The past year revealed a world in shambles, one with tragic echoes to Pablo Picasso's famous tableau of mass slaughter carried out with modern efficiency. Like Picasso's generation, we must not avert our eyes from the bleak and tragic global reality that is now being conjured before our eyes.
PARIS – On a flight I took recently from Paris to Osaka, the screen displaying our plane’s route reflected the state of the world in 2024: the aircraft zigzagged from France to Austria, over Romania, Turkey, Georgia, and Turkmenistan, crossing China via the Gobi Desert, then rounding North Korea before making a 90° turn toward our destination. Our flight carefully avoided the hot war zones (Ukraine, the Middle East, Iran) and a heavily sanctioned Russia that is now thoroughly alienated from the West. We were flying over a world in shambles.
PARIS – On a flight I took recently from Paris to Osaka, the screen displaying our plane’s route reflected the state of the world in 2024: the aircraft zigzagged from France to Austria, over Romania, Turkey, Georgia, and Turkmenistan, crossing China via the Gobi Desert, then rounding North Korea before making a 90° turn toward our destination. Our flight carefully avoided the hot war zones (Ukraine, the Middle East, Iran) and a heavily sanctioned Russia that is now thoroughly alienated from the West. We were flying over a world in shambles.