You may not care about war . . .

. . . however struggle cares about you.

For a number of years, I’ve been warning that the rise in nationalism will result in extra struggle. And now it’s occurring.  Right here’s Bloomberg:

This week, the Worldwide Institute for Strategic Research in London printed the most recent version of its authoritative annual Armed Battle Survey, and it’s not predicting a lot peace for the vacations. It paints a grim image of rising violence in in lots of areas, of wars chronically proof against broking of peace. The survey — which addresses regional conflicts fairly than the superpower confrontation between China, Russia, the US and its allies — paperwork 183 conflicts for 2023, the very best quantity in three many years. . . .

This week, the Worldwide Institute for Strategic Research in London printed the most recent version of its authoritative annual Armed Battle Survey, and it’s not predicting a lot peace for the vacations. It paints a grim image of rising violence in in lots of areas, of wars chronically proof against broking of peace. The survey — which addresses regional conflicts fairly than the superpower confrontation between China, Russia, the US and its allies — paperwork 183 conflicts for 2023, the very best quantity in three many years.

This will seem to be a faraway drawback, as most of those conflicts happen in Africa, the Center East and south/central Asia.  However as this tweet demonstrates, it’s these areas that can more and more dominate the worldwide inhabitants:

And one other Bloomberg article means that the issue could also be spreading to the beforehand quiet Western Hemisphere:

In a transfer harking back to Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, the dictator of Venezuela — Nicolás Maduro, a former bus driver and acolyte of leftist strongman Hugo Chávez — sponsored a referendum in his nation final week. The topic was whether or not to annex an unlimited area of Guyana adjoining to Venezuela referred to as Essequibo, which represents roughly two-thirds of Guyana’s territory. It’s a resource-rich tract with oil, gold, contemporary water and timber — and a comparatively tiny inhabitants of round 100,000. . . .

In his sensible 2018 guide on geopolitics, The Jungle Grows Again, political scientist Robert Kagan laid out the case that the extra worldwide norms are eroded someplace, the sooner chaos descends regionally and even globally. It might probably begin to seem like the Thirties, when Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan started to seize more and more massive chunks of territory in Europe and Asia, respectively.

Nationalism shouldn’t be patriotism.  It’s a zero-sum ideology, which seems to be on the world by means of the lens of us vs. them.  Nationalism embraces tribalism, protectionism, xenophobia, authoritarianism, militarism, misogyny and homophobia.  In my opinion, it has change into the primary drawback going through the world as we speak.  And if not addressed, I worry that it’s about to get a lot worse.

PS.  I’ve finished a lot of posts discussing the distinction between nationalism and patriotism.  Bloomberg has a superb article on the topic:

It’s patriotism when love of your personal individuals comes first; it’s nationalism when hate for individuals aside from your personal comes first. That definition comes from Charles de Gaulle, a former nationwide hero and president of France.