Editor's note: Hussein Askary, a special commentator for CGTN, is the Vice-Chairman of the Belt and Road Institute in Sweden, and a distinguished research fellow in the Guangdong Institute for International Strategies. The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily the views of CGTN.

The world has become increasingly unstable due to the reckless behavior of the American leaders and their allied Israelis, who launched coordinated airstrikes against Iran. This war, which can get out of control soon, has already inflicted heavy damage on the world economy and security. The very definition of security, according to these modern warlords, has become a cartoonish image of their own selfish desires and fantasies. "Might makes right" has replaced common sense and the true essence of what it means to be human.  

Chinese President Xi Jinping reminded us when he launched the Global Security Initiative (GSI) in a keynote speech at the Boao Forum about four years ago, about such an eventuality, when he said: "We need to work together to maintain peace and stability in the world. The Cold War mentality would only wreck the global peace framework, hegemonism and power politics would only endanger world peace, and bloc confrontation would only exacerbate security challenges in the 21st century."  

The GSI was launched to highlight the importance of thinking in terms of the common and indivisible security of all nations, rather than what some powers deem their own pure interest, no matter the consequences. China has laid out a roadmap for achieving global peace and prosperity through cooperation and the harmonization of the interests of all nations in a community with a shared future for humanity. This is not mere rhetoric but a reality of what China has achieved through the Belt and Road Initiative, for example.  

The contrast between the world views of the global majority and those few who are dragging us towards the abyss of war and destruction has never been starker than now. However, this is not a completely new phenomenon, although with nuclear weapons, it has made the danger to human life on earth unprecedented. In modern Western philosophy, Thomas Hobbes' notion of a state of "war of all against all" as a natural state of affairs became dominant in imperialist thinking since the 16th century. 

American scholar John Mearsheimer asserts, in a generalizing manner, without distinguishing among the different philosophical outlooks that have existed across the world. He argues that great powers are concerned mainly with figuring out how to survive in a world where there is no higher authority to protect them from each other and that the anarchic international system creates powerful incentives for states to look for opportunities to gain power at the expense of rivals.  

In such a cynical condition, "might makes right," and justice becomes whatever serves the strong. This condition leads to a life that is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short," as Hobbes writes in his Leviathan.  

This brutish mentality is, unfortunately, often idealized and justified in historical references as a fact of life. The constant bombardment and blockade of Iran today, which will only be relieved, according to American leaders, if the Iranian "surrender unconditionally," is compared to the tragedy that inflicted the people of the island of Melos. 

In Thucydides' "History of the Peloponnesian War," which took place in the 5th century BC, the Athenians tell the people of the island of Melos that they cannot remain neutral in the war and that they either join the Athenian alliance or be destroyed. When the people of Melos refused, the Athenians killed all the males on the island, enslaved all the females, and resettled the island with their own supporters. In "the natural state of things," the Athenian envoy told the people of Melos, "the strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must."

Humans are not prisoners in this world; they are endowed with free will to choose to become better, solve problems, and make the world better for everyone. Through our free will, we can make the world a jungle or a garden. 

Nothing is predetermined, and global security depends on the ideas we carry within ourselves, in our society and culture, and on how we want to shape the reality in which we co-exist with others who might be different but are united by our humanity and our common destiny.

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