Glass half-full or half-empty? Tell me your answer and I tell you who you are. If you tell me that the glass is half-full, then that would qualify you as an optimist. Say half-empty and you would be a pessimist. However, I do have a problem. I cannot decide whether the glass is half-full or otherwise when it comes to international affairs.
On the one side, statistics suggest that the number of the world population living in extreme poverty, as defined by the World Bank, has diminished by half in just two decades. The UN even set a sustainable development goal for eliminating abject poverty by 2030. Already, fewer than 10 per cent of the world population have to live with less than $2 per day. The number of children deaths have come down. The world is also less illiterate. And wars between countries are in fact rare. If you are to judge the state of world peace from the number of inter-state wars, this is a peaceful era in the world history. Financial Times reported this week that the space for autocrats in Africa has been shrinking. This is a world in which the glass is definitely half-full.
But then, how about the fact that we are living in an era where the numbers of displaced are highest anytime in my half-century of life so far. The city of Aleppo was devastated as the world looked on. Rohingya children, in the Raknine state, Myanmar, are born into what the United Nations describe as widespread human rights violations, even possibly crimes against humanity. As I was writing this article, rioters were burning cars in successive nights of unrest sparked by the beating and rape of a young black man in Paris. Glass is half-empty. Politics in too many places is pulling humanity in the direction of a fragmented Europe, fragmented world. Exclusive and self-defeating “me first” world views are spreading in a copy-cat fashion, where higher ideals, morals, principles and common institutions are relegated to secondary, if not tertiary, status. This is dangerous because the world is already a powder keg. Instability, terrorism and conflict around the world cost us humans around $1.3 trillion a year, reports Global Peace Index.
Glass half-full or empty is then perhaps an irrelevant inquiry. There is much work to be done every which way. Here is a short list.
First, concentrate on the problem areas of the Middle East and North Africa regions. Not all, but most of the war and peace problems stem from there, thanks to some degree to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. At any rate, the region is left behind since the Ottoman Empire fell, and must be helped to get out of its conundrums. Turkey already did a lot of the job by clearing 2,000 square kilometres of Syrian territory from Daesh (ISIS) terrorists and putting a break on the disintegration of Syria by YPG terrorists, while also helping re-launch the political process.
Secondly, do not think, nonetheless that instability shall not spread. Get your politics right. Resist xenophobic, migrant-phobic, Islamophobic, other faith-phobic, and non-democratic tendencies.
Thirdly, concentrate on state building. Problems become aplenty when states cannot govern themselves.
Last, but not least, defeat the bystander effect in international affairs, where everyone present expects the next person to offer help. Be enterprising and join what the UN Secretary General called the surge of diplomacy for peace. Because, as President Erdogan of Turkey does not tire reminding: “the world is larger than five” (permanent members at Security Council), and every stakeholder must contribute to peace.
Burak Akcapar
Turkish ambassador, professor and author
Follow him on Twitter @akcapar