. More on that later. Now let's talk about the process of integration. So far we were talking about one of the twin processes, the process of disintegration and what we're learning, seeing in the Ukraine war with respect to that. Now, let's look at the other simultaneous process of integration. What's exciting is that we're seeing a lot of integrations. These are the imaginal discs, right? in the caterpillar that are starting to proliferate, that will bring about a new creation. That butterfly, that new civilization that we're looking forward to in this world, in which peace and security reign. So we're seeing, first of all, unanticipated unity between countries in Europe and the United States, which frankly people thought was not going to pass over imposing sanctions, trying to do something in the face of unlawful aggression. Secondly, unprecedented steps by Sweden and Finland who have always shirked away from wanting to join NATO and are now starting to seriously consider it after years of neutrality because they didn't want to anger Russia. Sweden is also sending military aid to Ukraine, and Finland is sending weapons and ammunition as well. This is really quite historic. Switzerland, which has long had a history of neutrality since 1815, since the Congress of Vienna had this long standing tradition, has also broken that tradition and has joined in with the imposition of sanctions. Then we see individuals putting pressure on companies who are doing business in Russia to pull out, even though it meant for many of these companies leaving behind very valuable assets, which were going to be confiscated by the Russian government. Individuals have also been rising up everywhere in the world. We see it in the neighboring countries where the refugees are fleeing. People have opened their doors to streams of refugees, taken them in. You see them on television and you see them saying,"I wish I could do more. I've taken in as many as I can. It's like nothing I can do is enough." We also see people in other parts of the world doing really creative things, like using the Airbnb app to book people's homes in Ukraine, even though they're not going to go use them, in order to be able to support the Ukrainian people and give them funds so they can get their day to day needs met. And yet we have a long way to go to bolster these forces of integration. Remember we said both of these processes are accelerating, gathering momentum, and both have to reach a climax. So we need to do a lot of mindful, intentional work to bolster and boost the forces of integration. Why is that important? Because to the extent we delay, we are going to enable more suffering, physical and mental, to happen. Our ability to boost the forces of integration will require us to overcome a natural tendency that we have in times of crises, which is to do one of two things, do more of the same or take a step back. When we hear talk of,"Oh, we're going to revert back to a new cold war. That's taking a step back. Been there, done that. Wasn't helpful. Let's not go there again." So those are our natural two tendencies. The third thing that we need to train ourselves to do, which is our third option, is to find what the famous Harvard psychologist Sean Aker calls the third way, which is, as he says, using the momentum of our collapse to catapult ourselves in a new direction, in a direction that we never imagined before. This is key. We need to be able to radically reconceptualize the way we want to structure our world. The effort we have to make has to be commensurate with the dangers we're facing. I love this quote from Robert Schuman, the foreign minister of France who was one of the creators of the European Union at its foundation, the European Coal and Steel Community. He says,"World peace cannot be safeguarded without the making of creative efforts proportionate to the dangers which threaten it." So what must we do? The first thing is to recognize that the articulation of lofty principles, while important, is not sufficient. We know we have this Responsibility to Protect principle that all the nations of the world agreed on in 2005 at the summit in New York at the UN. But principles have to be associated with institutions that are capable of giving effect to them. This is, I think, what President Zelensky meant when he talked about the need to create institutions that address the needs of humanity and recognize that we are all in this mess together, so to speak. The second thing we need to recognize, is that if you listen and look at what's being said, every nation really is clamoring for security. It wants to feel safe. It is a crying need. Some countries may use it as an excuse, but still, because we don't have a system that assures the security of all the nations of the world, they're able to maybe take advantage of this. Even in this conflict, Russia claims to be worried about its security. It worries about forces in NATO countries that border it. It worries about the melting of the snow and ice in the Arctic Circle. It has the very long border along the Arctic Sea, and it feels like it's going to be exposed. At least that's what it claims. So let's carve a system in which Russia's security can be assured. The Ukraine also gave up its nuclear weapons in 1994. It had, briefly, the third largest nuclear arsenal in the world. It gave it up in return for security guarantee from the U. S., the U. K., and Russia. NATO countries this week have clearly decided that they still need the nuclear umbrella to counter even conventional threats. So they're feeling insecure as well. Other countries are also seeking nuclear weapons. Saudi Arabia wants to feel safe in an area where it thinks Iran may have nuclear weapons. South Korea feels unsafe because North Korea has nuclear weapons and on. You see how this story unfolds. So this is where proactive thinking foresight comes in. If we don't do something now to create a system of collective security, we're going to get into an escalating arms race, including a nuclear arms race. That is not going to end well for us. Those nuclear weapons will eventually be used either deliberately or accidentally. So it is time now to build a global system of collective security that meets the needs of all nations. We need to radically re conceptualize our understanding of society, viewing it as a single organism, and to that end, build this system system of collective security. We talked about the details last time. I'm not going to go into detail, but remember each nation's arms have to be limited to a certain amount necessary to maintain order within its borders. Everything else has to be destroyed under international supervision. The system has to apply to everyone. There can't be opt outs. Everybody must agree that if one nation flouts the rules, all the nations bring that nation to heal, that government to heal, using a collective standing force that represents all of them. The way I see it, if the scientists were able to devise a vaccine, to put aside their egos, come together in a time of global crisis, collaborate, share their knowledge, share their findings and develop a vaccine in record time. In 11 months, not just one vaccine, but several vaccines, whereas in the past, it normally took 12 to 14 years. Surely our leaders in light of the dangers and threats we're facing can put aside their egos and their nationalistic egos and collaborate together and work tirelessly to craft a system of collective security in record time that will act as an inoculation, if you like, against war. We can do this. The reason why we need the system of collective security, again, let me be very clear. Another analogy that helps is what we have right now is completely inadequate. Sanctions are going to kill not just Russia, but all of us slowly, as we've seen. So to me, it's somebody who has pancreatic cancer and if you see the malignancy and it's still confined and it hasn't metastasized and spread in the rest of the body, you can go in and do a targeted kind of Whipple surgery to excise the mass, the contaminated stuff around it. Otherwise, you're going to allow the cancer to spread in the body and then you've got to apply a strong poison, chemotherapy, which is going to kill a lot of good cells and weaken the body system tremendously. There is so much we need to do. Let's focus. Let's start by building the system of collective security. We also need to think proactively. We talked about that. Long term proactive thinking versus short term and expedient thinking. And one of the areas in which we need to think long term is about energy. How do we create a global system where every nation has equitable access to energy to meet the basic needs of its population? And we can look at the European Coal and Steel Community, the pooling of energy resources in the hands of a supra national, say, global legislature. I've written a lot about this for those of you who are interested. I've written a book on this called Bridge to Global Governance that lays out a full prescription for how to tackle this issue. We also need to think proactively about how we're allocating resources in the world. In 2018, the world spent almost two trillion dollars on military expenditures. And Congress in the United States have just passed a bill for 13.6 billion to help Ukraine, half of which is humanitarian. And then they passed another billion. So what if we were to just stop building all these armaments? With a system of collective security with limited arms, you can, everybody can stop this escalating arms race, eliminate nuclear weapons and redirect all that money to into tackling the real challenges that we have. And lastly, we need to learn to elect fit leaders, who are fit to tackle the challenges of our time. We're seeing that poor leadership lacks foresight, fails to respond. When they respond, it's too little too late. And then they engage in incrementalism, bit by bit. So the way I think about it is, we've got a tsunami coming at us, and we're busy now putting sandbags out. To me, it's untenable that we could see this war in Ukraine coming. We were writing about it. We were reporting about it. Our intelligence agencies knew about it and yet the international community was paralyzed and was unable to step in and stop it before it happened. It's like seeing your child play on the train tracks and say,"Oh my gosh, there's a train coming. It's coming. It's coming. It's going to be another 10 minutes, another five minutes, another two minutes. Let me call an ambulance so that when that child is crushed, the ambulance can pick up the pieces." This is essentially what we've been doing with Ukraine--not that I don't feel strongly about it-- and we need to stop doing that. We need to actually get global collective systems in place. I agree that unilateral action is not appropriate and even acting in coalitions in today's world is not appropriate. We need to figure out a global system where we can all agree to act collectively in accordance with certain rules that we all agree on in advance. It has to be a rule based system. In conclusion, it's time to decide that we've had enough suffering, right? And that we need to be brave enough to radically reconceptualize and restructure our global society in accordance with the ideas we've presented, in order to boost--what?-- the processes of integration. Disintegration is doing its work all on its own. It doesn't need any help from us. And we need to make the establishment of peace a priority, because it's become existential now. Without peace, if we self destruct, if we get into a nuclear war, we won't have to think about poverty and social justice issues and climate change. We need to first survive in order to be able to tackle our other challenges. And finally, we have to act now as though there were not no tomorrow. So we don't find ourselves having this conversation five years from now or 10 years from now. We owe it to our children and our grandchildren to create a better world for them. So with that I want to thank you all. I will look at the comments. By the way, I've had some inquiries about, how does the system of collective security work? I wrote a book a number of years ago called Collective Security Within Reach. And it's available everywhere on Amazon. It actually lays out everything, including how you create a standing army, and what you do with a global legislature, and and a security council, and so on and so forth, and the system of collective security, and exactly the steps that would need to be taken to get us there. All right let me go to the comments. All great comments. Yes, the sooner the better. And someone's put electric cars. Yes, all of that too, because climate change is the other existential threat that we're facing. It was really wonderful to have the opportunity to be with you again. Thank you very much. And for those of you who are going to be listening to the recording, I hope that you find it of value and enjoy it. And please, if you do, share it. with your circles of friends, colleagues, family, acquaintances. Take care. Bye bye. That's all for this episode of Reimagining Our World. I'll see you back here next month. If you liked this episode, please help us to get the word out by rating us and subscribing to the program on your favorite podcast platform. This series is also available in video on the YouTube channel of the Center for Peace and Global Governance, CPGG.