PARTLY FACETIOUS: ‘The world is gray, my friend, very gray'
'Unless buttressed by, how shall I put it, actions that are…'
'You are no construction guy, are you!'
'Where did that come from?'
'Buttress as in propping up a building.'
'In my book, buttress means propping up, building is what you added on.'
'Ah, clearly you are not reading the same book leave alone the same page…'
'I reckon I am reading the Chicago Professor Mearsheimer's book titled The Tragedy of Great Power Politics which explains the concept of realism, while others are reading Machiavelli's The Prince and…'
'One is recent, well more than 20 years ago, and the other is more than five centuries ago…'
'Right, but the two are about statecraft and I reckon there is one profession that has not changed over the millennium…'
'You are referring to the oldest profession in the world?'
'Learn to be respectful, silly.'
'No, I am truly clueless - can you explain please.'
'The oldest profession in the world is that of a politician — politics can be undertaken at various levels — within a nation, within a separatist group, within a community, within a family unit.'
'So let me get this straight: you define politics as the art of governance or, put more plainly the management of others?'
'Yes and you could have a civilian government, or a military dictatorship or a one party rule or two parties or the deep state or the head of a family as the decision maker, it doesn't matter.'
'Got it but as I said popularity of the one who governs can evaporate pretty quickly. Look at President Trump: there were videos of him boasting about what he did to women in 2016, and he still won, but now his Make America Great Again base is challenging his decisions notably not to release the paedophile Epstein (with close ties to Israel) files, supporting Israel First instead of America First…'
'Yep, and deflection ain't working no more.'
'Yep the report on Obama's complicity in spreading the fake Russia-gate narrative in 2016…'
'Is Obama the same guy who insisted that Raymond Davis, a pseudonym, who killed three people in broad daylight in Lahore was a state department official and entitled to diplomatic immunity when he was not!'
'The world is gray, my friend, very gray.'
Copyright Business Recorder, 2025
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Listen to article The Domino Theory explains how one event sets off a series of similar events. The theory is not attributed to any single author but is a concept that gained popularity during the Cold War. The theory suggested that if one country fell to communism, the neighbouring countries would also succumb to the same, like dominoes. Taking lead from this theory and the scholarly work and assumptions made by some scholars in international relations, I am inclined to postulate the next domino that the world may face. The hypothesis of the next domino is based on the reality that the anarchic international system thrives, and no central authority has been able to end the ongoing conflicts between Iran and Israel, India and Pakistan, and in Ukraine and Gaza. 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Israelis have made genocide an acceptable norm, and today the world looks at the daily number of deaths and not the deaths of human beings and humanity. As a consequence of what is currently happening in the world, there is a phrase that can describe its future, and that is: 'the future is bleak.' The next domino is based on how the states in the global south will make this important foreign policy choice of drawing away from internationalism and what constitutes the international community. They would prefer to substitute it with the concept of regionalism based on a community of nations that believe and trust in the great powers in the region. Multipolarity in its continental form will be the next domino for the states of the global south. In the future, China and Russia may create a sense of regionalism in which great powers not only make promises but also keep them. The next domino will constitute new political, economic and military alignments of states in which regionalism will replace internationalism. The bleak future is a gift of unfair and unjust internationalism, and the domino effect of regionalism is a force that may contest with internationalism to create a better future for the world.
