Global conflict increasing daily

Long gone are the headlines that talk about small problems locally encountered. Now we hear about conflict in every corner of the globe, be it Asia, the Americas, Europe or elsewhere. There are some common themes to the violence in many places, but occasionally there is just a land grab to satisfy an ego.

From Syria, to Iran and Iraq, from Thailand, Philippines and Indonesia there are people dying everyday from conflicts. Most of the conflicts are in one way or the other linked to Islam as it is in some way part of their battle cry be it a Jihad, enforcement of strict Muslim laws on non-Muslims or whatever. Insurgence fighting for a piece of land because cohabitation with people who have other beliefs and views seems to be beyond their ability.

The other types of violence involve land grabs like Russia grabbing some Ukraine real estate, or China exerting themselves on islands that seem to belong to other countries. As for dealing with those types of conflicts, placing sanctions on the violating country seems to be a good working alternative than to get involved militarily.

The one problem is sanctions seem to have zero effect on the Islam based conflicts. For the most part they seem to be running on an entirely different set of motivations and rough going seems to be a way of life. Simply you can’t take away something they don’t have. So obviously another approach is needed.

One of the problems that is contributing to the rise in conflict is the size of the human heard. At 7+billion, living closer to people who have different ideologies is unavoidable. So assuming the population gets to 9 or 10 billion, we can expect conflicts to only get worse.

That is unless climate change starts to reduce the human population as many credible scientists predict. Then it will be a different situation as more space between groups is available, but resources needed to sustain humans is below the required amount. Then there will be conflicts over water and food and some are already making the news as climate change is already making its effects felt.

So all things considered, there needs to be a different approach to dealing with conflicts that sanctions have zero effect on. Unfortunately the options other than doing battle seem elusive at best. Education about cohabitation is an option, but that is scoring little if any success when dealing with the most extreme groups, and it is the extreme groups that are the problem.

So long gone are the times depicted in the 1950’s and 1960’s TV programs like “leave it to Beaver”, “I love Lucy” and the “Andy Griffith Show”. Somehow those times seem long forgotten and in a very different era from today’s world. Back then there was no terrorism and you could board an aircraft without any of today’s security measures. Big news then was teenage pranks, long hair styles and the invention of the birth control pill that lead to a sexual revolution.

On a bigger scale there was The Cold War between the USSR and the United States and battles against communism. Beyond that there was only getting man to the Moon. How times have changed.


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