The year 1890 witnessed the retirement of Otto von Bismarck, the architect behind the unification of Germany and solidifying her position as a world power.
Bismarck resigned from his Chancellor roles after disagreeing with the then new and inexperienced Emperor Kaiser William II, who was provocative, uncompromising, and undiplomatic when dealing with other states.
When resigning, the Chancellor prophesied about the world war and warned Emperor William II about its impact on mankind and state building.
“There will be a world war; you (William II) will see it, but I will not be around to see it, and it will start from the near east,” Bismarck was quoted.
Now making sense of Bismarck’s historical philosophy, 24 years later, in 1914, a world catastrophe in the form of a world war broke out in Eastern Europe as a result of military confrontations between Austria-Hungary and Serbia, of course being backed by then-World superpowers, including Germany under William II.
The mistakes and injustices committed by the peacemakers in the aftermath of the war gave rise to more and ruthless aggressors like Hitler, Mussolini, and Hilohito dragging the world into a more disastrous world war in 1939-1945, just 21 years later.
The Second World War changed the world order, and international law and institutions were put into place to oversee world peace and ensure such calamities would never happen to humanity again.
However, the new laws and institutions inherited the same mistakes and injustices that caused the two world catastrophes. The arms race between bigger economies has intensified like never before, turning weaker and underdeveloped nations into testing grounds for the manufactured weapons.
Having realized the grave impact of nuclear weapons on mankind, the world has been advocating for the limitation of nuclear arms in both conventional and non-conventional wars, but the bigger powers have kept a deaf ear, and instead they are manufacturing more and deadliest weapons ready to test their effectiveness on mankind.
For decades, the Middle East has witnessed gun violence fueled by religious difference and struggle for supremacy in the region.
Just like in 1939, when Germany invaded Poland on grounds of preventing persecution of Germans in Poland and Sudetenland, Israel has been attacking Palestine for years, claiming the same and the ownership of the Gaza strip.
The breaching of the International Humanitarian Law in the Middle East has far-reaching negative impact on world peace and mankind. The international actors, including the United Nations, have since gone mute, and instead each member is pushing their own interests.
With the recent media reports indicating that Iran launched about 200 missile attacks in Tel Aviv targeting military installations and also Israel vowing to retaliate against the Iranian attacks, this shows the loss of patience, and this could escalate into a larger-scale nuclear war.
