The Major Threats To World Peace Today

 By Uchenna Nwankwo

No doubt, the ongoing Russia-Ukraine faceoff and the China-Taiwan imbroglio stand out as the most challenging problems and threats to world peace today. These are problems that test international diplomacy today, especially given the fact that they constitute major sources of international tensions involving the major blocks in world affairs.

*Zelensky and Putin

As Henry Kissinger (99), the erstwhile famous international diplomat and secretary of state in the President Nixon administration in the US is quoted to have observed:

We (USA) are at the edge of war with Russia and China on issues which we partly created, without any concept of how this is going to end or what it’s supposed to lead to.

Henry Kissinger On Ukraine: How The Crisis Ends

 By Henry Kissinger  

(PUBLIC discussion on Ukraine is all about confrontation. But do we know where we are going?)  

In my life, I have seen four wars begun with great enthusiasm and public support, all of which we did not know how to end and from three of which we withdrew unilaterally. The test of policy is how it ends, not how it begins. 

*Dr Kissinger and Donald Trump

Far too often the Ukrainian issue is posed as a showdown: whether Ukraine joins the East or the West. But if Ukraine is to survive and thrive, it must not be either side’s outpost against the other – it should function as a bridge between them. 

Russia must accept that to try to force Ukraine into a satellite status, and thereby move Russia’s borders again, would doom Moscow to repeat its history of self-fulfilling cycles of reciprocal pressures with Europe and the United States.