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The end of history and a rules-based order is happening
The notion of rules and human rights is a chimera, and the likes of Hamas and Islamic Jihad know how to press the right buttons of Israel and the United States to reveal this.
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Palestinian cause: Members of the United Nations Security Council listen as Palestinian permanent observer Riyad H. Mansour speaks during a Security Council meeting on the Israel-Palestine war at the UN headquarters in New York City, the United States on Oct. 30, 2023. (AFP/Getty Images/Michael M. Santiago)
The fall of the Soviet Union on Boxing Day of 1991 marked the actual termination of the Cold War. Although quite a few scholars would point to the collapse of the Berlin Wall as the start of the "end" of history.
Irrespective of the actual dates, the world, true to form, is actually not linear. It never has been.
No one expected World War I in 1914, with the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand I of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in Bosnia of all places. Yet when he was killed by a Serbian nationalist, Europe blew up, with the war lasting from 1914 to 1919.
What came after was the Treaty of Versailles in Paris that took apart the Ottoman Empire in 1923 too. The fall of the caliphate led to the emergence of 57 Muslim member states spanning from Marrakech in Morocco to Manado in present-day Indonesia.
Despite being endowed with a rich store of fossil fuels, the Muslim world has not flourished with the wealth that came with it over the last century. If anything, in the years to come, oil and gas cannot be the commodities with which the Muslim world can stage a comeback to global preeminence.
The extreme climate crisis will not allow oil and gas alone to be the only energy drivers. Once again, the world cannot be plotted on a straight line or bound by a set of laws. There are always unintended consequences.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, for example, was an astounding example of how the world order could be upended almost instantly. Russia refused to play by the rules of the Group of Seven, (G7) having previously annexed Crimea in 2014, and the rules-based order was dealt yet another blow.
