The Spiritual Cost of Global Trade

Alt. Text: Photography depicts the image of an olive tree against a cloudy sky. (image courtesy of Pixabay)

The ‘India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor’ was announced on September 9, 2023 as a Memorandum of Understanding between the ‘nation-state’ structures of the United States, United Arab Emirates, India, Saudi Arabia, France, Germany, Italy, and the European Union. 

The Corridor aims to stimulate ‘economic development through enhanced connectivity and economic integration across two continents.’ 

Much has been written about the corridor in terms of ‘strategic competition,’ but little from a spiritually informed perspective. But what is it that we are competing for? And at what cost? 

Unfortunately, many diplomats, analysts, policymakers, politicians, and leaders are spiritually unequipped to seriously consider the world’s problems. 

One Palestinian Jewish Rabbi, Jesus of Nazareth, wrote the Overarching Protocol Concerning the Wellbeing of a Globalized Word Instrument, otherwise known as the Lord’s Prayer.

Could ‘God’s will be done on earth as it is in heaven,’ really mean to destroy God’s creation by dropping bombs on babies in Palestine, for oil and gas? 

And by ‘give us this day our daily bread,’ did Palestinian Jesus really mean buy more cheap shoes made in India, delivered through the Economic Corridor?

It really doesn’t get any more plain English (language-wise only; obviously) than ‘forgive our debts.’ Foreign policymakers retort that increased economic competition from rivals is a good reason not to. 

The true cost of this spiritual failure will not be known until the next lifetime, but economists predict a downward trend, on the Index to Hell. 

No doubt former diplomatic colleagues may wonder what is to be made of such naïve analysis.  

Does imaginative politics belong only to so-called ‘frontier societies,’ an endearing term used by Western diplomats for what are ultimately settler-colonial entities? 

White supremacist constructs of political realism, spiritual disconnection, and the beloved diplomatic ‘tools’ of economic and historical gaslighting answer in the affirmative. 

But on the actual receiving end of the truth printer, it is not just Palestinians like Jesus that are Awake. 

The genocide in Palestine has displaced over two million civilians. Over 50,000 people have been killed, 70 percent of them children. Over one million Lebanese civilians are now also displaced. Over 1,000 combatants from the State of Israel have died.

Who is responsible for this mess and abject failure of moral leadership? In whose direction should we cast the first stone? 

It is the Spirit that binds us to each other and to God that gives us clarity to know that this genocide compounded by global greed is a great moral wrong. We are all complicit, but some more than others. 

White supremacy is not just the belief in racial superiority. It is the structure of the modern capitalist system, built and maintained through violence learned from white European colonizers. It narrates itself as the so-called ‘nation-state’ locally, and as ‘rules-based order’ internationally. 

It is a culture of perfectionism, urgency, defensiveness, worship of the written word (but not God’s written word), paternalism, fear of open conflict, individualism, and the dangerous and always false belief in one’s own ‘objectivity.’ 

Responsible, spiritually, and historically aware leadership requires us to deconstruct the myths, and work with historical truths, so that we can seriously engage with the magnitude of the existential problems facing our world.

World leaders and diplomats should do this as grown-up statesmen and stateswomen, not as emotionally and spiritually immature childish spoiled brats. 

Deconstructing that which we believe holds us together can be scary, and destabilizing; but it cannot be worse than dropping bombs on the children who pray:

“Give us this day our daily bread, … as we forgive those who trespass against us.’