Bellum Iustum (October 2022)

The crowds in their euphoria could not be restrained any longer. Old and young, women and men, poor and wealthy, workers and capitalists, and intellectuals and bureaucrats spilled over into the streets and were channeled through the avenues that converge on Parliament, waving the formerly-outlawed flag of the proud nation that 70 years before had disappeared from the world's maps.

The politician and self-appointed caretaker Prime Minister had just announced the defiant nation's resurrection. The people cheered. Emissaries from half the world voiced their respective countries' endorsement of the new independent democratic republic, 'rising from the ashes of history like a firebird.' Stock markets across all the time zones surged at the prospect of lucrative investment opportunities.

The titanic power to the east reacted differently. It attacked by land, air and sea within hours of the proclamation of independence. The euphoric were stunned in shock and denial. Sudden death and destruction of biblical proportions fed despair and agony, but quickly loss and grieving turned to anger, vengefulness, hatred and retaliation.

The politician's allies from across the globe rallied behind him with moral support and weapons—tiptoeing up to the line beyond which an action could be deemed a provocation and an act of war. The voices of war—"defensive war, let's be clear," they said—gazed into the future and compared the magnitude of the thousands of actual casualties with the projected millions who would be killed or wounded if the attack went unanswered and the dominoes of a bygone era did in fact fall this time. The weapons dealers—makers of weapons of large-scale destruction from the air, the ground, the sea and even space—said, "If not us, then someone else, so why not us ... besides it's like your allies have said, 'Manageable losses in the short term for victory over evil in the long term—that is the price of peace and freedom.'" Investors concurred. Billions upon billions of dollars were raised in the cause of the phoenix—a just cause if ever there was one, it was said. A local affair had become a global conflagration with no fire brigade capable of controlling the inferno.

Early on, the politician in a one-on-one red phone conversation with his counterpart to the east had asked, "Do you enjoy hurting people?," to which the other replied, "In our world at this level, we—you and I—cannot avoid conflict, and our choices, regrettably, have unpleasant consequences on occasion. This is one such occasion where some will pay a higher price for our—yours and my—decisions. And remember, Prime Minister, we act for history not for individuals."

"Me, for the right side of history, Mr. President," responded the Prime Minister, ending the conversation and dialogue.

The leaders of two great religious institutions positioned their congregants in opposition to one another. Said one to the other, "Do you, too, enjoy hurting people as did your predecessors who left a bloody trail in their conversion of the unbelievers?" God was one, but God was divided.

The defence minister of one of the allied nations, an inexperienced member of cabinet, whispered to one of her aides during a pause in procurement discussions with several major defence contractors, "Do they enjoy hurting people?" inviting the aide to respond, "No more than the markets do, Ma'am."

Another voice—with predictable realist cynicism—prophesied candidly from a scholarly hideaway that "The allies will fight the aggressor from the east to the last soldier in the Prime Minister's army"—a quote which will undoubtedly appear as an epigraph in one the chapters of his latest book that lies waiting in the galleys.

And that's how the world (almost) ended.