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Dr. Hossam Badrawi writes for “Egyptke”: The Jungle of the Global Order

The year 2026 did not begin with hope, but with warning signs.
States are disintegrating, presidents are being arrested beyond their borders, and international law stands by—either as a silent spectator or as a complicit partner. It is as if humanity, after everything it claimed to have learned, has decided to return to the first lesson of history: the strong do what they will, and the weak pay the price.

The reader may ask: What did the president of Venezuela do to deserve being arrested outside his country, by military force?
Did he start a war?
Did he threaten the security of another state?
The shocking answer: no.

What Nicolás Maduro did was not a cross-border criminal offense. It was a political departure from the line, a refusal of hegemony, and an attempt—successful or not—to assert that small states have the right to be different.

And here the essence of the scene is revealed: we are not facing a legal proceeding, but a message. A message that says sovereignty is no longer a fixed right, and legitimacy no longer comes from peoples, but from the balance of power.

The real danger in this action does not lie in Maduro himself, nor in how his rule is judged, but in the precedent it establishes: if one state has the right to arrest the president of another state outside any international judicial framework, then what remains of the idea of international law? What, then, is the difference between a global order and a jungle… wearing a necktie?

Justice, when exercised outside the law, loses its meaning and turns from a human value into a selective tool—raised against the weak and sheathed before the strong.

This scene intersects with the disintegration of states, with international silence, and with our growing habituation to violations. Madness does not begin with the bullet; it begins when the moral question disappears and everything becomes “understandable,” “justified,” “realistic,” and familiar.

Israel arrests an entire people and intends to deport them from their land. America arrests the president of a sovereign state as if it owns him. An ancient country is split into two. Syria was dismantled, and its leadership—labeled terrorist yesterday—surrendered its land and the Golan to Israel. And yet…

This must not be the end of the story.

Hope does not lie in acquitting a ruler, nor in demonizing a power, nor in blaming, but in restoring meaning: that the state is not a spoil of war, that sovereignty is not a gift, and that law—if not applied to all—will lose the respect of all.

We can understand what is happening through the following axes:

This is an age of madness,
yet hope remains as long as there are those who refuse to convince themselves that the jungle is destiny, that silence is wisdom, and that power is justice.

This is not a cry against a state,
but a cry for the human being—
before he too becomes a forgotten footnote in the margins of a global order that has lost its mind.


Axis One: The Collapse of the Idea of the State

The announcement of Yemen’s separation into two states is not merely a Yemeni event; it is part of a continuing pattern: dismantling identity, exhausting the state, then presenting “the solution” in the form of division.
The real danger is not separation itself, but the normalization of the idea that the state is a breakable entity whenever major powers so decide.


Axis Two: Power Above Sovereignty

The arrest of the president of a sovereign state like Venezuela and his wife by the U.S. military is not about liking or hating a person; it is about a dangerous precedent.
If a head of state can be arrested militarily, what remains of sovereignty?

Here the philosophical question emerges:

  • Was international law created to be applied?

  • Or to be used when it serves the powerful and suspended when it annoys them?


Axis Three: International Justice… a Beautiful Myth

Justice did not collapse suddenly. It is collapsing by installments.
Silence here, double standards there.
Justification in the name of “security,” neglect in the name of “political realism.”
The result is a world with no moral reference except the balance of power.


Axis Four: Why Are Arab States Always Targets of Disintegration?

Because the Arab state is often weak in institutions, fragmented in identity, economically besieged, and strategically exposed. But more dangerous is that its dismantling is not met with real deterrence; sometimes it is even presented as a “solution.” What we are living is not merely a conflict of interests, but a divorce between power and conscience.

When humanity loses its ability to respect the boundaries of states, the limits of law, and the dignity of the human being, it does not progress—it regresses into its original madness.

Madness is no longer the exception; it has become the rule. Every morning we wake to news that seems to come from primitive times: states cracking, borders erased, sovereignty violated, and international law present in name but absent in reality. The world has taken off its civilizational mask and returned to its naked form: power first, and rights later—if at all.

What is happening is not separate events but one long scene in which faces change but the logic remains: whoever holds power writes the rules; whoever lacks it is reshaped, broken, or divided.

The state, once a moral contract between people, land, and history, is now a file to be edited, borders to be bargained over, and peoples treated as collateral damage.

More dangerous than violence itself is its normalization: that we hear about disintegration without trembling, arrest without anger, and international silence without asking: where are we going?

International justice did not collapse in one blow, but through a series of “temporary exceptions” until exception became the rule and law a selective tool.

And despite all this darkness, the most dangerous question remains: is this humanity’s fate? Has the human dream ended at the edge of power?

No. And here hope begins.

Hope is not that the powerful will stop using power—history knows no such luxury—but that peoples regain awareness: that disintegration begins in minds before maps. Hope is in a state strong in institutions, not slogans. In a collective consciousness that refuses to be dragged into narrow identity conflicts. In elites who know that silence is not neutrality, but complicity.

The jungle may rule temporarily, but it builds no civilization, no stability, no future.

This may be an age of madness, but madness never lasts. Humanity, despite all its falls, can learn—if it chooses.

This cry is not a call for violence, but for reason. Not a declaration of despair, but a final warning before the jungle becomes a homeland, power becomes law, and the human being becomes a forgotten detail.

If this is the “new international order,” then let us admit with courage: it is not an order, but a moral vacuum filled by power when it wishes and abandoned by justice when it inconveniences.

The danger is not a divided state or an arrested president, but our habituation to the scene, our growing ability to justify it.

When sovereignty is broken in the name of law, law assassinated in the name of security, and peoples told to be silent in the name of realism, humanity does not advance—it retreats centuries.

The jungle is honest with itself. The catastrophe is calling it a “global order” and asking humans to applaud because they are still alive.

This is not a call to rebellion, but a final alarm to reason: either we restore the idea of justice before it collapses entirely, or prepare for a world where no state is respected, no strong man held accountable, and no voice heard until it is too late.

History does not forgive the inattentive, nor excuse the complicit, nor respect those who remained silent while madness was managed in the name of wisdom.

And before we lose the world, we may lose meaning itself: to be human… not just survivors in a nameless jungle.

Dr. Hossam Badrawi

He is a politician, intellect, and prominent physician. He is the former head of the Gynecology Department, Faculty of Medicine Cairo University. He conducted his post graduate studies from 1979 till 1981 in the United States. He was elected as a member of the Egyptian Parliament and chairman of the Education and Scientific Research Committee in the Parliament from 2000 till 2005. As a politician, Dr. Hossam Badrawi was known for his independent stances. His integrity won the consensus of all people from various political trends. During the era of former president Hosni Mubarak he was called The Rationalist in the National Democratic Party NDP because his political calls and demands were consistent to a great extent with calls for political and democratic reform in Egypt. He was against extending the state of emergency and objected to the National Democratic Party's unilateral constitutional amendments during the January 25, 2011 revolution. He played a very important political role when he defended, from the very first beginning of the revolution, the demonstrators' right to call for their demands. He called on the government to listen and respond to their demands. Consequently and due to Dr. Badrawi's popularity, Mubarak appointed him as the NDP Secretary General thus replacing the members of the Bureau of the Commission. During that time, Dr. Badrawi expressed his political opinion to Mubarak that he had to step down. He had to resign from the party after 5 days of his appointment on February 10 when he declared his political disagreement with the political leadership in dealing with the demonstrators who called for handing the power to the Muslim Brotherhood. Therefore, from the very first moment his stance was clear by rejecting a religion-based state which he considered as aiming to limit the Egyptians down to one trend. He considered deposed president Mohamed Morsi's decision to bring back the People's Assembly as a reinforcement of the US-supported dictatorship. He was among the first to denounce the incursion of Morsi's authority over the judicial authority, condemning the Brotherhood militias' blockade of the Supreme Constitutional Court. Dr. Hossam supported the Tamarod movement in its beginning and he declared that toppling the Brotherhood was a must and a pressing risk that had to be taken few months prior to the June 30 revolution and confirmed that the army would support the legitimacy given by the people

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