The indispensable role of scientists and medical professionals in this fight should underscore their central role in addressing other 21st century threats as well, especially those that are medical and environmental in nature.
World war iii tv 1982 windows#
Recently, while walking on one of the nearly deserted streets of New York City at precisely 7 p.m., my wife and I were deeply moved as hundreds of people opened their windows and banged on drums, pans and other objects, cheering for these brave, skilled men and women - not a ticker-tape parade, as occurred after WWII, but an honest, exuberant demonstration of deep respect and thanks that now happens every evening at that time in this city. They are heroes again in a very different area of expertise - along with the frontline doctors, nurses and caregivers who are tirelessly (and often at risk to their own lives) working to confront the virus. Many in this community are working across borders far more effectively than their governments.Īfter World War II, scientists were seen as national heroes in developing the technologies needed to protect our country in the event of a new war. The other encouraging facet to this effort is that the medical and scientific communities - which, for some time, have been given insufficient weight in the policy process in many countries and relatively little visibility, while in several instances facing large budget cuts - are now playing a leading role both in the fight against the disease and in shaping the kinds of policies that governments need to pursue to curb and eliminate the virus. The process has been in high gear since January. Scientists around the world are collaborating to do this, sharing information and trying to identify current drugs that might achieve some success in killing or curbing the virus, while searching for new ones and for new immunization medicines. The immediate issue, of course, is to stop and reverse the spread of today’s coronavirus and to save as many lives as possible. And international institutions failed to focus sufficiently on common human threats as well as military ones. Preoccupied as we were with cross-border military challenges, we failed to address common global non-military ones.
And we need to rethink what “security” in the 21st century actually entails. Most of these warnings went ignored or were downplayed as “science fiction” or “highly implausible.” Trapped in a mindset of the past, future security threats of this sort were given little attention. The trouble is that much of the world was defining “security” as protecting ourselves from a military threat - not a dire, dangerous health threat. There were numerous, highly respected scientists and medical experts who wrote about a looming catastrophe of this nature, issuing thoughtful reports on the risk of a pandemic. This is not how military planners had envisaged World War III, but that is how it is working out. They are not fighting one another but, instead, this Third World War is against a small, unseen virus that threatens all nations - regardless of the nature of their governments or their political philosophies - and millions of their people.
This is not a confrontation of countries with nuclear and other advanced weapons, but it does involve massive numbers of countries throughout the world in a very different way. The world is now engaged in what legitimately can be labeled the Third World War - dramatically different from any war imagined decades ago, but massively lethal and destructive, nonetheless. and its key allies - versus other groups of countries, perhaps led by the Soviet Union. It always was groups of countries - the U.S. strategists developed military plans for fighting what was often characterized as the Third World War - a major confrontation that would engulf large numbers of nations in a cataclysmic, and perhaps nuclear, confrontation. During the middle of the last century, U.S.
0 kommentar(er)
