Borders, Ballots, and the Business of Power

The final week of January 2024 closed not with diplomatic breakthroughs, but with a stark display of the collapsing boundaries—between domestic politics and international order, between national security and economic grievance, between democracy as ideal and democracy as performance. If the opening of the year was marked by war zones and summits, its end is defined by a quieter but more structural turbulence: the friction at borders real and imagined, political and geographic.

Across capitals, the centrifugal forces of discontent are growing stronger. Some erupt in drone strikes, others in tractor blockades. Some are clothed in the language of sovereignty, others in the garb of economic grievance. But underneath the surface noise lies a common undercurrent: the reassertion of control in a world perceived to be slipping beyond the reach of traditional governance.

America Votes, the World Waits 

President Joe Biden’s formal re-election campaign launch was far more than a domestic political milestone—it was a message crafted for an international audience. Speaking from Philadelphia, Biden did not open with jobs or inflation, but with Ukraine, Gaza, and Taiwan—framing the 2024 U.S. election as nothing short of a referendum on democracy’s viability in the 21st century. The stakes, he argued, transcend American borders: if the U.S. falters in its commitment to “open societies,” the world order itself could fracture.

But this framing, while rhetorically bold, is politically fragile. His critics—both foreign and domestic—see in it not principled leadership but a deflection from domestic crises: inflation, immigration, and the widening disconnect between Washington’s global idealism and Main Street’s local fatigue. Polling data already suggest that many Americans are less concerned with defending Ukraine than with affording groceries.

And yet, the implications of Biden’s framing cannot be easily dismissed. Should Donald Trump—or a similarly inward-looking successor—reclaim the presidency, the shift in global posture would be seismic. NATO’s future, Ukraine’s resistance, Indo-Pacific security—all would be recalculated. What is at stake in November is not just the leadership of the United States, but the future orientation of the Western alliance system itself.

Horn of Africa: Borders That Bleed

While Washington strategizes over global narratives, Ethiopia and Eritrea have once again edged toward conflict, this time sparked by a drone strike near the border town of Zalambessa—a site scarred by the 1998-2000 war that killed tens of thousands. Both sides deny responsibility, yet each accuses the other of provocation. Though full-scale war has not been declared, the mobilization of regional militias and the absence of credible third-party mediation make escalation more likely than resolution.

The African Union’s statement—urging “restraint” without assigning blame—is emblematic of its diminished authority in an increasingly multipolar Africa. Once hailed as a regional anchor, the AU now often functions as a reactive observer, constrained by sovereignty norms and rival patronage networks. Ethiopia, having just emerged from the Tigray conflict, remains internally brittle, with ethnic federalism and militarized politics undermining any chance at national cohesion. Eritrea, meanwhile, continues to pursue a policy of opaque deterrence, marked by isolationism and latent aggression. 

In this context, the border is not just a line—it is a symptom of deeper governance failure. Neither Asmara nor Addis Ababa controls the narrative anymore; local actors, militias, and transnational smugglers do. The real threat is not conventional war, but a prolonged zone of hybrid instability—where sovereignty is asserted but not secured, and governance is claimed but not delivered.

Europe’s Farmers, the Continent’s Faultlines

Further north, the tractor convoys that clogged highways across France, Germany, and the Netherlands may seem like protests over diesel costs or carbon taxes—but they represent something more profound: a revolt against the political logic of the European Union itself.

What began as targeted frustration with climate-linked regulations and agricultural subsidies has ballooned into a broader populist backlash—against Brussels technocracy, globalization’s broken promises, and the increasing alienation of rural economies. In France, the protests have echoes of the Gilets Jaunes, but with deeper transnational coordination. In Germany, they have disrupted coalition cohesion. In the Netherlands, they have already reshaped electoral outcomes.

At the heart of the unrest is a question the EU has long tried to sidestep: Can a single regulatory framework govern economies with fundamentally different geographies, cultures, and political imperatives? Rural producers feel strangled by urban-centric environmental policy. National governments, fearing both populist surges and EU reprimand, are increasingly caught in the middle.

This is not a temporary rebellion—it is a structural challenge to European integration itself. Climate policy is merely the match. The kindling is the slow erosion of political legitimacy in the face of remote governance and the perception—rightly or wrongly—that Europe’s green transition is being implemented at the expense of those least able to absorb its costs.

Domestic Frontiers, Global Reverberations

What binds these disparate events—American electoral rhetoric, border skirmishes in the Horn of Africa, agrarian revolts in Western Europe—is not any one ideology or crisis. It is the erosion of boundaries between domestic politics and foreign policy, between the internal and the external, the governed and the global.

In every case, local discontent is being internationalized, whether deliberately (as in Biden’s global-democracy framing), inadvertently (as in the geopolitical consequences of European farmer protests), or dangerously (as in the spillover risks from Ethiopia’s border tensions). The traditional model of diplomacy—treating foreign affairs as a discrete realm managed by elites—no longer holds. The new diplomacy is hyper-local and transnational at once, shaped as much by protest networks and militias as by envoys and ministers.

In this emerging landscape, diplomacy must operate in new registers: one that acknowledges the polyphonic nature of power, where non-state actors are no longer peripheral, and where domestic instability can be more geopolitically consequential than any summit or treaty. Institutions that fail to adapt to this complexity will find themselves not merely irrelevant—but complicit in their own obsolescence.

Beyond Borders, Beyond Illusions

January 2024 ends not with clarity, but with convergence—of crises, of identities, of discontents. The world is not merely fragmented. It is being re-contoured by actors and energies that traditional diplomacy neither anticipated nor can easily contain. 

What we are witnessing is the slow erosion of the myth that power can be managed from the top down, that order can be imposed from Geneva, Brussels, or Washington. In its place is a messier, more volatile reality: a world where ballots shape borders, borders trigger ballots, and power is no longer the property of the powerful alone.

As February begins, the lesson for diplomats and citizens alike is stark: the map is no longer the territory. And the margins are moving inward.

Diplomacy 101 continues next week, as we track how political theatre collides with strategic calculus—on the ground, across screens, and between the lines.

Frozen Conflicts and Fragile Forums

Each January, the Swiss town of Davos becomes an improbable epicenter of global discourse—a place where mountains of snow frame mountains of ambition, where CEOs, prime ministers, and social entrepreneurs gather under the brand of global cooperation. But this year, as elites convened once more under the well-worn banner of polycrisis, the mood was not only subdued—it was strategically disillusioned. The 2024 World Economic Forum (WEF) offered fewer declarations of optimism and more careful calibrations of risk, hedging, and managed disengagement.

This is not to say that Davos lacked symbolism or spectacle. But in substance, the forum felt less like a global steering committee and more like a crowded terminal for departing powers and detaching partnerships. In the hollowed-out corridors of global governance, the consensus economy is fraying, the multilateral imagination is shrinking, and geopolitical fatigue is beginning to metastasize.

A Forum Without a Forum 

Nominally, Davos is still a platform for solving collective problems—climate, development, digital governance. But this year, the forum resembled more a clearinghouse for managed disconnection than for new convergence. The most discussed term was not “sustainability” or “cooperation,” but “de-risking”—a bureaucratic euphemism for economic segmentation, a gentler way to say decoupling without provoking the markets. 

“De-risking” is the diplomatic gloss now used to rationalize reshoring, friend-shoring, and selective disengagement, particularly from Chinese supply chains and politically sensitive sectors like semiconductors, critical minerals, and AI. But make no mistake: this is not risk mitigation—it is systemic recalibration. And the ripple effects are asymmetrical. Finance ministers from Indonesia, Mexico, Egypt, and Nigeria issued subtle but firm warnings that this trend—driven largely by the U.S. and EU—undermines capital flows to the Global South, raises borrowing costs, and deepens the North-South asymmetry under the guise of security. 

The language may be new, but the logic is not. In the name of strategic autonomy, Western economies are retrenching—prioritizing resilience over integration, and national security over interdependence. Davos 2024 made it clear: globalization is not dying, but it is being amputated, piece by strategic piece.

China Missing, Russia Marginal

The absences at Davos were as revealing as the agendas. China, in a rare move, sent no senior official—a symbolic retreat that underscored both Beijing’s skepticism of Western forums and its own economic reorientation inward. With the Chinese economy in a phase of recalibration, and with domestic priorities trumping international charm offensives, the non-presence of China was itself a diplomatic signal: “We no longer need this stage to shape the script.” 

Meanwhile, Russia remained a geopolitical specter—excluded formally, ignored informally. Sanctions continue to isolate Moscow economically, but diplomatic isolation has become the more potent long-term penalty. In panel after panel, Ukraine received words of solidarity, but the tone was more weary than resolute. With battlefield dynamics largely frozen and aid packages caught in political crosswinds in Washington and Brussels, Kyiv’s challenge has shifted from galvanizing support to preventing attrition.

The Western unity that once defined the Ukraine response is showing signs of fray, not fracture. The problem is not opposition—but exhaustion. In foreign ministries and parliaments, the bandwidth for sustained attention is shrinking. The longer the conflict stagnates, the harder it is to maintain high-intensity diplomacy.

AI Panels and Digital Paralysis

Another supposed centerpiece of the Davos agenda was AI governance—a topic hyped by headlines but hollowed by the absence of enforceable consensus. Panels discussed algorithmic ethics, disinformation threats, and regulatory frameworks. But beyond rhetorical commitments, the conversation lacked teeth.

Part of the problem is architectural: there is no global body equipped to enforce AI norms. The regulatory fragmentation is deepening. The EU’s Digital Services Act, China’s algorithm oversight regime, and the U.S.’s patchwork of federal agency initiatives are all proceeding on parallel tracks—none interoperable, none comprehensive.

Moreover, the major tech companies present—some of whom now wield influence on par with nation-states—continue to shape AI trajectories through closed-source development and proprietary standards, effectively outpacing the very regulators meant to constrain them. The forum’s AI discussions ultimately amounted to an elaborate policy showcase with no steering wheel.

The Sahel, Sudan, and the Shadow Wars

On the fringes of formal agenda, the Global South’s “frozen conflicts” remained mostly footnotes—Sudan’s civil war, Ethiopia’s fragile peace, the realignment in the Sahel. These conflicts are geographically distant from Davos, but structurally intertwined. They are where the erosion of multilateral credibility is playing out in real time.

In Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger, military juntas are not only consolidating domestic power, but disengaging from post-colonial regionalism and embracing external patrons like Russia, Turkey, and the UAE. These are not temporary shifts—they represent a fundamental pivot away from Western institutional engagement and toward transactional sovereignty: security first, legitimacy later.

Davos has no answer for these dynamics because it was never designed for a world where non-alignment is no longer ideological, but opportunistic. The assumption that rising powers want to join the liberal order has been disproven. Today, many prefer to selectively engage with it, exploit its weaknesses, and shape alternatives.

Consensus Is a Casualty

Davos 2024 has proven what the past two years have hinted: we are no longer in an age of global governance, but of selective coordination. The institutions and gatherings designed in the aftermath of 20th-century trauma—Bretton Woods, the UN, the WEF—were predicated on the notion that global crises demand global solutions. That premise now feels antiquated.

Consensus has become a casualty of fragmentation. Forums like Davos still convene—but they no longer compel. They reflect a world where multilateralism is not dead, but diluted, where states and stakeholders attend more to signal presence than to shape policy. Coordination exists, but it is increasingly ad hoc, interest-based, and regionally compartmentalized.

In a world of frozen conflicts and fraying alliances, diplomacy has not disappeared—but it has been de-territorialized. It now lives in bilateral bailouts, tech standards, energy corridors, and private equity decisions. These new instruments of influence do not need Davos. They need only access, leverage, and plausible deniability.

The Mountain and the Mirage

The image of Davos—a snow-draped mountain resort promising solutions to global challenges—feels more detached than ever from the world it claims to convene. In 2024, that disconnect is no longer atmospheric. It is structural.

The markets may be warming. The panels may be polished. But the strategic center is not holding. As wars freeze and forums fracture, power is migrating—away from the plenaries and toward the shadows, from multilateralism to minilateralism, from institutions to actors with no fixed address.

What remains is performance: the semblance of dialogue, the language of solutions, and the optics of consensus. But beneath the alpine scenery, the reality is plain—Davos is no longer a compass. At best, it is a weathervane.

And the winds are shifting fast.

Taiwan Votes, Beijing Watches

The world watched closely on January 13 as Taiwan, a self-governing island at the epicenter of one of Asia’s most combustible geopolitical flashpoints, held a presidential election with ramifications far beyond its borders. The result—a narrow but decisive victory for the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and its candidate, Vice President Lai Ching-te—was not merely a continuation of the status quo. It was a calculated act of political defiance. A reaffirmation of Taiwan’s evolving democratic identity, conducted under the shadow of existential pressure. 

But in Beijing’s eyes, this was not an exercise in democratic self-determination. It was a direct affront. And its response was immediate, calibrated, and ominous.

Lai’s Victory: Continuity in Defiance

Lai’s campaign ran on a platform of measured continuity. His message echoed that of outgoing President Tsai Ing-wen, whose tenure solidified Taiwan’s international profile as a functional democracy resisting authoritarian encroachment. Lai reaffirmed de facto sovereignty, promised cautious but strategic engagement with the United States, and committed to economic reform and technological competitiveness—particularly in critical industries like semiconductors.

But beneath these technocratic promises lay a deeper political statement: that Taiwan is not waiting for permission to define itself.

To external observers, this may seem like prudent governance. To Beijing, it is provocation—wrapped in electoral legitimacy, but designed to undermine the One China Principle that forms the bedrock of Chinese foreign policy.

The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) responded with two days of military exercises encircling the island—live-fire drills, simulated blockades, and incursions across the median line of the Taiwan Strait. These were not routine maneuvers. They were a strategic warning: that while Taiwan may vote freely, it cannot act freely without consequence.

Washington’s Balancing Act: Rhetoric Without Repercussions

In Washington, reactions were swift but studiously restrained. Senior officials congratulated Lai, reaffirmed support for “peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait,” and reiterated adherence to the One China Policy—a formula that has become the linguistic fulcrum of American strategy in the region. 

But this calibrated ambiguity is increasingly under strain. U.S. hawks argue that continued adherence to the One China Policy—originally designed as a Cold War compromise—is out of step with the strategic realities of 2024. On the other hand, diplomatic pragmatists warn that any explicit deviation would risk accelerating conflict with China, which has declared unification—by force if necessary—a matter of national rejuvenation.

This strategic tightrope is no longer theoretical. It is being tested in real time, with Taiwanese elections acting as proxies for American resolve, and PLA maneuvers serving as stress tests for regional red lines.

Indo-Pacific Watchers: Quiet Coordination, Growing Tensions

Beyond Washington, other regional capitals issued subtle but significant signals. Tokyo and Canberra expressed support for “democratic processes” and the “status quo,” diplomatic shorthand for rejecting Chinese pressure without appearing to endorse formal independence. These statements, often overlooked, reflect the quiet architecture of Indo-Pacific deterrence—a network of coordination that stops short of alliance, but operates with strategic clarity.

Japan, in particular, has grown increasingly vocal about its stake in Taiwan’s security. The strategic logic is simple: a Chinese seizure of Taiwan would threaten Japanese territorial waters, disrupt critical sea lanes, and upend the regional balance of power. For Australia, the calculus is more distant but no less acute: Taiwan is a bellwether for the credibility of U.S. security commitments in the broader region.

There is, however, a growing recognition—if still whispered—that the traditional “status quo” may not be sustainable. The concept itself is a diplomatic placeholder, convenient but increasingly unmoored from ground realities. The more Taiwan asserts itself as a political entity distinct from China, the more brittle the fiction of ambiguity becomes.

The Sahel: A Different Theater, The Same Pattern

While attention fixated on the Taiwan Strait, another corner of the global periphery—West Africa’s Sahel—registered its own seismic shift. Burkina Faso, joining Mali and Niger, announced its formal withdrawal from ECOWAS (Economic Community of West African States). This move is far more than bureaucratic maneuvering; it is a strategic reorientation.

These military-led governments are not simply rejecting regional norms. They are dismantling the post-colonial liberal framework that ECOWAS sought to uphold, one grounded in democratic transition and economic integration. In its place, a new alignment is forming, one that looks eastward—to Russia for military cooperation, to Turkey for infrastructure and arms, and increasingly, to China for developmental finance without political conditions. 

The Sahel’s realignment is emblematic of a broader trend: the erosion of Western influence in peripheral but strategic regions, and the rise of authoritarian patronage systems that provide security guarantees and regime survival in lieu of democratic legitimacy.

For ECOWAS, long seen as a model of regional diplomacy, the unraveling exposes a critical vulnerability: its lack of enforcement capacity in the face of armed domestic legitimacy. For Western partners—especially France and the United States—it represents a stark reckoning with the failure of counterinsurgency and counterterrorism paradigms that never translated into local governance or popular support.

A Global Pattern: Elections as Strategic Signals

What ties these stories together is not their geography, but their function in the international system. Taiwan’s vote, Burkina Faso’s withdrawal, even the nuanced language of U.S. press releases—they are all signals. In 2024, elections are not just exercises in governance—they are geopolitical declarations.

Taiwan’s election may have occurred on a single island, but it was heard in Beijing, read in Washington, and interpreted in Tokyo as a referendum on the viability of ambiguity. Burkina Faso’s exit from ECOWAS is not just a bureaucratic rupture—it is a renunciation of an entire diplomatic tradition, replaced with a transactional model of hard security over soft legitimacy.

The story of 2024 is not just one of conflicts and campaigns. It is about how sovereignty is asserted, how power is signaled, and how alignments are no longer confined to treaties, but broadcast through acts of omission and assertion.

The Calm Before What?

As of this writing, the Taiwan Strait is quiet. Commercial flights continue, naval movements remain steady, and no missiles have flown. But the silence is not reassuring. It is strategic. It is studied. And it is temporary. 

Beijing has made its message clear: Taiwan’s election was not a domestic affair. It was a regional provocation, and a global test of how much political agency the island can exercise before the costs outweigh the tolerance of its adversary.

In this environment, formal diplomacy lags behind strategic signaling. Multilateral institutions issue cautious statements. Think tanks publish scenarios. But the actors on the ground—whether in Taipei, Ouagadougou, or Washington—are already operating in a post-diplomatic reality, one where the symbolic weight of elections and withdrawals rivals that of military deployments.

The question for 2024 is not whether diplomacy will survive—it will, in form. But whether it can still function as a primary tool of stability, or whether it will be increasingly reduced to a commentary on events already decided elsewhere, by other means.

Let us not mistake calm for consensus. The Strait may be still—but the world it reflects is anything but.

Proxy Fires and Electoral Faultlines

If the first week of the year set the tone for 2024 as a high-stakes geopolitical drama, the second week has laid bare the deeper structure of its global instability: not merely wars and elections, but the volatile spaces in between. While formal diplomacy continues its familiar rituals—summits, communiqués, strategic silences—what truly animates the international system today are the informal alignments, gray zone escalations, and proxy entanglements that blur the lines between statecraft and subversion.

In this emergent order, power no longer flows solely through embassies or ministries; it flows through straits, courtrooms, balance sheets, and ballot boxes. Welcome to the second week of 2024, where alliances are quieter, stakes higher, and the pretense of consensus more brittle than ever.

Red Sea Flashpoint: The Strait and the Shadow War

The Bab al-Mandeb Strait—narrow, strategic, and perennially volatile—has reemerged as a frontline not just of maritime disruption, but of political messaging. A series of attacks by Houthi forces on commercial vessels in the Red Sea have triggered a multinational naval response, spearheaded by the United States and joined by France, India, and other willing partners. These are not mere convoy escorts. They are political signals: to Iran, to global insurers, to maritime markets, and to regional regimes watching carefully to gauge American staying power.

Tehran, for its part, denied any direct coordination with the Houthis, but its rhetorical posture was unambiguous. Describing the attacks as “legitimate resistance,” Iranian officials effectively blessed the strikes as aligned with its strategic doctrine—one that seeks to destabilize U.S.-aligned security architecture without direct confrontation. What we are witnessing is not just a maritime security crisis; it is a textbook example of the proxy model of deterrence, where plausible deniability is the currency of escalation.

What makes the Red Sea particularly combustible is its layered context. This is not an isolated flare-up—it is a symptom of systemic disorder, a theater where multiple geopolitical narratives intersect: Iranian ambition, Gulf insecurity, Western retreat, and the erosion of maritime norms. It also underscores a hard truth: gray zone warfare has outpaced multilateral regulation, and there is no Geneva Convention for a shadow war.

Pakistan: The Specter of Controlled Democracy

While regional flames burned visibly in the Middle East, a quieter fire was lit in Pakistan’s judiciary. A court ruling effectively disqualified former Prime Minister Imran Khan from participating in elections scheduled for February. The verdict, delivered by a judiciary often seen as deferential to the military establishment, represents more than a legal decision—it is a structural intervention in the electoral field.

The military-backed caretaker government, already facing eroding legitimacy and mounting street protests, now confronts a public that increasingly perceives the electoral process as a managed spectacle rather than a democratic choice. The political landscape in Pakistan has long been a delicate balance of formal democracy and informal military veto power. But with the IMF negotiations faltering, Western embassies issuing security alerts, and economic stability slipping further from reach, the old equilibrium is under serious strain.

Pakistan’s geopolitical importance—bordering China, Afghanistan, and Iran—means that domestic instability has regional spillover potential. Yet Western capitals, distracted by Ukraine and Gaza, have offered only generic calls for transparency and stability. This hands-off approach belies a deeper fatigue: democracy promotion has lost its ideological urgency, replaced by transactional diplomacy, risk management, and crisis containment.

What emerges is a state trapped in its own architecture of dependency—on the military, on foreign loans, on volatile alliances—and a citizenry disillusioned by the illusion of choice.

South America: Diverging Souths

In Buenos Aires, the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) summit took on new significance, not for what was agreed—but for what was revealed. Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, now fully re-engaged on the international stage, used the platform to issue a bold call for “Global South alignment”—including the creation of a BRICS credit-rating agency and an expansion of cross-currency lending mechanisms, explicitly designed to undermine the dominance of Western financial institutions.

This is not merely economic policy. It is ideological counter-programming to the Bretton Woods consensus—a rebuke to institutions like the IMF and World Bank, seen across much of the Global South as structurally biased and politically conditioned. Lula’s speech was both nostalgic and strategic: invoking Third World solidarity while repositioning Brazil as a leader in a post-Western order.

Yet not everyone in the region is reading from the same script. Argentina’s new president, Javier Milei, a libertarian firebrand, pointedly declined to participate in the summit. His government has signaled a radical reorientation of foreign policy—away from regionalism, toward bilateralism with the U.S., and alignment with market orthodoxy. This divergence between the region’s two largest economies is not just a policy gap—it is a sign of an ideological faultline in Latin America’s left-right contest over the future of sovereignty, globalization, and development.

South America, long the subject of external geopolitical designs, is now crafting its own competing visions. But rather than converging into a unified Global South identity, the region appears increasingly fragmented—national interests outpacing regional integration, and ideological cleavages replacing shared strategic outlooks.

The In-Between Spaces: Where Real Power Now Operates

What connects these disparate theaters—Yemen’s strait, Pakistan’s judiciary, Brazil’s summit stage—is that they all lie in the interstices of formal diplomacy. The 20th-century model of international relations assumed that diplomacy happens at the state level, that conflict is defined by borders, and that legitimacy flows from recognized institutions. But 2024 is proving otherwise.

Today, alliances are not always announced—they’re enacted. Through blockades, verdicts, investment pacts, and even summit absences. Proxy actors shape policy more than plenipotentiaries. Influence operates not just through policy, but through performance.

This is a world in which the formal multilateral order is being bypassed—not necessarily broken, but increasingly irrelevant to how and where power is exercised. And nowhere is this more visible than in the spaces between ballots and battlefields. This is where the world’s future is being negotiated—in street protests and sanctions boards, in shadowy militias and in summits that are more about absence than agreement.

Conclusion: Alignment Without Consensus

The second week of 2024 has made clear that the central axis of global politics is no longer consensus—it is alignment. And alignment does not require agreement. It requires only that actors see common enemies, shared vulnerabilities, or mutual benefits in disruption.

The Red Sea coalition was not born of a treaty. It was born of urgency. Pakistan’s political crisis was not scripted in diplomatic backchannels—it is playing out in public, as a referendum on who controls the boundaries of democratic possibility. Brazil and Argentina, ostensibly neighbors and economic partners, are now philosophical opposites on the question of global order.

This is the emerging map of global politics: a world of fluid alignments, fractured legitimacy, and escalating asymmetries. Formal diplomacy may continue to issue statements. But it is the informal, the unsanctioned, and the in-between that is now writing the real story of international relations.

And that story, in 2024, has only just begun.

Let the world watch. But more importantly—let it listen. Because the message is no longer coming through microphones. It’s coming through missiles, verdicts, absences, and protests. And it’s not asking for permission.