People need only briefly indulge the masochistic habit of following current affairs to grasp the most important question facing everyone around the world: How do we avoid the Third World War?
Unlike sophisticated political, sociological, or moral arguments over universal and particular, or global, national, and local concerns, the reason why avoiding WWIII has to take precedence is crude and brutal; i.e., raw survival of all. For some 80 years now there has been the technical possibility of annihilating human civilisation, perhaps even life itself - particular and universal alike. But the range of possible methods for doing that expands all the time to include designer pathogens or malicious AIs beside the dear old Bomb.
It is now more than 20 years since a diverse group of academics published Conceiving Cosmopolitanism (2005) discussing the varied forms cosmopolitanism has taken and the (then) revival of interest in it. The editors' introduction summarised intellectual conflicts over cosmopolitanism very well. Safe to say cosmopolitanism has faded from such public gaze as it ever had in face of popular revolt against an educated (and travelling) class, including within the West as well as in Islam and former colonial dependencies. But terror of annihilation beyond a personal death which leaves family and place behind, needs little education. WWIII would move that from abstract possibility to immediate threat. Speaking personally, my first acquaintance with political affairs in boyhood was raw fear from nuclear tests and then the Cuban missile crisis.
Lately we have seen a variety of politicians and others threatening us with a third world war. So far none has spelt out in direct terms what that can really mean. Can we be sure that whoever found themselves losing in the war would not hit back with all possible weapons?