A common conclusion among writers at the end of 2023 was that the world was heading to hell in a handcart.
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New wars and resurgent authoritarianism had finally snapped any lingering optimism which followed the collapse of Soviet communism as the 1990s dawned.
If history had found its rational plane, it had not dwelled there long. NATO will this week commence its largest military exercises since the Cold War - its not so fictional enemy a "near peer aggressor" also known as, Russia.
A Trump victory later this year would doubtless accelerate this regression, emboldening bad actors and withdrawing what has been the mainstay of order for the last 80 years, US strategic superiority tempered through multilateralism and "moral" democratic engagement.
With that would go any hope of an effective planetary response to climate. Who seriously thinks China would drive the global effort to decarbonise?
So then, Hades by way of handcart it seems to be.
But what if there is a handbrake in this particular handcart - a lever right in front of us and yet culturally invisible? Leaders already among us who could arrest humanity's slide towards mutually assured destruction?
Let me come at this by way of illustration. Remember a few weeks back the reports that two Australian brothers were killed in southern Lebanon by an Israeli missile strike?
Tel Aviv cited self-defence, the same blanket licence it relies on for sending waves of rockets into Gaza killing civilians in their tens of thousands.
The coffins of the "martyrs" were hoisted through the streets by an enraged community. The air bristled with a righteous grief. Fists and firearms were thrust skyward.
One of the brothers was claimed by Hezbollah as a fighter, the other and his Lebanese wife were collateral damage. All were nonetheless draped in Hezbollah flags.
Media showed the scene yet ignored a crucial fact - these streets were packed with men. Where were the women?
By remaining mute on this gender divide TV reports omit a key ingredient in this never-ending cycle of violence - its quintessential "male" quality.
It was the same in Sanaa, Yemen's capital, where ultra-violent Houthi fighters thronged on Friday to protest about US airstrikes, and again in Pakistan in the last 24 hours as baying locals gathered to support their government following cross-border attacks by Pakistan and Iran respectively.
It is always men.
Men waving their guns. Men enforcing an extreme religious doctrine that keeps women corralled at home, subordinate and second class.
Men ordering the wars then refusing to negotiate.
Men who uniquely demand the moral authority to determine what women can do with their bodies while simultaneously exercising the right to take life indiscriminately based on faith and race.
Had any of these rallies been exclusively women, this gender fact would warrant mention. Why?
Because an all-female rally would not merely be atypical in the Middle East but inherently "political" - a challenge to the local power.
By ignoring the gender element journalism actually obscures rather than exposes the agar from which these hyper-violent movements spiral. Yet gender is never far from war.
This current round of atrocities began on October 7 with the most gratuitous and degrading sexual violence against Jewish women that Hamas leaders could dream up. This was deliberate.
A New York Times' investigation of that day makes this excruciatingly clear. While many specifics are contested, there is no denying that a latent contempt for women was given vent that day.
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That contempt stands on a subjugation of women written in religious doctrine - all of them.
Should we be surprised, then, that when these faiths are interpreted by religious extremists, gendered contempt manifests as crazed fanatical violence?
They are all at it. The war-mongering Netanyahu government's pulverising bombardment of the Gaza strip and the worsening exchanges across its northern border with Lebanon, entail the indiscriminate - but not unintentional - killing of women and children.
Vladimir Putin used the Christmas-New Year period to step up his lawless attack on civilian targets in Ukraine.
Keeping women out of leadership, away from the negotiating table, removed from strategic and defence policy is so normalised that it escapes news reporting. It is a blindness common to every nation-state in the world.
Just as it is inconceivable that a majority female leadership in Gaza would have conceived, let alone authorised the sexual violence on October 7, it is hard to believe a predominantly female Israeli response would have so relentlessly targeted non-combatants, firing massive munitions into apartments, schools, hospitals, churches and mosques.
Would female leaderships in the US, UK, Australia have endorsed Israel's conduct of this war also?
The denial of food, water and medicines?
Who knows? But we have more than enough evidence to draw some conclusions.
First, men are the common factor in all wars of aggression.
Second, they have ruined things now so consistently and so comprehensively that it can only be because they hold all the cards, own all the media, control all the weapons, rule all the faiths, and dictate all the capital flows, that they are not regarded as ill-suited to lead.
So, that handbrake? Turn to the world's women. Empower women to negotiate a settlement between Israel and Palestine. Put women in charge of strategic policy.
Pull that thing and pull it hard - even an average man can do that.
Mark Kenny is The Canberra Times' political analyst and a professor at the ANU's Australian Studies Institute. He hosts the Democracy Sausage podcast. He writes a column every Sunday.
Mark Kenny is The Canberra Times' political analyst and a professor at the ANU's Australian Studies Institute. He hosts the Democracy Sausage podcast. He writes a column every Sunday.
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