Unless wealth begins to trickle down (at the very least in the developed nations) I think something like this may be where the world is headed in this century which could reduce world populations by half with all the fighting. However, in this scenario it would be starvation that would kill 90% of these people and not the wars directly.
Without economic equality happening more in all races (at the very least in the developed nations) violence "from every type of terrorist" can only increase worldwide not decrease. If anyone thinks this isn't true "Just look around you!"
begin quote from:
Opinion: Is the world's 'Long Peace' over?
When terror goes viral it's up to us to prevent chaos
Is this terror or a mass killing? 01:56
Story highlights
- World is in a "moment of phase transition," writes Brian McNair
- Period could be "chaotic, destructive and violent to a degree" that no one can imagine
Brian McNair is the author of "Cultural Chaos." His new book is "Communication and Political Crisis." The views expressed in this commentary are solely those of the writer. CNN is showcasing the work of The Conversation, a collaboration between journalists and academics to provide news analysis and commentary. The content is produced solely by The Conversation.
(CNN)The
scent of chaos hangs heavy in the air. Donald Trump evokes it in
Cleveland. Islamic State sows it in Nice, Brussels, Paris, Orlando.
Britain is immersed in it after Brexit, while the EU struggles to
prevent its onset amid mounting crises of migration and political
legitimacy. Ukraine and Syria are being torn apart by it, and Turkey
looks fragile after a failed coup.
To
apply a metaphor from the science of chaos, we are, it seems, in a
moment of phase transition. A state of relative global order -- the Long
Peace, as Steven Pinker describes it in "The Better Angels Of Our Nature"
-- has existed since 1945. We're now moving into a new configuration of
competing powers and ideologies, the structure of which we cannot
predict, except to assume it will be very different from what we have
known.
The
intervening period of transition, which we may have entered, could be
chaotic, destructive and violent to a degree that no one born after 1945
in the industrialized countries that constructed the post-war order can
imagine.
The great battles of the
era now underway or emerging are not those which dominated the late 20th
century -- left versus right, east versus west, communist versus
capitalist. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, these binaries have had
less and less relevance. It is the dark forces of nationalism and
religious sectarianism that now drive global politics, fueling the rise
of a crude, xenophobic populism in the advanced capitalist world that we
have not seen since the 1930s.
Trump
is the most vivid manifestation of it, but we see it everywhere we look
in formerly stable social democracies -- Germany, Denmark, the UK,
France, Greece, even Australia, where the demagogue Pauline Hanson's One
Nation party was returned to the Senate in the recent election. Appeals
to nationalism and fear of the "other" are replacing notions of
collective security, common interest and the moral duty to care for
those in need such as asylum seekers.
Trump openly praises Putin and Saddam Hussein
for their leadership and effectiveness (which in Saddam's case, lest we
forget, included the use of chemical weapons on his own people). NATO,
he declares, is past its sell-by date, as are all international climate
change and trade agreements which he judges to be against America's
interests.
Majority of ISIS victims are Muslim 01:24
The internet destabilizes
In
2006, two years before the global financial crisis, and five years
after al-Qaeda's September 11 attacks on New York and the Pentagon, I wrote about the cultural chaos then emerging as an unforeseen, unintended consequence of the internet.
"Its
roots," I wrote then, "lie first in the destabilizing impact of digital
communication technologies ... Not only is there more information out
there, the speed of its flow has increased. The networked nature of the
online media means that an item posted in one part of the world
immediately becomes accessible to anyone with a PC and an internet
connection, anywhere else -- linked, signposted, rapidly becoming part
of the common conversation for millions".
As
a consequence, I argued, established elite power was leaking away,
becoming more porous. As 9/11 showed, we had entered a world where
affluent, stable democracies were vulnerable as never before to
disproportionate disruption by terrorism. A world where policy -- as in
the case of the EU and the current migrant crisis -- was driven not by
rational calculation so much as the power of testimonies, narratives and
images captured and shared on digital media.
No
one doubts the humanitarian impulse underpinning Angela Merkel's
decision to offer open house to millions of refuges from the Middle
East. This policy was fueled by distressing, globally networked accounts
of desperate people drowning in Mediterranean waters, and pictures of
children dead on the tourist beaches of southern Europe.
But
if it contributes to the rising influence of anti-immigrant party AfD
and the rise to power of its equivalents in France, Italy, the
Netherlands, it will come to be seen as having hastened the
fragmentation of the European Union; to have been an ill-considered
response to a crisis amplified and intensified by 24-hour, always on,
real time news and social media culture.
Notwithstanding
the huge benefits brought to people and societies all over the world by
the internet, then, it also presents challenges to the capacity for the
good governance and rational decision making on which our collective
wellbeing depends. In a world where information of all kinds -- nasty as
well as nice, false as easily as true -- travels faster, further, and
with fewer possibilities for censorship than ever before in human
history, authority and the exercise of power are uniquely precarious.
Greater transparency and accountability of governing elites -- what Sydney University professor John Keane calls monitory democracy
-- remains a positive benefit of digital technology. The internet made
WikiLeaks, and the revelations of Edward Snowden and the Panama Papers possible. It gave every digitally networked individual on the planet all nine volumes of Sir John Chilcot's report
with its devastatingly forensic details of how and why Tony Blair took
Britain to war with Iraq in 2003. You may choose not to read it, but it
will be your choice, and no-one else's.
If
power is built on knowledge, and effective democracy requires that
citizens be informed about their environment, the age of digitalisation
has also been one of global democratization. It has made popular
challenge to authoritarian rule easier to organize (if not necessarily
to succeed). Cultural chaos, like chaos in nature, can be a constructive
as well as destructive force.
Terror experts warn of more soft target attacks 02:36
Fear is contagious
This
media environment sees isolated events which would once have been of
mainly local importance, such as the Lindt Café siege in Sydney (a "lone
wolf" terrorist attack in which two people were killed), become global
in their impacts through the immediacy and visceral nature of their
media coverage. But it is also an efficient way to disseminate anxiety,
panic and fear.
Donald Trump
understands this, and uses Twitter like no other presidential candidate
before him. He is able to further stir up his already enraged
constituency with simplistic, authoritarian solutions to complex social
problems like illegal migration and global terrorism.
IS,
like al-Qaeda before it, understands it. Jihadi John cuts off the head
of an American or Japanese journalist, and the uploaded, socially
networked video becomes a weapon of mass psychic torture, spreading
virally.
Some Britons voted for
Brexit because they had seen those videos, or heard about them. They
believe they can be quarantined from radical Islamism by rejecting
Merkel's humanitarianism and closing the doors on the continent.
9/11 cost al-Qaeda $500,000.
It cost the world trillions in military expeditions, heightened airport
security and other responses, not to mention the hundreds of thousands
of deaths inflicted in the "war against terror" since 2001. IS atrocity
videos are well produced, but cheap to make, and the communicative power
of digital networks does the rest. They are at the heart of a new kind
of asymmetrical warfare.
The chaos
Edward Lorenz described in nature applies also to our globalized,
digitized societies. From small bifurcations in the social fabric emerge
catastrophic, potentially system-destroying consequences.
One
crisis feeds into another. Trump's success fuels French National Front
leader Marine Le Pen. The UK Independence Party's Nigel Farage
encourages Putin in his dream of winning back Ukraine and the Baltic
states. And as the mass murderer of Nice follows the attack at Ataturk
airport, both outdone by the atrocity of Bataclan, we enter a period of
cascading, interconnected crises, where "black swan" moments become part
of everyday life, and the unthinkable becomes mainstream.
Is it too late?
Have
we reached the tipping point between order and chaos at the global
level? Is it too late to stop this slide backwards into the vortex of
violent nationalism, sectarian hatred and authoritarianism that caused
World War II? After a century of unparalleled progress in
democratization and the extension of human rights to women, ethnic and
sexual minorities, are we now at the top of the ladder, the peak of a
cycle, with nowhere to go but down?
No
one knows, because by definition the onset of chaos is non-linear and
unpredictable. Its precise causes are impossible to identify, and its
consequences unknowable.
Personally, I think not. I believe not, because I am an optimist and I have confidence in the essential goodness of most people.
We
-- that is, those of us who don't wish to build walls, or erect borders
where there were none, or to prevent others from harboring beliefs,
religions or values different to our own -- are still the majority, as
far as I can see. Our law governed liberal states still define the rules
and set the tone for global culture and politics. Barack Obama won two
elections with convincing majorities.
If
we can engage in this global struggle with the same confidence and
commitment as the other side engage in their jihads and nationalist
hate-mongering and fascistic public gatherings, not with military
hardware but with ideas and words, it is not too late.
The journalists of Charlie Hebdo did that, and paid the price. Human rights activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali called for reformation of Islam,
and has been condemned not only by the mullahs who regard her an
apostate but by some western non-Muslims for doing so. We must support
voices like Ali's, and add to them, at the same time as we challenge the
racists and xenophobes who are feeding off fundamentalist Islam's
excesses.
That the global system is
under unprecedented stress is by now undeniable. The role of the
digital media in increasing that stress is also clear, as is its
potential to be utilized for progressive reform and democratic
accountability. We have to be wise in responding to the first, and smart
about fulfilling the second. As to their impact on political outcomes,
that remains stubbornly unpredictable. The Arab Spring failed to become a summer.
With
that knowledge, all we can do is what we must do. Resist the censors,
the haters, the authoritarians, religious and secular, the builders of
walls, and declare them the enemy of us all, this human race, which will
not be dragged against its will into a new dark age.
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