Disaster and Conflict
For a while the media has been full of worldwide bad news. Not only have we had the continuing reports of security failures and deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also the terrible suffering of those caught in the floods in Pakistan and China, to which we can add the huge disruption and toxic smog from the fires in Russia. We must not forget either the Gulf oil leak.
The scale of the resources needed to bring relief to the suffering caused by accident or freak weather events is sometimes almost beyond imagination. The sight of frightened children soaked and shivering in homeless abandon, beyond the reach of large scale aid, invites a feeling of inadequacy among the world wide audience of these daily pictures of distress. The view of Moscow shrouded in a poisonous cloud recalls a sci-fi horror movie.
This extraordinary contrast between the ability to cope with natural disasters in a timely fashion, while at the same time employing extraordinary resources to maintain military adventures, which become disasters of our own making, is sobering. It is also important to notice that the most efficient country in helping its own population in crisis is China.
There are lessons here for us all. As time goes on, weather patterns change, populations increase and vulnerability of finely balanced ecologies produce epoch making events, we will have to learn that the greatest priority of national organisation of states all across the world will be, not to ratchet up spending on warfare, but to spend instead on humanitarian aid mobilisation on a global scale, in order for all countries to be ready to pitch in to help each other. None can tell who may be next in the line of need.
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