War of words better than a real war - 2016 was a year of changes

AT the beginning of a new year most people reflect on the one that has just gone and ponder about what will happen in the months to come. There is little doubt that 2016 has, in global political terms, been a momentous year, one in which certainty was turned on its head.

When the people of the United Kingdom voted in June to leave the European Union there was a collective gasp throughout Europe and beyond. Nobody — not even the Leave campaigners — expected it to happen and most people were left floundering as a result. It was as if a 500-1 shot had won the Grand National and not even its owner had placed a bet on it.

Just when we felt that things could not get any stranger, Donald Trump beat Hilary Clinton in the race to become the next US president. Nobody — not even the professional pollsters — saw that one coming, either. It was as if our collective mindset could not comprehend such an appalling vista.

After the initial shocks of those momentous events began to subside, anxiety became the dominant feature of political discourse. Will Donald Trump really do all those crazy things he proposed during the presidential campaign? Will Theresa May make Britain’s exit a very painful one?

Given such uncertainty, pessimism has taken hold, even though a more sensible assessment would indicate that the world will keep turning.

Unlike most animals, human beings tend, irrationally, to fear the unknown more than the known but history shows that there is greater danger in what is familiar.

In fact, the dangers we face do not come from change but from more of the same, ongoing situations. The civil war in Syria is a case in point. It has already seen hundreds of thousands killed and millions displaced in a conflict that now enters its sixth year.

It follows a depressingly familiar pattern of powerful nations — in this case Russia — using military might to prop up dictators and despots, oblivious to the horrors inflicted on civilians caught in the crossfire.

War and want are all too familiar. So is terrorism, as the attacks in Berlin, Nice, Paris, Brussels and Istanbul show. The attack at a Christmas market in Berlin on December 19 was a carbon copy of the one in Nice on July 14. Many cities across Europe are on high alert because of the threats posed by Islamic State suicide bombers.

The Mediterranean continues to be a graveyard. The number of people who have drowned fleeing north Africa this year has risen to more than 5,000 this year, according to the official data of the United Nations Refugee Agency. Members of the Irish Naval Service continue to put themselves in harm’s way to rescue refugees.

Neither Brexit nor Trump’s election pose anything like the danger we all face from these familiar situations. We should also acknowledge that they were the result of fair and democratic votes by the UK and US electorates, a triumph of the ballot over the bullet.

Better a war of words than the real thing.