The United States, China, Russia, Israel, the EU, India, Pakistan and the planet where shame no longer stops threats of war and bombings.
The world is not entering a new orderly Cold War, with clean maps and academic speeches. It is entering a more brutal age, where the great actors have discovered that they can bomb, blockade, sanction, invade, occupy, displace and militarize without paying a cost proportional to the damage caused. The central word is no longer balance. It is impunity. And when impunity becomes doctrine, shame is filed away as a minor procedure.
Israel shows that degradation with brutality. Gaza is not only a humanitarian tragedy. It is a moral test for the planet. Every pulverized neighborhood, every destroyed hospital, every dead child and every displaced family does not accuse only the one who fires. It also accuses those who finance, justify, veto, remain silent or ask for prudence from halls where a bomb never falls. Impunity does not fall from the sky. It has a shield, weapons, lobby, doctrine and sponsors.
The United States is not the judge of the world nor the universal defender of human rights. Its bases scattered across the planet are not there to protect humanity, but to secure routes, surround adversaries, sustain allies, monitor resources and attack when its doctrine decides. That is also the shame. Calling a global network of military pressure stability. Calling the possibility of shooting first defense. Calling a map full of foreign bases freedom.
Cuba is an old wound turned into diplomatic routine. It does not threaten the planet, it does not surround anyone with military bases, it does not control ocean routes or decide the fate of continents. Yet it remains trapped in an architecture of economic punishment that disguises itself as moral principle and ends up striking the daily life of a people. One can criticize the Cuban system without turning the blockade into a democratic virtue.
Venezuela appears not as an internal file for powers to distribute certificates of democracy, but as a geopolitical, energy and diplomatic piece. Its oil, its location, its relationship with China and Russia, its regional weight and its conflict with Washington have turned it into a territory watched by too many external eyes. No foreign actor has the right to decide the fate of a people through sanctions, threats, covert operations or humanitarian speeches smelling of contract.
Russia also calculated its own impunity before entering Ukraine. It measured energy, the European winter, alternative markets, Western fatigue and indirect support from partners. Moscow speaks of security, encirclement and historical defense. But no narrative erases tanks crossing borders or cities paying for decisions made far from their windows. Russian geography is immense. Its excuses, not so much.
China advances by another method. Ports, loans, railways, industry, technology, maritime pressure and strategic patience. In the Indo-Pacific, Taiwan, the Philippines, Japan, India, Australia and the United States form an architecture of permanent tension. Beijing speaks of historical rights. Its neighbors speak of threat. Washington speaks of stability. Everyone speaks of law. Everyone moves ships.
India does not want to ask permission. It buys Russian energy, negotiates with the United States, competes with China, looks toward the Indian Ocean and presents itself as a voice of the Global South. Pakistan, nuclear, fragile and militarized, completes a region where religion, army, intelligence, poverty, national pride and atomic bombs coexist far too closely. There, impunity does not always come from great empires. Sometimes it is born in States where uniforms command even when they do not formally govern.
The European Union speaks as the moral conscience of the world, but often acts as a dependent power. It speaks of human rights, but buys energy wherever it can. It speaks of green transition, but needs minerals from Africa, Latin America and Asia. It speaks of strategic autonomy, but looks to Washington when fear grows. Europe writes very good communiqus. The problem is that lions do not stop to read them.
The figures also have shame, even if no one invites them to the table. Global military spending reached nearly US$2.89 trillion in 2025, the highest level since 2009 as a share of global GDP. The United States, China and Russia together accounted for 51% of the planets military spending. In Gaza, OCHA continued reporting deaths, forced displacement and humanitarian restrictions in May 2026. And the blockade against Cuba was condemned again at the UN for the 33rd consecutive year in 2025. There is no lack of data. There is a lack of decency.
Toward 2030, the dispute will not be only over territories. It will be over lithium, copper, rare earths, uranium, gas, water, food, chips, submarine cables, ports, satellites, data and artificial intelligence. War may arrive as a mining contract, a digital blackout, strategic debt, an energy blockade, a naval base or an opaque algorithm. The dead will remain real. The excuses, increasingly elegant.
Good manners, NGOs, diplomatic menus and not even humanist movements will be of any use if the evolution of our ancestral gene continues its course in the lions that observe the world with an impassive primitive pattern, trying above all not to be annihilated. There lies the dark root of power. Not only in ambition, but also in fear. Humanity will have advanced greatly. So much so that it no longer needs to hide wars.
Brief Bibliography
- Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, SIPRI. Trends in World Military Expenditure, 2025.
- United Nations General Assembly. Necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the United States of America against Cuba.
Mauricio Herrera Kahn
