Outlook's Latest Issue: The Warlord With 'A Passion' For Peace

Recently, Scottish artist Lewis Macleod dropped a hilarious impersonation of US President Donald Trump where the bit concerns him ending multiple wars, including War of the Roses, Battle for the Planet of the Apes, Star Wars and currently working on resolving the American Civil War. Isn't it baffling how normal it would be to hear him say something similar? While exaggeration has always been an intrinsic part of comic impersonation and political satire - a world safely distanced from reality, the current scenario has people stuck between fact and fiction, where the absurd feels all the more real, and the reality seems increasingly perplexing.

As US-Israel attacks on Iran ensue, West Asia continues to negotiate between a rocky past and an uncertain future where the contours of the region keep being shaped by the global north. In yet another war, which was never theirs to wage, the US, promising to liberate women, ended up bombing a girls' school and along with Israel killed almost 1200 people after offering the people of Iran a chance to return to ‘normalcy’. In a world where the West continues to determine what deserves to be branded ‘a regime’ and what ‘a government’, not only have wars become the new normal, but are being fought like crusades.

US troops are being reportedly asked to wage war as a part of “God’s divine plan”. Adding to Trump’s list of era-defining claims, he recently mentioned that he was asked to be the next Supreme Leader of Iran which he politely refused by saying "No, thank you". Last year, in his quest for the Nobel Peace Prize, Donald Trump anointed himself as the ‘President Of Peace’ claiming that he had ended eight wars,  but not very surprisingly continues to fight the latest one in Iran, with the promise of bringing ‘peace and stability to the region’. The fine line between reality and fiction is a feeble one at the moment, steadily erasing itself into oblivion. Markets crumble; supply systems keep being paralysed while haze and tease continue to surround peace talks - misinformation and sweeping statements taking front-seat. 

In Outlook’s April 11 issue, Warlord, difficult questions are asked with tensions escalating, futures compromised, uncertainty looming and leaders of the free world being blinded by an obnoxious lust for power and interests. Tanvir Aeijaz speaks to Prof. Thomas Pogge, Leitner Professor of Philosophy and Professor of Political Science, Yale University interrogating the philosophy of war, the involvement of the global south, India's silence, and the global balance of power. In his column, Harish Khare looks at the emotional trauma and physiological impact of the relentless American-Israeli aggression on Iran through the accounts of Harold Nicolson’s Diaries and Letters, 1939-1945. Seema Guha’s piece talks of how as the war enters its fourth week, the US must win, while Iran just needs to survive. Dissecting the current talks which are being held with limited clarity on any breakthrough as missiles and drones keep raining down across West Asia.

In India, as five crucial states walk into the month of elections and the final strategies are being ironed out, Outlook’s coverage of the elections goes beyond general numbers, diving deeper into agenda, challenges and issues plaguing the electorate and the disadvantaged across the country. Snigdhendu Bhattacharya delves into how the consistent exchanges between Mamata Banerjee and Narendra Modi keep polarising Bengal, and how SIR in the state has reversed the cards, with Mamata asking the primary questions more than facing them. R Viajaya Shankar raises a crucial question on the vacuum which might follow in Tamil Nadu, if AIADMK suffers a second successive defeat, bringing an end to the Dravidian binary in the state. Ashlin Mathew profiles Himanta Biswa Sarma, the ideological history and contradictions shaping the wildly polarising BJP's numero uno figure in Assam, and NK Bhoopesh looks at MK Stalin and Pinarayi Vijayan, the towering vanguards against BJP’s machinery in the South, where for one ideology shapes power while for the other, power drives ideology.