Is The World Re-enacting The Berlin Agreement?

Intriguingly, the international community, particularly the United Nations (UN), is sitting by and watching as another round of the Berlin Conference unfolds. During that Conference of 1884–1885, 14 colonial powers signed the General Act of Berlin, an agreement regulating European colonisation and trade in Africa during the New Imperialism period.

Though resources of the affected African countries were pillaged and used to develop the colluding Western colonial countries, war of the kind that is imminent in the looming arrangement was carefully avoided.

We are compelled to recall that imperious episode as world powers, specifically Russia, China, and the United States of America (USA), plot to grab territories that do not belong to them by force and under ignoble and bare-faced tactics. The only explanation so far is that those territories are weaker and not in a strong position to offer meaningful resistance on their own.

First, it was Russia annexing Crimea, and when no one raised any deterring eyebrow or forceful move in disapproval, it marched into Ukraine in what it described as a special military operation that has lingered for close to three years in a needless war that has claimed over 40,000 Ukrainian lives. Not counting the infrastructural devastation and humanitarian calamities.

Second, China has not stopped harassing its neighbours around the South China Sea, a stretch of waters it claims, without proof, exclusive right to. The Philippines is managing to hold on as the world looks askance at the undeserved provocation.

The plans it has for Taiwan, an area China claims to be its province, are yet to unfold as it has vowed not to let the annexation of that tiny island nation linger forever. China is only waiting to see how the Russian misadventure in Ukraine will pan out.

Third, to compound these developments, President Donald Trump is talking of making Canada the 51st state of the United States of America and invading tiny Greenland with a population of less than 50,000 to have complete control of the vast resources in that autonomous territory in the Kingdom of Denmark, a North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) member just as the USA. He wants the United States to hold those resources in trust for the so-called free world. Not satisfied, the newly elected President of USA is threatening to reacquire the Panama Canal, authority over which was relinquished by the Jimmy Carter administration under the Carter/Omar Torrijos Treaty of 1977. Trump has just told a stunned world that he has plans to take over the Gaza Strip, which he intends to develop in the mould of the French Riviera, throwing out, in the process, all the Palestinians, relocating them to Egypt, Jordan and other Arab countries.

That was music to the ears of the visiting Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who had always loathed the demand for a two-state solution to the Middle East crisis that erupted with the creation of the State of Israel in 1948.

Trump is over-simplifying the Gaza problem from the point of view of an estate developer. That territory by the Mediterranean Sea is attractive to him as a resort but will end up generating what Hamas sees as chaos.

We had warned on this page that the war in Ukraine, the bellicosity of China around the South China Sea and the Middle East crisis are flashpoints that might ignite, if not properly managed, an avoidable third world war.

In our opinion, all the parties are hardening their positions in the emerging confusion. Russia insists on completing its assignment in Ukraine, a first step towards rebuilding the Soviet empire, including most East European countries.

International relations experts dismiss Vladimir Putin’s plan as a wild goose chase. However, Poland and other countries that managed to extricate themselves from the Soviet enclave are not amused by the Russian leader’s obduracy. He still thinks dismantling the Soviet empire was the greatest catastrophe of the 20th Century and is determined to reverse it. The world must consider what is happening in that volatile region.

One way of doing this is by persuading Trump to rein in his inordinate ambition to make America great again, for that country is already immensely great. We are persuaded to posit that any attempt on his part to take over either Greenland or Gaza will be a green light to China to march into Taiwan. No one knows the outcome of such a move that might have cataclysmic dimensions.

Already, China, Russia and North Korea are forming a very dangerous alliance, developing and testing strategic missiles that can strike any part of the world.

For countries in the so-called developing world, of which Nigeria and Africa are part, the situation at present, though beyond their capacity to make any worthwhile contribution, given the United Nations incapacity, calls for serious thinking as there is no sitting position on the fence.