《南华早报》刊文：世界正处在最危险时刻的前夜

The Russian Ukrainian conflict has entered a protracted war, which is the main reason why the world has become more dangerous. On April 1, the Ukrainian army launched its first raid on Russia, which means that the Russian Ukrainian conflict has entered the stage of counter attack. 

On the surface, it is a military struggle between the Ukrainian and the western and southern Theaters of Russia. In essence, it is a total outbreak of the Cold War confrontation thinking in Eastern Europe, and it is also a total counterattack by Russia against the endless strategic expansion and extrusion of the US and NATO. 

In addition to not formally sending troops, the US and NATO have used almost all means of mixed warfare such as financial sanctions, information blockade, intelligence support, satellite navigation and air and space technology to comprehensively strangle Russia.

In the more than 40 days since the conflict, the West has imposed more than 5300 sanctions on Russia, which is 1.5 times the number of sanctions imposed by the United States on Iran in the past 40 years. More military assistance and financial sanctions from the US and NATO are still on the way. This is undoubtedly adding fuel to the flames, stimulating Russia to fight back more. In particular, President Biden's words of letting Putin out of power made Russia face a threat to its survival.

President Putin's spokesman has revealed that if the country faces a "survival" threat, Russia may use nuclear weapons. Putin cannot tolerate failure, and Biden is unwilling to give up, which undoubtedly forces Russia to use nuclear weapons. More and more scholars estimate the possibility of the outbreak of World War III is increasing, and even deduce the outbreak of nuclear war. The situation is moving in the direction of the earth disaster.

Besides war, more disasters are happening.The war has displaced millions of Ukrainian farmers from their homes and missed spring harvest, resulting in a decline in Ukrainian agricultural exports. Ukraine was originally one of the world's important exporters of agricultural products, with wheat and corn respectively accounting for 10% and 15% of the world's exports. Fourteen countries are more than 25% dependent on Ukrainian wheat imports. There’s Libya at 43% and Bangladesh at 28%. Without adequate affordable import substitutes, cities in some developing countries are likely to fall into severe famine.

Famine and the rise in energy prices caused by the war have limited the production of more and more countries. The US, the EU, Argentina and Turkey. have experienced quite serious inflation, and the inflation rate in Europe and the US has reached a new high in 40 years. If we continue, will Elon Musk's prediction of economic crisis "maybe happening around spring or summer 2022, but no later than 2023" become a prophecy?

No one expected that the hottest global consensus “climate change” in 2021 would be almost forgotten in 2022. The war suspended cooperation and split the world, directly losing the last chance to unite to save the climate disaster. Icebergs melt, sea levels rise, small islands disappear, natural disasters occur frequently, the world continues to fight, and mankind seems to be getting closer and closer to the "day after tomorrow".

There’s a grim mathematical problem popular in cyberspace: the sum of every two digits of the starting dates of World War I (07 / 28 / 1914), World War II (09 / 01 / 1939) and the Russia-Ukraine War (02 / 24 / 2022) are the same. This is just a great coincidence, but it serves as a reminder to compare the dangerous evolution of the Russian-Ukraine war with the two worst world wars in human history.

Looking back, tragedies in history often come from five aspects: war, famine, economic crisis, a pandemic and climate disaster. In spring 2022, people didn’t expect that with the outbreak of the war, the five aspects are experiencing unprecedented resonance. The world may be on the eve of its most dangerous moment.

What should we do? Perhaps it is time to revisit President Franklin Roosevelt's words: "We would prefer that all wars did not break out rather than the end of the war."