The Pope and the next World War

Pope Francis is now in his second leg of his three-nation Africa tour in Kampala, Uganda, after his first stop in Nairobi, Kenya. His message remains one of hope and moral self introspection to overcome the many challenges facing humanity at every level on issues ranging from the environment to politics. And, as an international leader, this is against the backdrop of the now subsiding misunderstanding between Turkey and Russia after the former shot down a Russian fighter jet on Tuesday. This dangerously threatened to draw in the West in a military standoff with Russia that nobody wishes to contemplate. Thus it was, conscious of the Pope’s moral leadership as he settled down to our regional hospitality, some wags at my favourite joint started wondering whether we were not on the brink of the Third World War on account of the Turkey incident. And, if World War III ever came to pass, how would Africa fare? Peace and security and all things moral are universal, and this being a borderless world in the age of satellites and the Internet, Africa would probably not be an issue in the event of another world war. For this reason it would be more useful to see how the theatre of the next world war would probably look like. Several scenarios have been painted, notably by P.W. Singer and August Cole, in their book, Ghost Fleet: A Novel of the Next World War. The two authors say that when they set out to explore what a modern-day war between 21st century great powers might look like, it was clear that the setting would quickly move beyond the familiar fights on land that we have grown accustomed to. They can deploy forces in every domain, though two of them stand out: space and cyberspace. In one scenario, conjured by Time Magazine, warships battle at sea, firing everything from cannons to cruise missiles to lasers. Stealthy fighter jets dogfight in the air, with robotic drones flying as their wingmen. Hackers from either side of the divide – East or West, as it were – duel in digital playgrounds. And fights in outer space decide who wins below on Earth. In space and cyberspace, as P.W. Singer and August Cole colourfully put it, there are no geographic borders and, moreover, the military and civilian networks are intertwined, whether it’s undersea fibre-optic cables or domestic telecoms networks. Military communications and intelligence share bandwidth with grandmothers sending e-mail. GPS is used by both the latest generation of drones and families navigating home from a vacation. So, how would Africa fare? In this global village made smaller by the Internet and physical travel as the Pope Francis so amply demonstrates – not least by being the most travelled pontiff in the short time he has been in office – Africa would bare as much of the cost of international conflict as the rest of the world to the extent of the continent’s digital penetration as a way of life. But as Singer and Cole observed, such a conflict is neither wanted nor inevitable; a third world war would be an epic failure of deterrence and diplomacy. Trade interests between nations across the world and the promise of mutually assured destruction mean that diplomacy takes the primary role of defusing tensions. And, coming back to the subject of the Pope in the region or wherever he may be in his busy schedule, he wields the moral authority that resonates with the religious and non-religious alike. While he may not always be listened to according to the demands of realpolitik in international relations, he, at the very least, has a voice that brings attention to humanity’s challenges. Thus his welcome in the region as he heads to the troubled Central African Republic to complete his tour of the continent.

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The Pope and the next World War