In a world beset by a seem­ing­ly ever-metas­ta­sis­ing Pandora’s box of  life-alter­ing, if not end­ing threats, for those with the means and respon­si­bil­i­ty of elim­i­nat­ing, or at the very least ame­lio­rat­ing them, the French philoso­pher Voltaire offers a wor­thy piece of advice: “No prob­lem can with­stand the assault of sus­tained thinking.”

At the moment, the ten­den­cy is more towards vis­cer­al reac­tion and quick fix, both of which trans­late as tem­po­rary at best.
The NATO lead­ers expand­ed the alliance with a remark­able lack of con­sid­er­a­tion as to the effects of putting Moscow’s for­mer sub­jects into the mil­i­tary embrace of its tra­di­tion­al foes. Leav­ing noth­ing between NATO forces and Moscow but a flat plain that both Napoleon and Hitler swept across, is hard­ly con­ducive to eas­ing ten­sions, nev­er mind Vladimir Putin’s mega­lo­ma­nia and paranoia.
No doubt more think­ing has gone into coun­ter­ing how the Russ­ian leader’s view of his­to­ry and his future turned into war on Ukraine. How­ev­er, “bet­ter late than nev­er” is hard­ly a sound basis for for­eign or strate­gic policy.
Yes, Ukraine is brave and deserves help. Yes, Rus­sia is con­duct­ing itself in an evil way and is undoubt­ed­ly the West’s ene­my. But both fac­tors demand care­ful, unemo­tion­al, long-term actions, the con­se­quences of which ought to be care­ful­ly considered.
So far, the response has been to throw mon­ey at it in the form of ever-increas­ing arms sup­plies and defence spend­ing, the glob­al strate­gic equiv­a­lent of social media addicts faced with a Tik­Tok challenge.

                         COMPOUNDING INIQUITY

The worst exam­ple is Pres­i­dent Joe Biden’s deci­sion to sup­ply Ukraine with clus­ter muni­tions, a pri­ma facia case for charges of short-sight­ed­ness and turpi­tude if ever there was one. 
As the 2022 UN Clus­ter Muni­tion Mon­i­tor Report put it: “Clus­ter bombs are weapons designed to be scat­tered over large areas, con­tain­ing sev­er­al hun­dred “mini-bombs” called sub-muni­tions. As they make no dis­tinc­tion between civil­ians, civil­ian prop­er­ty and mil­i­tary tar­gets, clus­ter bombs vio­late the rules of inter­na­tion­al human­i­tar­i­an law.”

The U.S. refus­es to sign the treaty ban­ning clus­ter muni­tions, and used them in Iraq and Afghanistan. Cov­er­ing the after­math of  “Oper­a­tion Ana­con­da”, one of the first  major bat­tles of the inva­sion of Afghanistan, I was with­in a cou­ple of feet of step­ping on one when the mil­i­tary escort yelled a warn­ing. No men­tion of them had been made in brief­in­gs about the oper­a­tion and had it not been nec­es­sary to point one out, I’m in no doubt none would have been forth­com­ing. And I’m will­ing to bet some of them are still wait­ing for a passerby.
Among the oth­er non-sig­na­to­ry nations are Rus­sia, Chi­na and North Korea, which brings to mind a quote attrib­uted to the philoso­pher Aesop, 2,500 years ago: “A man is known by the com­pa­ny he keeps”.
Had the wise Greek been around today, he might have includ­ed a phrase to include the way lead­ers and oth­ers relate to what the author and polit­i­cal thinker (and FULL DISCLOSURE: long-stand­ing friend) Robert Kaplan termed prob­lems with­out pass­ports, such as pan­demics and the cli­mate cri­sis, which are beyond the reach of any one coun­try to address and are grow­ing more extreme and existential.
As Shake­speare not­ed in Ham­let: “When sor­rows come they come not as sin­gle spies but in battalions”.
The most press­ing one in the “with­out pass­ports” cat­e­go­ry is cli­mate change.
The recent glob­al onslaught of storms, wild­fires and a string of what sci­en­tists say were quite like­ly the hottest three days in Earth’s mod­ern his­to­ry, have done much to bring the prob­lem to the frontal lobes of even those whose default brain-set­ting is an oleagi­nous slur­ry of “me, me,
me” and denial.
Now they, and those with the pow­er to address the issue, need to take  heed of one of the best sum­ma­tions I’ve seen so far: “Cli­mate change is the quin­tes­sen­tial “threat mul­ti­pli­er” — fuel­ing ener­gy, health, water and food inse­cu­ri­ties, set­ting back our progress on eco­nom­ic and human devel­op­ment, tur­bocharg­ing what is already the worst peri­od of forced dis­place­ment and migra­tion in his­to­ry, and fur­ther exac­er­bat­ing insta­bil­i­ty and geopo­lit­i­cal ten­sions and flash points.”

                           CHANCES ARE…

   Over­com­ing that would seem to be a Sisyphean task, not least because like the punishment’s name­sake, the col­lec­tive trans­gres­sion of human­i­ty is greed.
Unlike the trans­gres­sor who had to eter­nal­ly roll a boul­der to the top of a moun­tain, only to have it roll down again, how­ev­er, we have a wealth of evi­dence, ideas and solu­tions avail­able to change our fate. But many of them are being left on the bench as sub­sti­tutes, even though, to con­tin­ue the sports metaphor, we’re on the los­ing side of the score­board, the clock is run­ning down and there’s no pro­vi­sion for over­time or penal­ty shoot-outs. The only option is to put fresh legs and inno­va­tors into the game.
The wis­dom and exam­ples of his­to­ry are there to be tak­en to heart. The press­ing and open ques­tion is whether there is the will and the self-efface­ment to do so.
It is up to us to demand a pos­i­tive answer.

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