photo by: Creators Syndicate

Keith Raffel

Way back in 1919, the poet William Butler Yeats wrote of a time when the “centre cannot hold,” and “mere anarchy” and “the blood-dimmed tide” spread throughout the world. Sounds like today, doesn’t it?

And yet, as the summer of 2025 begins, I see signs that the center is making a comeback and that those fighting to spread blood and anarchy are being beaten back.

Two of the nations in the world that most aggressively oppose freedom and democracy, Russia and Iran, are at war with countries that aspire to them.

In 2005, Russian President Vladimir Putin declared the Soviet Empire’s collapse “was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.” He set out to begin rectifying it nine years later when he sent troops to seize Crimea, which constituted about 4% of the former Soviet republic of Ukraine. Given the relatively weak response of the Obama administration, which relied on economic sanctions, and Germany, which was dependent on Russian natural gas, it was inevitable Putin would come back for seconds. He did so in 2022 when he ordered his army to invade the rest of now-independent Ukraine.

While Putin expected Russia to occupy the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv within days, the war grinds on three years later. The Center for Strategic and International Studies, a nonprofit think tank, estimates up to 250,000 Russian soldiers have died in the war against Ukraine, with overall Russian casualties approaching a million.

What has Putin gained in return for a sea of spilt Russian blood? He has spurred the historically neutral nations Finland and Sweden to join NATO and exposed Russia as something less than an irresistible force. The United Kingdom, Germany, Poland and France are bolstering their support for Ukraine as they modernize and enlarge their own defense capabilities. The combined size of those four countries’ economies is over five times larger than Russia’s. Even taking into account the Trump administration’s fluctuating American support for Ukraine, Putin’s attempt to take over that country may be the worst foreign policy blunder by a major power since World War II.

Hamas took over rule of Gaza in 2007. In July 2012, then-Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that “any freedom lover and justice seeker in the world must do its best for the annihilation of the Zionist regime” (Israel). Iran armed Hamas as well as Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Assad regime in Syria as a less expensive and safer alternative to direct confrontation with Israel.

On Oct. 3, 2023, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khameini posted a message on social media promising that “the usurper Zionist regime is coming to an end.” A Hamas terrorist attack followed four days later. Since then, Israel’s forces have drastically diminished the fighting capability of both Hamas and Hezbollah, and Syria has undergone a regime change, leaving Iran to stand virtually alone against Israel.

In 2021, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to the U.S. defense secretary, “I will never allow Iran to obtain the nuclear capability to carry out its genocidal goal of eliminating Israel.” On June 12 of this year, the International Atomic Energy Agency declared Iran was breaking the rules against developing nuclear weapons. On June 12, too, the 60 days that President Donald Trump had given Iran to negotiate an end to its development of such weapons lapsed.

The next day, June 13, Israel attacked Iranian sites and personnel involved with nuclear weapons development. Trump publicly endorsed the Israeli move once its success was clear. Now the specter of a nuclear-armed Iran is far closer to disappearing. Without a looming Iranian threat, Saudi Arabia might well resume moving toward normalization of relations with Israel, an event former Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken in 2023 called a potentially “transformative event in the Middle East and well beyond.”

There is a risk that Israel will overreach. The clerics who run Iran are far from popular. In fact, in its attack on Iranian nuclear sites, Israel received assistance from their opponents within Iran. But it’s not up to Israel to force regime change. It must be a groundswell of Iranians.

Israel should keep in mind Churchill’s aphorism — “In War: Resolution, In Defeat: Defiance, In Victory: Magnanimity, In Peace: Good Will.” The country has shown resolution and defiance in the wake of the Hamas terrorist attack on Oct. 7, 2023. For lasting peace, it must show the magnanimity and goodwill that are required for lasting peace.

Despite all, planet Earth remains a dangerous place. The slaughter continues on the Ukrainian-Russian border. Nation-building in Lebanon and Syria remains a work in progress. Hamas has not been utterly defeated. Noncombatant Gazans need to be protected, fed and sheltered. The Israel-Palestinian Arab deadlock festers. Outside of Europe and the Middle East, China still claims Taiwan and the rogue state of North Korea, unlike Iran, already possesses nuclear weapons.

Still, a more peaceful world is within reach. With summer comes hope.

— Keith Raffel is a syndicated columnist with Creators.