That Was Then
There was a time when the nations of the world at least paid lip service to the idea that national borders were sacrosanct. Any intrusion into another country’s territory was an act of war. Of course, there was a huge black market in revolutionaries, terrorists, and other insurgents, but while many of these were supported by the major powers, the trouble they caused tended to stay within the borders of their own countries.
This Is Now
In the last couple of decades, modern communications and transportation have changed all that, the key event being the World Trade Centre attack in 2001. This public laying down of the gauntlet by international terrorists gave the United States the excuse that they were at war with these extremists, no matter what country they were in. Since then, the US has made no secret of its forays in search of terrorist leaders, culminating in the murder of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan in 2011.
Sorry, does the word “murder” offend you? Would “Execution” make it better? The bare fact is that operatives of the United States killed a foreign national on foreign soil, without the benefit of a trial. Rather goes against everything we believe in, doesn’t it?
Israel
I don’t really want to start on that topic today, but Israel is in the same situation trying to deal with Hamas, which is imbedded in the Palestinian population. Netanyahu has pushed that idea further, targeting supposed terrorists and facilities in Syria, Lebanon, Iran, and Qatar. His solution is genocide, and it would do the international community no end of good to see him brought before International Justice to answer for his sins
The Drug Trade
Ever since the Opium Wars of the 19th century, colonial powers have been making a fortune off mass exports of drugs. Once again, that bit of strategy has come home to roost, and America is now the main target.
Countries born in violence that allow violence to influence their politics will always react with more violence, and history has shown over and over that it solves nothing. Nonetheless, the American Coast Guard has decided to play judge, jury, and executioner, assassinating drug runners by blowing up their boats. That looks like the entryway into a long, dark passage.
No Solution
America has a straightforward capitalist problem: they present a huge market for an easily accessed product. Restricting access to the American people simply raises the price. No surprise: their health care system has been playing the same game with prescription drugs for years.
Every student of history acknowledges the damage done to indigenous peoples of the world through the rapacious greed of Colonialism. It would be nice to think we have put it all behind us, but the numbers don’t support that comfortable idea. The rich of this world are still living in luxury based on the work of the poorest members of the population. And by extension, even the middle-class citizens of the so-called enlightened nations get a lot of their luxuries from the labour of Third World workers. We all have to take our share of the blame.
Relative Wealth
The last tsar of Russia had a personal wealth in the 300 billion dollar range, while serfs existed at a subsistence level. That puts Nicholas II square in the middle between Elon Musk and Mark Zukerburg, while about 800 million people in today’s world exist on less than three dollars a day.
The Bottom Line
I don’t want to go all Marxist on you, but the root evil that causes most of the trouble in the world is unrestrained capitalism. (Let’s use the politically correct term: greed.) It caused the European Colonial Era, and the situation has become worse, not better. Science got us through the potential disasters of the Twentieth Century. I’m not so hopeful about the Twenty-first.