“The world is in grave danger of a general confrontation.”
Even as the world was starting to emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic with lower daily case loads and easing of restrictions in most parts of the world, Russian president Vladimir Putin on February 24 launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. This prompted the United States and its Western allies to redeploy its troops in Europe and impose massive economic sanctions against Russia.
With the sanctions failing to dissuade Putin from his military adventurism, the world, particularly U.S. and its NATO allies, is at a loss on what to do next. A direct military confrontation with Russia is off the table as of this moment. Russia, with its vast nuclear arsenal, has the capability to unleash a destructive war against the West that can only spell nuclear Armageddon. So far, the West’s only recourse is to arm the Ukrainians and to cripple the Russian economy with punitive sanctions.
Only history can judge who is at fault here. Of course, the fault lies on whoever is talking. Is it Putin who attacked Ukraine without provocation, or is occupying Ukraine a matter of national security interest to nullify an existential threat being posed by the U.S. and its Western allies? Is it the fault of the Western countries, led by the U.S., which has taken actions to make Russia insecure? After Ukraine, what is Putin’s next move? Will China take advantage of the situation and now make the move to invade Taiwan and occupy other contested islands in the South China Sea?
Despite the many imponderables, one thing is certain. The world is in grave danger of a general confrontation, a full-scale war between the West on one hand and Russia and China on the other. We are tethering on the precipice of destruction, more so because the antagonists are armed with nuclear weapons that can bring mutually assured destruction. Never since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 has a nuclear confrontation between US and Russia been so close as now.
Overseas Filipino Workers in Ukraine and others working in the neighboring countries will be adversely affected. On the home front, the flow of goods, including gas and wheat used for bread will be disrupted, and that among others will jack up inflation further. This can be devastating to the millions of impoverished Filipinos who are still reeling from the effects of the pandemic. The Japan-based global investment firm Nomura predicted that a steep rise in oil and food prices triggered by the war in Ukraine could hit Asian economies hard, with the Philippines among the biggest losers. With COVID-19 subsiding for now and the economy, moribund as it is after years of sluggishness due to the pandemic, slowly gaining traction, it is so unfortunate that we are once again faced with another grave problem.
The Ukraine crisis has exposed again the vulnerability of our country to global events. Neoliberalism really has to be rejected by our leaders – it makes us more vulnerable. We must have a strong independent foreign policy. In this case, we do not necessarily side with the United States even as we strongly condemn the invasion and war as an instrument of a country’s foreign policy. In May, we need to elect a president who is mature, an adult, a hard worker, one who listens to experts, is a strategic thinker and one that is creative and decisive.
We need leaders like Pope Francis who broke protocol and visited the Russian after that country invaded Ukraine. In his weekly audience, the Pope said his “heart is broken.” He is quoted as saying, “Those who make war forget humanity. It does not come from the people. They don’t consider the everyday lives of people but put partisan interests before everything and trust in the diabolic and perverse logic of weapons, which is the furthest thing from God’s mind.”
Pope Francis also used his Twitter account @Pontifex to forcefully affirm his “no to war” in Ukrainian and in Russian: “Jesus teaches us to respond to the diabolical senselessness of violence with God’s weapons: with prayer and fasting. May the Queen of peace preserve the world from the folly of war”. The Pope also recalled a quote from his encyclical Fratelli tutti: “Every war leaves our world worse than it was before. War is a failure of politics and of humanity, a shameful capitulation, a stinging defeat before the forces of evil”.
This coming Ash Wednesday, March 2, is the start of the Lenten season. Pope Francis has asked that it be a dedicated day of prayer for peace in Ukraine. It is a great opportunity for us to ponder, reflect on what God’s plans are for all of us, most especially to the people of Ukraine and the millions more who will be directly and indirectly affected by the conflict in Ukraine. Above all, this is a moment of conversion. Let’s make use of that opportunity.
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