This day Will Come (2022) Drawing by Edwin Loftus

Someday the dove of peace will light as eagles take to flight.
Peace thrives when a nation is prepared for war. Weakness and trust are an invitation to those with colonialist or hegemonic ambitions. Make war on no one. But be prepared to defend against anyone who would take from your people their Natural Right to determine how they want to live and who they want to lead them. That holds for Russia, for China, for Iran, for America and any other nation that holds or would hold another people under their control.
Anyone of these nations has the power to seize the land of other nations, to put their people to flight or to make them subject to their rule. And in doing so every one of them violates or would violate the basic principles on which they claim to be founded. To be accepted as a leader is a great honor. To make yourself or your nation a ruler over others is the ultimate disgrace, it is worse than murder or rape and of much the same nature.
In making this image I had in mind the people of Ukraine and the terrible assault they are suffering. The Russian leaders that launched this attack are beyond excuse, those that this attempt at blatant conquest are only a little less to blame. But it is heartening to hear of protest and resistance from good people in Russia, know that most of your fellow human beings cheer for you. Yours is the greatest courage outside the battlefield itself.
It is no accident that to the woman's right, children play in a golden field beneath an azure sky. Between them a city rises, a sign of the recovery to come.
To the left of the man, a soldier recovering from his injuries, a devastated landscape of dead trees and cratered fields with graves in the foreground, begins to yield to a farmer sowing seed as the trees behind him display their green leaves.
From the man's hand rises an eagle, a symbol of this people's willingness to fight for their Natural Rights. Onto the woman's hand alights a dove, bearing an olive branch, a symbol of peace.
This is inspired by the invasion of the Ukraine, but it is not limited to that conflict.
For more than a century, the so-called leaders of rich and powerful nations have sought to establish themselves as having the loudest voice in the evolving global civilization, either by acquiring more resources or by denying others such acquisitions. Some, like some of the leaders of my own nation, have sought to establish "international systems" ... that my country would conveniently dominate, or share domination, (if need be), with a few other "great powers." It's all a lie. The same people pushing "global initiatives in the United States are the people pushing for centralized authoritarian government in the United States. In their vision a few richest, most powerful nations will negotiate over who controls what in the rest of the world. The vast majority of us all, from even the dominant countries, will become the resources or "drains on resources" of an international ruling class of "those most fit to be our rulers," (in the judgement of those who consider themselves most fit to be our rulers).
It won't work. They'll disagree over who should be the most influential and then they will use "we" their resources, to fight for more power, just as they have done for over one hundred years.
This image depicts the inevitable time in which an end will come to the campaign of the leaders of Russia to seize the resources of Ukraine so that Russia can become a louder voice in the future world. It is far from the end of such conflicts.

Related themes

Globalism