World politics used to be played like a chess game with players thinking 10 moves ahead. Post-September 11, 2001, international affairs have become more akin to the simplest bat and ball game, where the objective is to hit the ball and run as fast as you can.

There is no real game plan. There is no long thought strategy. The ‘shoot first, ask questions later’ mentality has completely taken over. It is as if the whole world has gone west, in the wildest sense.

What was supposed to be the century of peace has degenerated into one of the bloodiest periods in human history. Conflict and terror have become daily news items. It is as if humankind has taken it upon itself to destroy civilisation – the very thing that separates us from the rest of the living creatures with whom we share this planet.

The horrors of war are literally everywhere. We have witnessed innocent victims being slain all over the world, from a cafe in Sydney to the streets of Paris, from the bush in Nigeria to the streets of Copenhagen, throughout the Middle East to Ukraine.

Our minds are becoming so attuned to the daily dosage of violence that we have stopped asking why. We are more interested in how persons are being butchered. We might be interested in where, if the place is relatively close to us. But we stopped trying to understand what is pulling down humankind to such low levels.

Things must change and change fast or else we risk obliterating the very foundations of society that bind and keep us together.

The world needs leaders. True leaders that think not in terms of their time in office but leaders with long-term vision. Leaders who are capable of doing what Alcide de Gasperi, Konrad Adenauer and Robert Shuman did in the aftermath of World War II.

What was supposed to be the century of peace has degenerated into one of the bloodiest periods in human history

We need leaders who realise that the interests of their states are best served by regional and global peace and not warmongering.

We need leaders who have the courage to put a stop to all this nonsense and re-establish dialogue as the common currency of humankind.

This is not to say that we can soft-pedal with IS. The world is too small a place to house both the IS and the rest of civilisation.

IS is not a country. It is a destroyer of countries. IS is not about the rule of law but that of terror. It is not about progress but about recreating systems of governance that were tried, tested and discarded centuries ago. IS is not about faith and religion but about hatred.

So, yes, IS must be fought, contained and removed just like one would do with a cancer growth. One cannot talk a cancerous cyst into remission. You need to hit it and hit it hard before it spreads. But, in doing so, you need to make sure that you do not cause more damage than good. And, likewise, you must ensure that the treatment is long lasting.

There can be no long-lasting solution to IS if the western world ignores what drove this hatred in the first place.

We cannot continue to ignore the divide between the haves and the have nots. We cannot continue to look away from the suffering that is happening around the world, including in our own societies.

We have to recognise that there can be no real progress if we ignore the plight of those in need. The truth is that we have not cared for our own.

Over the past decades, the world has been like a trapeze act being performed without a safety net. Parts of society could not hold on through the swings and ended up being crushed while others continued to fly.

And it was not just the peoples of nations in some faraway country that suffered. Pockets of our own societies felt the pain while watching others playing out their act. That suffering changed into hatred, that hatred into terror.

We have to reverse that process by removing first the terror, then the hatred and then the suffering. And where there is suffering without terror, let us intervene and remove it, before it starts to fester and take a life of its own.

Malta is not a major player in the international field of politics. But we do have our roles and responsibilities. We cannot shy away from our responsibilities under the transparent guise of neutrality.

How can one remain neutral in the face of what is happening around us? Neutrality can only be justified in the case of a litigation between two just causes or claims. We cannot shed doubt on what we believe in and where we stand in this clash.

I do not agree with most of what Oriana Fallaci wrote but she was right in saying that, sometimes, truth stays on one side only.

We have to be on the side of truth. We have to stop the world from drifting away from that truth.

If there ever was a time to stand up and be counted then this is that time.

Mario de Marco is PN deputy leader and shadow finance minister.