A Third World War?

Pope Francis has spoken frequently of his belief that the current state of instability in the world, overlain by the global threat of terrorism, is something akin to a “third world war fought piecemeal”. In his message for the World Day of Peace, he noted that, “sadly, war and terrorism, accompanied by kidnapping, ethnic or religious persecution and the misuse of power, marked the past year from start to finish”. This year’s traditional Urbi et Orbi (“To the City and the World”) address from the balcony of St Peter’s Basilica on Christmas Day listed many places around the world where peace and goodwill are in short supply: Israel and Palestine, Syria and Libya, Iraq, Yemen, Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan, Ukraine, Colombia. And the Pope also used the address to remind us of the terrorist acts committed only in the last months of this year in Beirut, Paris, Bamako, Tunis, and the skies over Egypt.

We could despair. Pope Francis, one of the few global leaders concerned genuinely with the state of the world as opposed to his own particular corner, paints a deeply gloomy picture that seems to echo  the pessimism of other commentators. Yet the significance of his message lies not in the litany of disaster, but rather, in his words, in “our human ability to conquer evil and to combat resignation and indifference … our capacity to show solidarity and to rise above self-interest, apathy and indifference in the face of critical situations”.  That capacity has also been a characteristic of 2015. We have seen it, for example in the COP21 agreement in Paris, the adoption of the Sustainable Development Agenda at the United Nations to tackle poverty, and at an individual level in the extraordinarily generous response of thousands of Europeans to families and individual refugees fleeing conflict in their homelands.

The Queen, in her Christmas Broadcast, also noted that “the world has had to confront moments of darkness this year”. But, she added: “There’s an old saying that ‘it is better to light a candle than curse the darkness’”. There will be disasters in 2016, too. What’s important is that the focus of this embassy, the British diplomatic network, and countless others involved in global issues, from NGOs to private citizens, will not be to despair, but to do what little we can to continue to make this world a better place, lighting those candles one at a time. Striving for peace is our message too.