The global stage went through upheavals in 2022 that included war, redrawn geopolitical alliances, and an ongoing fall of White world rule. Observers said the world plunged into deeper crisis and insecurity and they aren’t optimistic the challenges would simmer down in 2023.
“The world has never been in great shape,” said Bill Fletcher Jr., author, activist, and commentator. “I think that we are taught to believe that there is a straight line of progress of humanity and while there have been many important changes and advances, the world has been plagued by war, class struggle (and) patriarchy,” he reasoned.
Mr. Fletcher told The Final Call that the world in 2022 was no different, and the job of every generation to tackle those challenges without falling into despair continues into 2023.
So, in this last year, he said, we’re looking at environmental catastrophe, recovery from an economic collapse reverberating since 2020 from the COVID-19 pandemic, which contributed to a global inflation crisis well into 2022, and a tremendous polarization of wealth on the planet.
›As if these currents weren’t enough, 2022 was also defined by conflicts in the Middle East, Africa, and parts of Asia. However, none compared to the global impact of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, raging in Europe since February. This conflict impacted the global economy in regions from the Middle East to Africa and sparked an energy crisis throughout Europe.
Anxieties about “World War III” or what scriptures describe as “Armageddon” heightened with the Russian-Ukraine war, which brought European powers and the U.S. under the military umbrella of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) into the fray of war on the side of Ukraine. War analysts estimate that Russian and Ukrainian combined, dead and injured are in the tens of thousands and have brought the world to the edge of nuclear war.
“We are in a very precarious situation,” said Ajamu Baraka, national organizer for the Black Alliance for Peace. There is not much to point to that can be defined as positive, he added.
Mr. Baraka, a longtime human rights activist stated the world is in a space where it is clear that the agenda of the U.S. ruling class has been set. And central to the agenda is a commitment to use force and violence to maintain their hegemony.
“And so, we’re looking at 2023, and we have a military budget that was just approved by the Congress, $858 billion, right in the midst of an ongoing human rights crisis facing working-class people here in this country,” said Mr. Baraka. “We have an administration that is willing to sacrifice the interests of workers and the poor in order to serve the interests of capital,” he said.
While such resources are poured into the U.S. war chest, Mr. Baraka pointed out the lackluster attention paid to Black and poor realities within America. Among Black people in 2022, the order of affairs is still mass incarceration and high unemployment levels. “For us, 2023 does not bode well,” he said.
The global fallout coupled with other crises made 2022 a year of transition for a world already in decline.
The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, National Representative of the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad of the Nation of Islam, had cautioned that the outlook is an unraveling of a world structured on tyranny, oppression, and injustice. Both men warned that war, global unrest, confusion, and dissatisfaction are the active fall of White world rule and can be understood in the pages of scripture.
The clash of the White world against itself is evidenced in the war raging in Europe. While some may not see the conflict in scriptural terms, the scriptures describe these powers as “beasts” in their penchant for war and mayhem. The Bible’s Book of Revelation closes with four great beasts, and all of humanity is under the rule of these four great beasts.
“America is number one; England, Germany, Russia, all of them put humanity under their thumb,” said Minister Farrakhan during a lecture series called “The Time and What Must Be Done,” in 2013. The Minister’s words are as poignant in 2022 as they were then. As the year ended, prospects for a political settlement between Russia and Ukraine faded further into obscurity.
A visit to Washington, on Dec. 21, by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy added to concerns the war is far from concluding. The trip which, Mr. Baraka said was a “public relations” move for more money and weapons, was Mr. Zelenskyy’s first foreign wartime trip. He met with President Joe Biden at the White House and addressed a joint session of Congress. Mr. Biden committed $1.8 billion and a “first-ever transfer of the Patriot Air and Missile Defense System” and aircraft.
Dmitry Peskov, spokesperson for Russian President Vladimir Putin insists continued arms shipments prolong war and increase risks of direct confrontation between Russia and NATO.
That scenario translates to World War III or Armageddon, say observers.
Mr. Peskov told journalists Dec. 21 that Washington seems intent on waging a proxy war against Russia using Ukraine as a tool, reported RT.com.
Mr. Zelenskyy’s trip coincided with congressional debate on a proposed $1.7 trillion omnibus package that funds the federal government through September, which passed Dec. 22. Included in the package was $46 billion to Ukraine military, economic and humanitarian aid. Critics say the funding is a wide-open tap imposed on U.S. taxpayers.
Some lawmakers argued the additional funding, which would bring the U.S. commitment to war over the $110 billion mark, is improper without greater accountability.
Geopolitical watchers say the global impacts of the war coupled with other major crises engulfing the planet in 2022 has spiraled the world into a more dangerous stage of collapse.
American bully antics toward other sovereign nations have been her modus-operandi, as a lone superpower. However, 2022 showed 12 months of increasing pushback by nations tired of wading through the muddy waters of U.S. imperialism and wicked power plays. They are pushing a more multipolar equation.
“The idea of the sort of U.S. as the sole dominant power appears to be fraying around the edges,” said activist and investigative journalist Eugene Puryear in a recent interview with The Final Call. He pointed to countries like China and Russia, but also India, Indonesia, most of Africa, and Latin America.
These countries are speaking to this issue of the need for more sovereignty in international relations, explained Mr. Puryear. They are resisting this bullying and control of what Washington touts as a rule-based international order, “where the U.S. makes all the rules and everyone else follows,” he said. Mr. Puryear sees some changes as moving parts of a “new Cold War” of the U.S. aimed at China and a lesser extent, Russia.
Speaking to The Final Call in October, he said the U.S. from its own national security strategy is doing everything possible to isolate and prevent China and Russia from becoming a pivot point for eroding the U.S. as a unipolar power.
Nations are pushing to develop themselves with or without working with the West. Many are fostering stronger South-South relations. This year shifting alliances were demonstrated with traditional allies like Saudi Arabia applying for membership in the BRICS economic bloc of nations, made up of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa.
South Africa, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced in November that “Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman expressed the kingdom’s desire to join the BRICS,” as other countries had expressed. “In 2023, the BRICS summit will be held under the South African presidency and this request will be studied,” he said. “Several countries are in contact with the BRICS, and we have assured them that the accession issue will be discussed, and a decision will be made,” sdded Mr. Ramaphosa.
Iran, Algeria, Argentina, Türkiye, Egypt, Indonesia and Afghanistan are peeping at BRICS. A Dezan Shira and Associates Silk Road Briefing noted if accepted, BRICS would represent a GDP 30 percent larger than America; 50 percent of the global population and control 60 percent of global gas reserves. This is the state of the world in 2022 as 2023 gets underway.
—Brian E. Muhammad, Staff Writer
