[POST] Two men enter, one man leaves
The misbegotten "existential" nature of conflicts today
This is a reader-supported publication. I give it all away for free but could really use your support if you want me to keep doing this.
One looks around the world and senses a clear pattern to these intractable conflicts that so capture our imagination and lead many of us to view our world as full of wars and potential Armageddon-triggering flashpoints: they all involve opponents who view the struggle (ongoing or slated) as existential in nature — as in, for me to lose is for me to cease existing, while, for me to win is for the other side to cease existing.
In short, two go in, one comes out.
Hamas wants Israel gone … eliminated. And so Israel, post Oct-7, seeks to do the same in first Gaza and then the West Bank. The only solution is the singular solution: us or them prevail, us or them are eradicated. This “sacred land” of Palestine allows for only one outcome, one victor, one state.
Me? I’m betting on the great power to win and the stateless people to lose — as they have throughout history.
Complicating this situation further: Iran does not recognize Israel’s legitimacy and opposes its existence as a regime. Israel comes close to returning the favor over the issue of Iran getting nuclear weapons and thus ending Israel’s regional monopoly: it promises Tehran’s regime will never get its hands on the means to destroy Israel outright. This enduring tension results in existential threat-perceptions in both directions: if Iran gets nukes, Israel will cease to exist; and, if Iran doesn’t get nukes, it can/inevitably will be eliminated as a regime by some combination of Israel, the Saudis, and the US.
Russia’s Vladimir Putin has staked similar claims on Ukraine: Not only must it be absorbed but it must be erased as a separate entity or culture. Anything less is for Moscow to succumb to the West’s nefarious plans to destroy it as a civilization. So, Russia either wins in Ukraine or ceases to be.
Naturally, Ukraine and Ukrainians feel the same in reply. Their existential fears have become NATO’s existential fears: for Europe to allow Russia this win is to cease effectively existing as a deterring military alliance — its raison d’être (as in, keep the Russian out, the Americans in, and the Germans down — or the old rationale stated plainly). NATO was born in the face of Soviet aggression and lives on — without apology, mind you — in opposition to Russian aggression.
The threat China poses to Taiwan is similarly existential: for China to be whole, Taiwan must be absorbed. To deny this is to deny China’s rightful existence, therefore Taiwan’s existence must end. Beijing may peddle one nation, two systems (as it once did regarding Macau and Hong Kong), but it can really only stomach one nation, one system — as it has since proven with Macau and Hong Kong. Taiwan can be no different.
Taiwan, of course, returns the favor, but only in a limited manner — much like Ukraine vis-a-vis Russia. Taiwan will never feel safe so long as the CCP rules China and demands re-unification, but Taiwan can’t truly address that existential challenge. It needs that question to be elevated to a symmetrical opponent: here, the US, which has come, through its own self-important logic, to view Taiwan’s fate as equivalent to its status as a world power that commands a world order: for China to succeed in violently taking Taiwan is to end America’s status as global hegemon and thus the US must be prepared to risk its entire existence in a superpower war with China over Taiwan.
Got it? Keep it! Good!
On the Korean Peninsula, North Korea continues to view South Korea as an illegitimate entity. For Pyongyang to truly realize its destiny, South Korea must cease to exist. In reply, South Korea will fear for its existence so long as the Kim regime stands.
Historically, Pakistan and India have viewed one another in this manner, as we’ve recently been reminded. Likewise, India and China have toyed, throughout the decades, with such strategic definitions — always captured by the fear of encirclement!
There is your sum total of our “war-ravaged” world, our G Zero world order, and our law-of-the-jungle strategic landscape: each of us can only survive through our opponents’ demise.
These existential calculations account for the durability of these “hot spots” or “flashpoints” or “tinderboxes”: all of them are decades old in their stories and even longer in their instincts for survival.
But you know what? The world has progressed just fine despite their ever-present dangers posed. Israel and Palestine and Iran and the Gulf monarchies all fear for their very existence and yet look at how that region is modernizing, and networking, and globalizing, and advancing. All of that progress, legitimately cited by Trump in his current trip — despite these chronic tensions that routinely trigger our fears of the dreaded “wider regional war!”
Similar observations can be made about all of the other situations: India rises despite its still strong tensions with Pakistan, which is nonetheless viewed by the world as an emerging market — despite all its problems. Both China and Taiwan are economic powers with global reach. China’s successful rise hasn’t prevented India’s unfolding liftoff. Europe did just fine across the Cold War and then across the post-Cold War and still does fine today despite three years now of war in Ukraine. Thirty-five years after the USSR’s collapse, Russia remains intact and influential beyond its borders. South Korea is a serious global economic player and North Korea is still … North Korea.
Meanwhile, America is still America, subject more to its own internal demons (mostly imagined) than threatened by other powers.
All of us original nuclear powers (US, Russia, UK, France, China), even as we constantly fret over how we might stumble into strategic wars with one another, have avoided direct strategic war now for eight solid decades. That’s right: eight decades of fearing and assuming the inevitable arrival of World War III and it hasn’t happened.
And when those newer nuclear-club members (Israel, India, Pakistan, North Korea) have arrived, they too have been afforded similar stability — as in, no strategic war among them even as they have quite frequently, in various combinations, engaged in proxy wars and military interventions against non-nuclear states all over the planet.
Meanwhile, across these very same decades, we’ve witnessed the rise of globalization with its unprecedented mix of wealth creation and poverty reduction across the planet. We’ve seen a tiny global middle class balloon to 2B in 2000, then double to 4B in 2020, and presently target 6B souls by 2050.
All of this has unfolded DESPITE all these existential conflicts topped off with the threat of global nuclear war ending humanity’s existence.
What does that tell us?
It tells us that our fears are mostly overblown and out of our logical control.
We live in a world of de facto superabundance — albeit one undergoing significant structural transformation thanks to the climate changing of our own making.
We also live in a world that is anything but VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous) — despite our persistent fears. Collectively, we just processed a Great Recession and a global pandemic without lapsing into world war, as so many would have us assume was the inevitable outcome. We’ve processed a risen China and a collapsed Soviet Union — again, with only a modicum of local conflict and tensions. We processed 9/11 and the Global War on Terror, and globalization has marched on. We’re hurtling toward a post-oil future and yet, somehow, the oil-dependent Middle East is actually coming into its own as a serious global economic set of players. We’re rapidly approaching the Technological Singularity and can already see its positive impact on conventional warfare in Ukraine (rendering it increasingly pointless and post-human).
So, again, what do we make of these intractable existential conflicts that seem to persistently hang out there in the ether, driving our fears and military spending and yet having little-to-no-impact on the world’s technological advance and even its economic integration?
I’ll give you my take: None of them really matter all that much because none of them are all that existential — at least not for everyone involved.
There will be no two-state solution in Israel, which will continue to exist and thrive even as Gaza and the West Bank are absorbed. Iran isn’t going anywhere and will eventually be accommodated for the regional power it is. Same for the rising Saudis and PG monarchies. Pakistan and India will both rise, in combination with, and not in opposition to, each other or China, which will continue rising alongside India. America and China will not decouple, nor will America decouple with Europe, which has integrated as far east as it can, and must now turn southward toward the Middle East and North Africa. Russia will continue being Russia: internally weak and externally disruptive — not unlike its new best buddy North Korea, which will continue to have no impact on South Korea’s economic success.
All these conflicts that we wrap ourselves around … they don’t add up to a world at war — much less the global “chaos” so vehemently peddled by national security experts on cable TV.
We actually live in the least volatile and least uncertain world that’s ever been. It is full of growing complexity but guess what? Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) is just around the corner. And, as for ambiguity? That’s just complexity expressing itself as social diversity — frightening to older generations and a big-nothing-burger to young ones native to its reality.
Why do humans so persistently seek out conflict despite all the wealth and comfort and stability of our modern world?
Again, it’s mostly about existential fear: the poor fear their circumstances while the rich fear the poor. Stuck in the middle class are those who mostly fear the future — or slipping back into poverty. Amidst all this persistent fear — much of it a product of the risk-shift to individuals, we naturally retreat into exclusionary identities whose appearance and persistence only fuel even more existential fear (You don’t live like me and if you get your way, then I won’t be able to live like me!).
In the end, almost all of this fear-mongering is wasted energy in a world being transformed by climate change: namely, the one existential challenge — not actual threat — to which we should all be presently adapting ourselves and our institutions and our nations.
Given sufficient focus and energy, humanity will adapt itself admirably to our climate-changed planet and will — thanks to its many challenges — learn how to both live with, and appreciate, our species’ great diversity.
