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Twiplomacy Pressures Are Driving Us To Global War

The Ukraine war has glaringly exposed how tweets are driving the narrative, often at the cost of a balanced and thoughtful approach.

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The last time the West coordinated and mobilized action against an evil regime was in 2003. Twitter came into being three years later.

Since the platform became the medium of choice for armchair citizen journalists, there have been regional conflicts - the Arab Spring, the Syrian war, Sudan, and Yemen - to be sure. But none involved the West as profoundly as did Iraq in 2003 and Afghanistan in 2001, but that was before Twitter.

Today, western governments - compared to those in the rest of the world - live and perish on Twitter. A GIF meme and a short text message typed out by an activist while he/she waits at a 90-second traffic light can go viral. The pressure for government officials and corporate leaders to do something righteous is intense. So they turn to tweet the do-good action of the day, waiting to see how it trends. The do-gooders' uncoordinated approach is inching us ever closer to a global conflict, the biggest since the Second World War.

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