December 25 is Christmas in the West, which is the most important and lively holiday of the year. But if you look at the headlines of the United States and the West on this day, people feel more that "Christmas Eve (Christmas Eve) is not peaceful", and the joy and harmony that the holiday should have been squeezed to the edge by various conflicts and chaos. The ongoing war in Gaza, the Colorado case in the United States, the terrorist alerts in Europe, and the floods in Australia ......Roman Catholic Pope Francis said on Christmas Eve that "the prince of peace is once again rejected by the futile logic of war and armed conflict", an allegorical exclamation that has spread far and wide and touched the hearts of the Western world.
Christmas Eve and Christmas Day have connotations of reunion, tranquility and good news in Western culture. For the Western world, there are indeed many troubles on Christmas Eve this year, and the turbulent atmosphere brought about by the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, and the domestic political and social ** "makes the joy dull and even suffocated". It is not an exaggeration to say that this is the most depressing Christmas Eve in the West since the end of the Cold War.
However, it is regrettable that although the West laments that the world is not peaceful, it is almost impossible to see that they have any deep excavation and reflection on the reasons for the peace of Christmas Eve, and instead fall into a meaningless lament and complaint. If the West's lamentation does not touch the soul, it is still revolving around "Western-centrism" and will not have any positive effect on the fight for global security.
What is the root cause of the West's lack of security?The answer lies in the West itself. In recent years, Western countries have talked a lot about security, and many dignitaries and leaders have talked about "de-risking" at every turn. In pursuit of absolute security, the United States and the West have invested a lot of manpower, material and financial resources, and the proportion of military spending in GDP has generally jumped upward. Not only is NATO, a relic of the Cold War, deadlocked, but the United States and the West have also set up many new gangs and gangs in the name of "security" around the world. However, after spending so much money and making so much effort, the security situation of the United States and the West has visibly deteriorated, and they have fallen into the paradox that the more they pursue "security," the more insecure they become.
The security pursued by the United States and the West is narrow security, and its essence is conflict and confrontation. When the West, especially the United States, talks about "our security," the so-called "we" do not include all mankind, but only talk about the United States and the West themselvesWhen we talk about "maintaining global security," we are not really talking about safeguarding the security of the whole world, but about how to maintain the hegemony of the United States and the West.
This kind of divisive security, created through the use of reckless force, the formation of factions, the instigation of conflicts, and the transfer of contradictions, has undermined the common security of the whole world. The narrow and one-sided pursuit of so-called bloc security by the United States and the West will inevitably lead to insecurity in other countriesThe deterioration of the situation in other countries, in turn, has made the Western world even more insecure. This kind of artificially created security confrontation can only lead all parties concerned into a security trap and make everyone feel less and less safe.
It has been pointed out that the United States and the West, out of the need to maintain hegemony, prefer to revolve around "other people's crises." The problem is that the Western world does not exist in a vacuum, the whole world is a community with a common destiny. Constantly creating "other people's crises" can easily ignite their own crises, and the West cannot be immune to them. An auxiliary bishop of Cologne, Germany, interviewed by the Associated Press, said that Cologne Cathedral, which was taken care of by police dogs and police officers on Christmas Eve this year, "may be the safest church in Germany." This is not only a kind of self-deprecation, but also a true portrayal of the West's security dilemma.
In fact, whether it is the West or the East, developed or developing, what the common people want is nothing more than a peaceful and contented life. No one wants war to happen in their own country, and no one wants to see an economic crisis or a social crisis, and this is common to the whole world. The difference is what kind of "security" we want, whether it is the common security of inclusiveness or the "you must be worse than me" kind of security, and the results brought about by different starting points are often completely different.
A safe world is the common aspiration of all mankind. Safety doesn't fall from the sky. This year, China launched the Global Security Initiative, calling on all countries in the world to follow a path of common security. The prompt and enthusiastic response to this proposal from the international community is itself a reflection of the timeliness and urgency of the initiative. We hope that this not-so-peaceful Christmas Eve will prompt more reflection in the United States and the West, and encourage more forces, including the United States and the Western community, to participate in building common security, so that the world may be able to look forward to a more hopeful Christmas Eve.