is a fact that can be observed and measured. Human beings live longer, they enjoy better health and they can communicate and get around much easier. With the exception of the Middle East, which has been plagued by conflict in recent years, most parts of the world have experienced the longest ever periods without international warfare. Famine has become a rarity and, if it occurs, the international community comes together to rescue the starving. Once incurable diseases have been challenged. Even some kinds of cancer, known as the “emperor of all maladies,” have become curable or at least manageable enough to enable the patient to live a normal life. As war, famine and disease became less frequent, peoples and nations progressed. A billion people, mostly in China and India, have been lifted from the cycle of poverty during the past two decades. Some claim that this is merely a form of material progress and that it does not reflect the level of human happiness. It has also been said that morals have declined. However, such matters are very subjective and difficult to measure. There is no proof that people who are less advanced materially are happier or morally superior. In fact, they are more likely to be more wretched and poverty offers little scope for upward development. The idea of “advancement” revolves around two processes. One is technological progress, which drives the transition from one state of being to the next, especially when it affects many spheres of activity at the same time. The second is people's ability to organise that progress through global and local institutions capable of dealing with major changes and the spasms that occur when the world goes topsy-turvy. There is always a critical time lag between an occurrence of progress and its application and then moving beyond it to another advancement. I have brought up this subject, here, because human progress has landed mankind in three dilemmas that, so far, appear inextricable. The first is that ongoing progress and its cumulative effects have begun to imperil our planet. Such a comprehensive threat is not unprecedented. The British scholar Thomas Malthus argued that because the pace of population growth in times of progress could rapidly outstrip the growth of food supply, progress would bring a proliferation of war, food scarcity and famine. This did not occur, of course. In fact, countries such as China and India are now self-sufficient in food and even export it. Moreover, today, more people die from diseases related to obesity than from hunger. In 1974, the Club of Rome, citing the 1973 oil crisis, predicted that basic natural resources such as oil would deplete to the point that they could no longer meet human beings' essential needs and that this would precipitate warfare and threaten human survival. Four decades have passed since then. During this interval oil production has increased, as has the production of natural gas. At the same time, scientists have opened avenues to new forms of energy and alternatives to natural resources. Now, however, the planet is threatened by climate change. Hopes were pinned on the Paris Agreement. However, the US's withdrawal from that agreement meant that the largest cause of pollution-driven global warming backed out of the mechanism that was supposed to solve the problem. What happens when the advanced nations stop remedying the consequences of advancement? The second dilemma is that “progress” derives its legitimacy from its ability to remedy human hardships and difficulties. Thanks to the inroads in discovering the genetic map of creatures it has become possible to solve many problems that hamper human advancement. By altering the genetic map of mosquitoes, for example, we can curb their propagation or prevent them from carrying the malaria virus which proliferates in many parts of Africa. Genetic engineering has made it possible to increase the protein content in grains, to make plants resistant to draught, and to fight a number of types of cancer that grow resistant to chemical treatment due to cell mutation. The dilemma, now, is whether it is right to re-engineer the human genetic map in order to avert disease. The latest chapter in this question arose when the Chinese scientist He Jiankui announced that had successfully edited the genes of human embryonic cells, using a technology called Crispr-Cas9, to produce twin sisters who, he claimed, were genetically immune to AIDS. The scientist cast the matter as though this was a form of early inoculation against HIV. In fact, however, it flung open the doors to the debate over whether human beings will still be human after all the alterations that might potentially be introduced into the human genome. Jiankui's announcement triggered such a worldwide outcry that Beijing felt compelled to freeze all such types of experimentations. But that did not put a freeze on the dilemma of progress which has approached the threshold of the genetic essence of human beings whose scientific advancement courts the possibility of ending their very existence as a species. The third dilemma has to do with international relations and the question of war and peace. History has shown that progress cannot be contained within geographical borders. It spreads from one country to the next and, because of advancements in transport and communication, it spreads quicker than ever. And so does its ability to alter the balances of power. It was the ancient Greek historian Thucydides who first posed the dilemma when he held that it was Athens' growing power that induced Sparta to attack it, triggering one of the most famous wars in antiquity: the Peloponnesian War. Today, the US cannot ignore the rapid rise in China's power and technological prowess, even in areas that Washington had imagined it would retain a perpetual supremacy, whether in aerospace, electronics or genetic engineering. China, of course, has intrinsic motives for wanting to become the world's top superpower. It helps, though, that 350,000 Chinese students are studying in the US, most of them in fields in which the US holds the lead and in some of America's top universities, such as Harvard, Princeton and Yale. But, now, the US has accused China of industrial espionage and using those students to steal American technological secrets, and it has begun to restrict their entry into the US. When we add to this the current “trade war”, it looks like the Thucydides predicament is in the process of fulfillment again. If the Athens and Sparta case set the model, we are also reminded that it reoccurred in the case of Britain and Germany when the first industrial revolution was transmitted from London to Berlin, leading to two world wars. Human progress has posed major dilemmas: the first imperils the planet, the second threatens human beings as human beings, and the third jeopardises the entire world order. Will progress solve these as it has solved other threats before? As with every issue, this question has its optimists and pessimists. But that is another subject. 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The writer is chairman of the board, CEO and director of the Regional Centre for Strategic Studies.
