Continuity and integration of transition societies

By Blerim Abedini, ISSD-NM

The social and economic transition, which continues for the fourth decade, does not have proportional integration in all countries. It is noted that some states concentrated on increasing military armaments to realize internal and external political goals. Some of the Third World countries have achieved significant political-economic integration while competing with certain developed countries. There are also new countries that participate in Cosmos studies and others that have stopped this research. However, it is observed that international trade in certain periods prevents due to political issues in different parts of the world.

Compared to the Second World War which had 85 million victims, with the beginning of the transition in the 90s of the last century, military conflicts continue in different regions. From the victims of the Yugoslav war from 1991-2001 with 140.000 victims, the war in Afghanistan from 2001-2021 with 176.000 victims, Iraq from 2003-2019 with nearly 200.000 victims, the devastating fighting in Syria is believed to reach 500.000 victims, the ongoing civil war in Somalia even today with 500.000 victims, the wars in Nagorno-Karabakh with 50.000 victims, the civil war in Algiers from 1991-2002 with 200.000 victims, in Central Africa that continues with nearly 500.000 victims, the civil war in Sierra Leone from 1991-2002 with 300.000 victims, the civil war in Burundi from 1993-2005 with 300.000 victims, the First Zaire war from 1996-1997 with 800.000 victims, the Second Zaire war from 1998-2003 with close to 5 million victims, the war with narco groups in Mexico from 2006-2022 with 250.000 victims, the international wars against Boko-Haram from 2009-2022 with 350.000 victims, the civil war in Yemen from 2014-2022 with 370.000 victims, the war in Ethiopia 2020-2022 with 500.000 victims. Several multi-year conflicts also captured the Cold War period, such as the civil war in Sudan from 1983-2005 with close to 2 million victims, and the civil war in Sri Lanka from 1983-2009 with 100.000 victims.

We conclude that after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dispersal of the Soviet Union in internal and international wars from 1991 until today, we have approximately 12 million human casualties in the civilian and military categories. We know that modern wars were initiated with the Industrial Revolution in England activating mass production machinery for food, household, construction, and even military armaments. Space studies installed numerous satellites in orbit that help the world’s telecommunications, with the fast flow of information. Also, these artificial satellites in orbit help with different climate and military monitoring, like flying drones that process recorded video and then compare urban changes in other geographic coordinates.

Currently, there is neglect of the amount of nuclear arsenal possessed by the states in the world, especially with the military conflict in Ukraine and the provocations of North Korea. Professor Leon Panetta is the founder of the ‘Panetta Institute for Public Policy’ and served as the former secretary of the defense department and director of the CIA under the Obama presidency. For the CNN news edition, he declares that NATO must commit aggression against Russia if an atomic bomb is launched from Russian territory beforehand.

Few nuclear weapons can destroy, but their massive use in a conflict on an international scale can destroy living conditions in the world. A small-range atomic bomb can be 50% lethal, with a radius of action of 275 meters. Nuclear weapons can allegedly be brought down by current conventional missiles due to their high speed. While “Tsar” Russian nuclear bomb is the most powerful in the world, with the same yield of power that gives 50 megatons of TNT, with dimensions of 8 meters long, a diameter of 2-3 meters, and a weight of close to 27 tons. Compared to the bomb dropped on Hiroshima in the last century, the ‘Tsar’ bomb is 1,500 times stronger than that, which means it can destroy cities with few million inhabitants or world metropolises. A bomb launched from a submarine with a nuclear arsenal can reach the target within the given continent within 10-15 minutes.

In the episode of ‘Warfare’ radio broadcast on Spotify, Dr. Jean-François Bélanger from the University of Waterloo, who is also an advisor to the Canadian Ministry of Defence, is interviewed. Here he relays the story behind these latest nuclear escalations. The nuclear weapons intended to be used in Ukraine with a small destructive range against a garrison can hit targets 300 miles away. He points out that the use of tactical nuclear weapons is a form of Armageddon, a demonization of war tactics, that will cause significant natural damage and health consequences. This will have great escalation considering that the attacks will be very intense. He mentions the case with the offensives regarding the Tora-Bora hill which was the shelter of Bin Laden’s soldiers in Afghanistan. The use of tactical nuclear weapons on this mountain has not been discussed by George Bush because this was a demonization of weapons with significant consequences for the environment.

Today, the positive sides of the use of radioactive chemical elements enable the production of electricity that will be substituted for fossil-derived energies. Science has achieved that with the study of nuclear fusion, it can produce high temperatures up to millions of degrees Celsius like the temperature found in the core of the Sun. These lasers produced by fusion provide new opportunities for manufacturing plants and future projects.

Sources:

Institute of California-Monteray Bay, The Panetta Institute for Public Policy | Inspiring Lives to Public Service

Leon Panetta’s interview for TV-CNN, https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3rC6_49M1ZM

Radio interview with dr. Jean Belanger, Tactical Nuclear Weapons • Warfare (spotify.com)

Measuring the destruction radius of a nuclear weapon, https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/