Prominent US commentator Fareed Zakaria made a bold claim over the weekend. “Taken together”, he said, pointing to spiralling tensions in the Middle East, a raging war in Ukraine, and a dangerous new dynamic in Asia, “they define the most dangerous period internationally since the end of the Cold War.”
We are now in the most dangerous moment internationally since the end of the Cold War. My take: pic.twitter.com/WeOS5g37cI
— Fareed Zakaria (@FareedZakaria) October 13, 2024
It sounds portentous. But also, wrong.
It’s a conceit of humanity to believe that we exist in momentous times. And harkening back to memories of past turning points can make for a compelling comparison.
But let’s examine Zakaria’s timeline of the years following the end of the Cold War.
To me, the most dangerous period – in terms of sheer threat to humanity, leaving aside the pandemic – came following the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, which alone cost hundreds of thousands of lives. This frenzied killing also set in motion a cross-border conflict that saw the extraordinary collapse of neighbouring Zaire, later dragging in at least half-a-dozen neighbouring countries in what is reckoned to be the world’s deadliest conflict since the Second World War. (And is threatening to erupt again.)
How to stack up the reality of an estimated six million dead in a comparison to the anticipated fears of today?
We can talk ourselves into seeing to world as more troubled than it is and end up compounding problems by overreaction.
Zakaria is hardly alone in his claim about contemporary threats. No less than US President Joe Biden warned last month of a global “inflection point” in his farewell address to the UN General Assembly, “where the choices we make today will determine our future for decades to come”.
The warning here, which Zakaria gets into with his commentary, is about the contemporary challenge to international order. Of upending norms about sovereignty and the spectre of again using nuclear weapons.
But vantage point matters. Go back to the moment of the 9/11 attacks of 2001, which led an angry America to invade Afghanistan and then Iraq, wars that dragged on for years, costing trillions, leaving a legacy of resentment that feeds still. Abstract arguments raged at the time about whether terrorism could have strategic consequences, but there was no doubting the real effect.
Or think of danger taking other forms. The 2008 sub-prime mortgage exposure, for example, described by Australia’s then prime minister Kevin Rudd as “the economic equivalent of a rolling national security crisis”, precipitating a global financial collapse and a radical shift in the trajectory of national politics (Europe’s resurgent nationalism and the rise of Donald Trump).
Easy imaginings about a terrible future do not help in making sound decisions. We can talk ourselves into seeing to world as more troubled than it is and end up compounding problems by overreaction.
Yes, the challenges today are pressing. Better to dispense with the historical hyperbole and deal with the here and now.