Abhijit Bhattacharyya | Some historical lessons on old & new imperialist wars

It is clear now that the clout of both the United States and the European Union is on the wane due to their wanton divisive policies. Russia feels increasingly insecure and thus waging wars for self-protection and both China and Israel are intent on revenge missions to “reverse the forces of history”. Their religious breakup too reveals the reality: Europe, the US and Russia are essentially Christian, Israel is Jewish and Communist China, while avowedly atheist, has made the making of money almost a state religion. Interestingly, there is no Islamic imperial state today, despite all the “notoriety” after the 9/11 attacks on America and the US “war on terror” against Muslim nations that followed. Perhaps that makes today’s seemingly unending violence fraught with more mayhem in future.

In the past, the imperialism of both Europe and America have been over land and the seas, while Russian imperialism was always land-based, spanning from the Bering Sea to the shoreline of Baltic Sea. China too has always been a land-based expansionist power, primarily targeting Siberia, Central and Southeast Asia. The surprise fifth neo-imperialist today is tiny Israel, which sees its brutal aggression in Gaza and other occupied territories as a “fight for survival/existence”.

Let us remember that wars between Christians and Christians go back more than a thousand years. Moreover, as there was no Islam till the seventh century, there was no Christian-Islamic or Jewish-Islamic conflict in that era. It was essentially a series of bitter, hate-filled conflicts between the Christianity of Rome and the Judaism of Jerusalem. At most times, the Jews faced ignominy and wars instigated by no less than the Roman Catholic Church at the Vatican and Christian emperors of Europe endorsed by the Papacy, known as the “Holy Roman Empire”. Consequently, the Jews suffered colossal loss of their right to life, liberty and property without any role of Islam.

Christians and Jews thus remained sworn foes till Islam arrived in 622 AD. The inherent anti-Semitism never ceased and followers of Judaism seldom had little respite though both Jews and Christians shared the Old Testament (but only Jews were adept in reading original Hebrew text). This made non-Hebrew speaking European rulers wary, resulting in inconsistent protection of the minority Jews by Christian emperors.

The Jews were protected as long as they accepted second-class status. When the First Crusade was begun by Christians against Muslims in November 1095, French preachers openly accused Jews as “usurers and Christ killers” and urged everyone to simultaneously “eradicate Jews as they marched to recover the Holy Land” from Muslims. The crusading army “wreaked havoc” while marching to “Holy Land” of the Levant, joined by German Knights to plunder Jews in Germany, asking them to either convert or die. The Jews preferred the latter.

In 13th century, Pope Innocent III imposed “permanent servitude” on Jews, arguing that the “Jews inherited the guilt of Christ’s death”. This continued through the Middle Ages and ultimately led to the gas chambers of Hitler’s Third Reich.

So, it was not just “Islam versus Christianity” conflict; there is a gory history of hundreds of years of Christians, Jews and Muslims all deeply embroiled in bloodshed, from Jerusalem to Germany, Cartagena to Cairo, Paris to Palestine.

In this light, the war between Christian Moscow versus Christian Kyiv, instigated and abetted by the Christian EU and Christian US, takes on a new meaning. One also sees the lunatic criminality of the Sunni Muslim Hamas’ attacks of October 7, 2023 against the Jewish State of Israel, which triggered the escalating bloodshed going out of control, coming as a lifetime opportunity for the US “military industrial complex” to make billions in profits from a war zone 10,000 km away. As Jews and Muslims are dying in the Levant, the Christians of Russia and their Ukrainian blood brothers are slaughtering each other in the Balkan-Black Sea axis.

Amid this, distant China emerged as a hard-nosed mercantile imperialist trumping over the West’s profiteering merchants, ministers, military and bankers. The Chinese are biding their time and hiding their intentions, but it can’t remain a secret. As the West openly plays a double game and instigates both Israel and Ukraine, the Chinese act clandestinely, helping distant belligerents, and creating rifts through diplomatic manoeuvring in combat zones. It lures the Italian PM and South Africa’s President to reverse policy decisions in tune with China’s goals.

Today, the West faces a conflict between the interests of its corporations and countries. Private companies want Chinese material, markets and money, but nation states want to retain their political sovereignty and economic independence. The EU and the US face the same issues. Europe’s imperialism lies in the past as “supercop” America’s policing power declines, mainly owing to lack of resources; yet both want to cling to straws. Imperial Russia lost its way and broke into pieces in 1991, and today it fights with back to the wall to hold on to what was once its own soil. Neo-imperialist Israel, which was born with heavy baggage of devastation and destitution inflicted by the Christian West, now inflicts the same destruction on Muslims without trying to find any solution.

Where does all this lead? As the EU, US, Russia and Israel are at war, directly or indirectly, the Chinese are on the move, trying to take over ports across the world, seizing control of economy in several land-locked nations in Asia and Africa, capturing island after island in the Pacific Ocean and other water bodies and using special strategy regarding India. New Delhi lost land, Indian traders are divided, its immediate neighbourhood is on fire, and its Army and Navy are under increasing pressure. Its citizens (at least in Arunachal Pradesh) are sometimes subject to kidnapping across the LAC, even as the Chinese PM sheds crocodile tears for victims of the Wayanad tragedy. Beijing uses all possible means to take investments and funds away from India and destroy whatever medium, small and micro enterprises are left.

“Globalisation”, once envisioned as a twenty-first century panacea to avoid destructive war by businesses operating across continents, is now in shambles. It's replaced by the proxy war of the West and China’s muscle-flexing cash-conquest drive.