Heni Ozi Cukier

And when we analyze what history shows us, we realize that once armed groups emerge, compromise becomes impossible and conflict inevitable.

If polarization nowadays has reached this level, society or the political order is on the brink of collapse.

Now let's go to the final dimension, the military dimension.

And here I want to focus on alliances because they are key to understand how conflicts become worldwide disasters.

Wars or world wars, they don't start as global wars.

They begin as regional wars.

And then a regional problem becomes this big problem because of the alliances.

Let's take a look at World War I before that.

We had a dispute between Austria and Serbia, and because of the alliance, it escalated to become an European war.

And once Britain joined, it became a global war.

The same thing happened in World War II.

We had three regional conflicts, separated conflicts initiated by three different countries.

Germany won on hegemony in Europe.

Italy sought an empire in the Mediterranean.

And Africa and Japan wanted to control China and Asia Pacific.

World War II only became a world war when the United States entered the war after the Pearl Harbor attack.

So how is this related to today?

We already have two regional wars.

Russia in Ukraine and Iran with its proxies wars in the Middle East.

And the third one is taking shape as China aims to take Taiwan.