Week 26: Peace Is a Force Multiplier. War Is Not and Never Was.

Dear all,

A force multiplier. Reality is a force multiplier. It goes beyond political and business narratives. It simply grinds forward. Seamlessly coordinated, in a perfect-pitch mode. Harmonious.

The phrase "the rules of the game are changing" typically refers to a significant shift in how things are done within a particular context, be it business, politics, sports, or any other field. It suggests that the established norms, practices, or expectations are evolving.

But in the world we live in today, it's not just the rules that are changing. It’s the game itself, and there are no rules attached. Norms are fluid. Morality has been replaced by subjectivity.

There are enemies everywhere. Real, constructed, imagined, useful. Yet enemies all the same. We are living in a hostile time. A time when the word peace agitates both elites and masses. A time when politicians and leaders call for “de-escalation,” not peace. Not a ceasefire. Not an immediate stop to death, suffering, and destruction.

We live in a time where the global institutions once established to uphold peaceful coexistence now gape empty and hollow. A time when consumers around the world are finally realizing that they are, in fact, just consumers—no longer citizens.

Democracy is easy to dismantle. It starts with norms, spreads to institutions, and creeps into laws and rules. Eventually, the impossible and unthinkable become normal. Killing children is normal. Bombing is normal. Starvation is normal. Kidnapping, executions, collective punishments—all of it is normal today.

Accepted. Supported by people in power. Explained to the masses as “necessary,” “existential,” “righteous.”

We love the drama of murderers and heroes, as long as we are the good ones and someone else is the evil. A world where our values are deeper, more moral, more human than their values.

We indulge in our differences, in the threat we pose to one another, in the danger and death we can bring upon each other. We have forgotten, and are no longer reminded, that the only truly “necessary” thing is that we stop killing one another. That the only real “existential” truth is that we are all flesh and blood, floating together in this vast universe.

Our survival depends on all of us. The truly righteous thing to do is to love, to compromise, to show compassion, to forgive. Hate and fear are force multipliers. But so are love and courage. We need to see that. We need to feel that.

Peace, by far, is the most powerful force multiplier humanity has.

There are numbers that should never become statistics. Numbers like 22,495. That is the official count of children in conflict zones who were either killed, wounded, used as weapons of war, or denied the basic right to safety in 2024. The United Nations released its annual report, and the findings are not just alarming, they are devastating. A 25 percent increase in these atrocities over the span of a year. Let that sink in. This is not a random fluctuation on a graph. It is an explosion of suffering with names, faces, and futures lost in silence.

Children, whose only crime is being born into the wrong place at the wrong time, are being hunted by war. Schools, once sanctuaries of laughter and learning, are being turned into targets. Attacks on educational institutions surged by 44 percent. Sexual violence against children jumped 35 percent. It is a world upside down, where brutality is policy, and innocence becomes collateral damage.

Virginia Gamba, the UN secretary-general’s special envoy on children and conflict, put it bluntly. “We are at the point of no return.” And yet, too many seem to have already passed that point and kept walking. Governments and armed groups are shredding international law like it’s an old newspaper. A child is supposed to be anyone under 18, legally shielded from war. But in today’s reality, that definition might as well be a whisper in a hurricane.

The report documented over 41,000 violations. That is not a typo. In Gaza alone, 4,856 cases were confirmed, most involving Israeli security forces. Children were killed, maimed, and blocked from receiving urgent medical care. In one of the most chilling findings, Palestinian boys were used as human shields, not in one or two instances, but in dozens. We are watching international law being publicly violated while the world scrolls on.

And it is not just Gaza. The Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, Nigeria, and Haiti all saw disturbing spikes in violence against children. In Haiti alone, over 400 cases of rape were recorded, including 160 incidents of gang rape. These are not just acts of war. They are acts of deliberate dehumanisation. In some regions, children are not only attacked but abducted and turned into soldiers or sex slaves. Their lives are fractured before they even begin.

Helen Pattinson from War Child UK said something that echoes in my mind. “To normalise this level of violence is to accept the dismantling of our collective humanity.” And perhaps that is the most terrifying truth. It is not just that these crimes happen, but that they keep happening without consequence. The trauma becomes routine. The grief, expected. The outrage, fleeting.