As world descends to war, we focus on petty quarrels

‘No man is an island,’ is phrase first coined by the English poet John Donne, a poet and clergyman, in one of his poems written in 1624, about 7 years before his death and at a time when the ‘Age of Exploration’ is at its zenith.

And if this observation was true during Donne’s time, it is truer today in this age of global commerce, interconnectivity, and the Internet.

In other words, to say that we can continue to isolate ourselves by focusing on our domestic issues, “petty” in comparison to other developments elsewhere, is not only simplistic but also, a sign of our immaturity and yes, pettiness.

Our leaders and politicians are like children quarreling near a beach totally unmindful that a tsunami is headed our way and is about to swamp everyone and everything in its path.

And that “tsunami,” dear readers, is none other than war, W-A-R.

This is not scaremongering nor am I being an alarmist, dear readers. As I mentioned in my column last week:

“While our leaders are focused on probing truly “mundane” issues aimed at improving their public image and their chances in the coming elections while not solving the issue of crime, poverty, and national disunity, elsewhere in the world, citizens are worrying about the extinction of our civilization.”

In case our leaders are not yet aware of it, Russian President Vladimir Putin last week admitted what is obvious from the start, that the Russo-Ukraine War now has assumed a “global character” mainly because the US and NATO continue to escalate the conflict in Ukraine by letting loose their ‘long-range’ missiles to target Russian territory.

It is now NATO/US versus Russia and its own allies, in particular, North Korea and soon enough, the member states of the CSTO (Collective Security Treaty Organization)—Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan.

Instead of admitting they made a colossal mistake in supporting the Fascist government of Ukraine as evidenced by their battlefield losses and the strain to the EU economy, the West is doubling down on escalation with Belarus sounding the alarm bell that forces from Ukraine and Poland (a NATO state) are massing in its borders and behind them, the armed forces of NATO.

In the Middle East, the US is letting the genocidal regime in Israel to turn the conflict in Gaza into a regional war that mainly targets Iran via an assault on Syria.

In the last week of November, CIA and MI6 supported terrorist organizations (ISIS renamed HTS) attacked Syria, a close ally of both Russia and Iran, with Israel providing air cover and Turkey (another NATO state) providing artillery support.

As Syrian President Bashar al-Assad observed, the world is already at war with the West using its mercenary and terrorist forces to destabilize the entire Middle East.

At the core of all these is the West’s obsession of inflicting a “strategic defeat” on Russia, on the dumb reasoning that by spreading the war to Russia’s allies like Belarus, Syria, and Iran, it would dissipate Russia’s capacity to defend itself in so many fronts and thus salvage their ‘Project Ukraine.’

But not blind to the West’s strategy, machinations, and main goal, President Putin made it clear that Russia’s nuclear option is now on the table. What do we do then?

Filipinos should make their voice known that in the face of this expanding global conflict, the government’s priority should be our national survival and not the political interest of the narrow few.