WHEN neighbours quarrel, true friends should always preach peace, not only because neighbours will remain neighbours, but also because it’s just the right thing to do.
Urging peace and doing the best to separate rival neighbours from conflict, relatives and friends and close neighbours also call on those quarrelling and menacing to take two steps back from the brink, especially when the noise goes beyond words to dangerous and possibly catastrophic actions.
This is precisely the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) situation in relation to the current unfortunate showdown between two nuclear-powered friends of the region.
The cost of a nuclear war has always been deadly and the world has been lucky no nuclear-powered nation has mistakenly or deliberately pressed the nuclear button. But global fear has never been worse, as the world races towards nine billion inhabitants later this year.
The showdown over Taiwan comes ahead of crucial elections in the USA, China and the UK — and neither side wants to be the first to blink.
The situation also presents yet another real possibility of yet another political miscalculation leading to a new war with worldwide implications and involvement, hot on the heels of Ukraine.
The current sparks were ignited just hours after United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned that: “The world is just one miscalculation away from a nuclear war!” With no sign of any side being willing to take one step back, it is for genuine allies and friends of all to take two steps forward and strongly, even though quietly, urge and encourage the warring parties to step back from the brink of no return.
This is not a time for friends to take sides in a conflict no side can win and the entire world will lose from. Instead, real friends should carefully weigh the obviously complex and worrying situation in its entirety, taking historical and contemporary realities into consideration and arriving at responsible conclusions.
CARICOM member states have ties with all the three parties involved (China, USA and Taiwan) and the region’s political leadership must learn from recent lessons and strive to avoid again being torn down the middle over a very distant issue over which the region simply has no control or decisive influence.
Guyana’s bilateral and historical ties with Washington and Beijing are in both cases based on mutual respect, friendship and solidarity and — in this case — are both equal friends of long- standing currently deeply involved, together, in Guyana’s development process, especially in the oil-and-gas industry and in defence of democracy.
Irrespective of which side of the Taiwan Strait individual CARICOM nations might have ties with, it can be in none’s interest to adopt posturing positions by taking sides in the dispute. Instead, as 14 nations with individual ties to both, CARICOM should consider taking – and standing by — one common position of non-involvement and non-interference, while strongly preaching and promoting peace.
But, at any rate, it serves neither diplomacy nor peace, for any Caribbean nation to back or oppose any of the warring parties – not at this time.
True allies should instead be advising friends gearing up for a deadly fight that will surely spill way beyond their borders, to step back from the edge of the precipice and save humankind from having to continue praying, in fear and uncertainty, that no miscalculation triggers actions that can ultimately lead to the extinction of the human race.
That is how bad it is — and why it can only be good for Caribbean friends to talk and act to protect world peace and advocate prevention of another unwinnable worldly war.
