Ongoing Russia-Ukraine war has threatened the world. To avoid the bloodshed one army will have to surrender to the other.
Muhammad Ali Shaikh
Amidst all the conflicts around the world with people yet still being infected with the COVID-19, which at one time really felt like a World War III, where every person was fearing their own death, be-it an adult or a senior citizen, where not hundreds or thousands but millions of people had been infected and died from this virus, to be exact, the total death toll is around 6.7 million and the count still goes on. And interestingly during the time where COVID-19 was at a rise, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo reportedly said that “ventilators are to this war what bombs were to World War II”, which at one point it felt that way.
It’s important to remember that things like the First World War and the Second World War actually began with localized conflicts between regional powers and minor powers, World War One began because of a fight between Serbia and the Austro-Hungarian Empire that also drew to other countries. WWII arguably began when Germany invaded; Poland and other countries came to Poland’s defense. There are a number of parallels that can be drawn between World War II and the COVID-19 pandemic: the exceptionally high number of deaths measured every day, immediately reminds the public of a war death toll, though it doesn’t compare with the 60 million victims of World War II. The interruption of normal life routines, the shortages of certain services, industries conversion, and the economic decline: these are all phenomena that occurred during World War II and that we have witnessed during the unfolding of the COVID-19 healthcare crisis, however, it often also assumes a national effort, when perhaps a pandemic is obviously international or global. Whereas, not only that, we have a conflict between two different states (the Russian-Ukraine war) that is drawing more and more attention from external factors. Really, some of the most intense attention to such issues that we’ve seen since the end of WWII, so one can understand why people feel we might be on the verge of World War 3, but we’re still several steps away, because it can be said that up till now Ukraine has survived the invasion when it fought back up against Russia, but still Russia is in control of east and south of Ukraine, the part of Ukraine which is near the border of Russia. Now here, the role the rest of the countries can play in this conflict is threefold, either the countries can do nothing, or they can send in their army to fight against Russia, which in that way will be a WWIII, which gratefully is everyone against of, or the last thing that rest can do and have been seen to be doing is to apply economic sanctions on Russia and help Ukraine through providing aid as the Americans did by providing Ukraine with high tech gears, so to avoid all the bloodshed and agony, one army will have to surrender to the other army, just as how the wars usually end as the Germans did during the WWII, because neither will Russia conquer all of Ukraine, nor will Ukraine be able to completely push Russia out of its border and secure it.
_________________
Muhammad Ali Shaikh is final year law student at Denning Law School affiliated with University of London
