Impossible Negotiation, Improbable Success

 

First Edition, unedited

Hypothetically, suppose two people — for example, a couple seeking a way to continue their marriage.

Both bring divergent opinions.

In divergence, feasible negotiation happens when each side accepts losing some advantage in exchange for another.

But what if such exchanges are impossible, given the total difference in positions?

In that case, an agreement may occur merely as a strategy to buy time, because there is no true exchange, only the acceptance of competition that extra time provides for personal gain.

This example recalls the basis of the relationship between the USA/Israel and Iran/Hezbollah, along with other radical groups fighting for their own hegemony.

If the basic premise begins with adopting a God who condemns to death those who do not follow Him, then such a God is not truly one whose love seeks solutions, but one whose intransigence demands submission.

It becomes clear that human religion still mirrors more of human nature itself than the higher principles it fails to reach.

While Israel struggles with internal radicalism, compounded by unfortunate moments of disrespect toward Christianity — and therefore toward the neighbor — the same occurs on the other side, where part of the Islamic world still lives by obsolete ideals of a crusading era. Meanwhile, world leaders begin an arms race under the premise that negotiations assume, where military and oppressive power becomes the dominant argument in deciding paths of negotiation.

Such natural currents of self‑defense only corroborate the paths followed by autocrats who rely on military conquests to secure bargaining power at the table of national independence, seeking supremacy of their ideals over others.

It is the case of North Korea inspiring Iran.

It is the case of China over the South China Sea and Taiwan inspiring the USA to claim Greenland, Mexico, Canada.

The arms race has begun in great strides.

Nations seek to contain war by becoming warriors equal to others, as a way to intimidate foreign belligerent ambitions.

Putin, with his “imperial” dream, poured fuel on the fire of global uncertainty when he turned expansionist dreams into a worldwide nightmare — even for himself.

If divergences are incompatible, there is no space for lasting negotiations.

Time becomes the hourglass, whose sand is the military contingent seeking to fill the certainty of power to overcome eventual threats.

Unfortunately, this hourglass is made of a material as elastic as the variety of interests, and its bulbs seem to offer infinite opportunity for sand to flow without end, while its weight suffocates the economy and environmental balance.

This will only end when world leaders begin with the example of respect — territorial, ideological, and climatic — together with the perception that a war so long prepared will lead to a useless and fleeting victory over such widespread destruction, that the victor will have little to enjoy, except organized crime.

As long as radicalism and the euphoria of ambition and pride remain the world’s means of resolution, whose supposed reason only adds to the blood spilled uselessly from a dream whose future turns nightmare, the world will continue its race toward global suicide, indefinitely.

And the people have a great share in this process of growing radicalism, and will certainly be the most penalized by it.

For every action, there is a reaction.
That law does not fail.