Underwood

Making tabouleh in my beloved Beirut bowl, I am saddened to think of all the hardship that Lebanon has gone through since Ally and I visited in November 2019. While reality was always more multifaceted (just think of Rwanda or the Balkans), it is difficult to escape the feeling that, when I grew up, the world was still about rebuilding from war, walls were coming down and countries were opening up whereas, today, one cannot even travel to large swaths of the world (including liberal democracies such as Japan). Instead of engagement, all that politicians talk about are boycotts and sanctions, how to isolate our enemies rather than winning them over. As despicable as Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine is, every day makes me less and less certain about the wisdom of the current approach. If anything, the West should be everywhere in Russia right now, fostering cultural exchange, and creating millions of micro-connections undermining Putin’s antagonistic logic.

Ultimately, this is of course a question about who we are, and who we want to become. If there was ever any doubt, StarTrek will not happen by itself, it will take all of us if we ever are to climb to the stars and bring the world together.