The ongoing tragedy in the Middle East adds to the desolation of a world already fractured by tensions and conflicts which, in reality, have followed one another since the end of the Second World War. The horror and the unjustifiable to which Hamas exposed us on October 7 last and, in response, the unrestrained bombardment of Gaza by the Israeli army and the polarization of international reactions confirm the normative, political and emotional breakdown of the world.
The fragmented world is the one consolidated by the international context of the post-war period, and which very often frustrates the expression of an awareness of our common humanity. Despite the development and growth of transnational solidarity movements, the multiplication of global initiatives by young people, women and civil societies to defend common causes, we continue to live in a world weakened by our convictions, our postures, our representations of man and society, our conceptions of otherness, our interpretations of history and, finally, the inconsistencies and contradictions inherent in international relations.
Should we think about our common future on the basis of the fact that peace remains an impossible ideal for us human beings? Or continue to maintain the hope of humanity’s progress towards “perpetual peace”?
Our world continues to upset political philosophies that have placed trust in reason, freedom, culture and education. Today, many believe that the principles of political liberalism that shaped the post-war international world are crumbling. It is even our collective capacity to learn lessons from the monstrosities of the 20the century which is now in question. The wars that damage lives across the world testify not only to the impossibility of lasting peace, but to the resistance of men to want and co-construct peace.
Perhaps we need to rethink our common coexistence again by drawing all the normative and political implications of the Kantian assertion concerning “the unsociable sociability of man”. So think about peace based on the observation that men are just as interested in war as in peace. And not to ignore the tensions, disagreements and conflicts that affect what we consider to be common: the world binds us at the same time as it divides us. Unfortunately, these divisions are more attractive and exert more force than the links that are likely to distance us from the automatic thoughts that destroy the world.
Are we condemned to live with wars?
It is not to say that we are living in a context of total war. But the evolution of our history since at least 1945 allows us to say that the moral force that we have succeeded in giving to peace has been parallel to its weakening on the political level: peace cannot be a force of proposition. politics, mainly in the field of international relations. We are better equipped to wage and maintain war than to promote peace, as evidenced by the failure of conflict prevention mechanisms, alliances to defend strategic interests and hegemonic struggles between great powers.
The ongoing conflicts in the Sahel, in Sudan, in Ukraine, in the Middle East, in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, the humanitarian crises and the multiplication of refugee camps, the permanence of hotbeds of tension, basically The inclusion of our daily lives in wars reveals less the conflagration of the world than a disarmed international system dominated by martial diplomacy. An economy of peace today characterizes our diplomacies, especially that of the great powers, starting with the United States.
Internationally, diplomacy has been taken hostage by the intensification of struggles for influence, the re-enchantment of identities and domination, and above all the maintenance of an imaginary division of the world into a “Western bloc” which would be opposed to the “global south”: the shock of September 11, 2001 produced a grammar of the world which accentuates divisions, maintains conflicts and now locks each of us into a camp. It always becomes difficult to think within the spectrum of relationships, to navigate between different convictions, to create spaces for compromise, to balance diplomatic practice with the legitimate pursuit of our interests and a peace proposal.
Should we conclude that we are condemned to live with wars? Is perpetual peace within the reach of men? Answering these questions requires clarifying the thorny question of the relationship between ethics and politics, primarily between ethics and foreign policy. But here we are already touching on another, even more fundamental question: whether men really have an interest in peace.