US started the Cold War. This war had two major components, military and economic control of most of the world. NATO served the military purpose while dollar as reserve currency served to control global trade/economy. writes Ali Ahmed Ziauddin

AFTER Biden had signed a $40 billion lend-lease for Ukraine, it is now almost certain the collective west has decided to wage a war against Russia indefinitely. So long they have provided material and moral support, next will be direct military involvement under whatever pretext. But no matter what their mainstream media and affiliated agencies across the world want us to believe that Ukraine is winning, the fact is Russia is progressing on its demilitarisation goal slowly but steadily despite stiff resistance from the Ukrainian forces. Realising their plan to sacrifice Ukrainians to bleed and weaken Russia may soon backfire. The collective west is getting edgy by the day and opting for rash decisions. They had hoped to destroy the Russian economy with sanctions from hell; it has flopped and instead has recoiled on them. Failure on both these counts and their visceral hatred of Russia along with the fear of losing global control have enraged them so much that they are willing to risk a nuclear war.

At stake is the west’s few centuries of control over the entire world system, once via colonies and later by finance and market regulation. Although this isn’t visibly the cause that sparked the current conflict in Ukraine, it nevertheless has an innate connection. To connect the dots one needs to patiently follow the train of history. Conventional opinion will perhaps mark the post-cold war unipolar moment. But it may not entirely explain the fate of the runaway train with no brakes and with all of us on board. The world beyond Russia and NATO are not party to the conflict, yet it cannot escape the fallout because unlike earlier similar ones this one is between multiple nuclear powers. Ukraine is the ill-fated battlefield where the first volleys are being exchanged, partly with the consent of the Ukrainians and partly imposed. How did we reach this point?

Making sense of the present world order of nations, nation-states and nationalism one needs to trace the series of revolutions in Europe and America in the 18–19th centuries. In the wake of these socio-political upheavals the hitherto feudal order and all the trappings that come with it were turned topsy-turvy, discarded, or diluted in varying scales in different societies. People from different walks of life had participated in these popular uprisings. Naturally, all claimed a stake in the pie. But the wealthier classes wanted to preserve their wealth while the subalterns sought redistribution. The former, small but powerful, kept the vote to themselves. Universal suffrage was still more than a century away. Accountable/participatory democracy got rigged early on in favour of the wealthy by deploying any devious means necessary. This conflict of interest would not go away but has been managed since, which however was not at all peaceful.

It was carried out by the state with the infamous ‘blood and iron’ tactic while providing bare survival wages to the workers, that too after persistent agitation (Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Capital). It is a story of heart-wrenching realpolitik, devoid of any morality; a long protracted battle of nerves fought in the streets, chambers and parliaments of Berlin, Paris, London, New York, Chicago and other big cities of the western world during the 19th century, culminating in the Bolshevik revolution. However, eventually in the western world a bargain was reached between opposing classes to maintain a working relationship. The richer classes will govern while the working classes got the vote, eight-hour workdays, safety at work, right to demonstrate, strike, and few social security benefits, freedom from slavery (EP Thomson, Making of the English Working Class). All these must have cost a lot of money. Who footed the bills?

The enlightenment provided the philosophical foundation of the western democracies, but the colonial project sustained it. Systemic genocide of the Red Indians, stealing their land, and slavery paid for the American democracy, while the Afro-Asian colonies funded the European ones. So these widely admired and so-called mature democracies advanced by demonising the colonies. In this project the working classes were co-opted by their capitalist rulers (M Beaud, A History of Capitalism). Democracy evolved as a social contract between opposing classes; in the process got locked with capitalism in a perpetual tussle over who will control whom and how much. In turn, following capital’s nature to seek interrupted profit and dominance led the western nations to wage constant warfare between themselves that peaked in World War I.

By the end of the war the US emerged far more powerful than other colonial powers; enabling it to have a major say in global affairs but no final say yet; few other contending powers like the USSR, Britain, Japan and Germany were still there. After World War II only two great powers the US and USSR emerged with the rest of the world aligned with either of them. West Europe, exhausted and distraught, handed over their security responsibility to the US while the east did likewise to the USSR. About 45 years later after the latter disintegrated most of the Eastern Europe followed the footsteps of their western cousins except few, Ukraine being one. But in 2014 it too followed suit after the US instigated coup. Why are these mileposts so important?

Crossing each hurdle made the US wealthier and powerful that propelled it to grow into the global hegemon that it is today. How it amassed this wealth and has sustained so far is no less important to discern why it behaves like a global racketeer. America was born a republic on the basis of white supremacy. So it lived all its life in conflict at the core of its existence. Yes, in course of time the conflict became multidimensional with class divisions becoming more prominent but the inner core of racial friction lingered. It needed full blown civil war to rid slavery, that too only legally. But by then the rich and the powerful, ie the 1 per cent made sure they never had to relinquish power, thus turning the republic an oligarchy. And as said already by the end of World War I the US grew into an indispensable global power. But its hegemonic dominance became an established fact only after or at the fag end of the Second World War.

Soviet Union was the last remaining impediment. To contain or confront it, the US started the Cold War. This war had two major components, military and economic control of most of the world. NATO served the military purpose, dollar as reserve currency served to control global trade/economy. The first led to militarisation of the US economy (Sweezy & Baran, Monopoly Capital), giving rise to what came to be known as the military-industrial complex, and the second led to tying the world economy into a single grid controlled by the US treasury department. Both together gave the US immense power to dictate terms on the rest of the world. Coups, regime change, military invasions became the hallmark of the US’s power projection. It came to believe it is exceptional and fashioned itself as a later day Roman Empire.

This was the background when the Soviet Union suddenly collapsed. The US presided over a unipolar world order. Hubris set in. Scholars like Fukuyama, Huntington and Brzezinski via different academic arguments and in close cooperation with the imperial officials declared ‘the end of history’ ie history’s march since the revolutions in late 18th century had reached a decisive point of the collective west’s victory over socialism and the only path forward for mankind was capitalism and democracy as defined by the collective west. Such triumphalism had no qualms to claim the 21st to be the American century. How it turned out three decades later is another matter.

However, what the Americans in their euphoric unipolar moment didn’t notice was over the several decades’ greed of the few was pulling the US in non-stop wars abroad while pushing the large middle class at home into ever growing debts, joblessness, and less competitiveness. Any organised opposition has been slowly but surely squeezed into silence or co-opted. Yes, a visible functional democracy is alive alright, but the key decision-making power that affects the lives of most of the electorate is no longer controlled by the Congress. It has been taken over by a plutocracy; a group of leading bankers, industrial barons, civil-military bureaucrats and media owners. They consider public participation in key decision-making process a total nuisance (Chomsky & Herman, The Washington Connection and 3rd World Fascism).

In a recent dialogue with The Independent, a US voter was very candid, ‘…the candidates are chosen by the DNC or RNC despite popular opinion, in the last election the DNC essentially staged a coup against Bernie, and with systems in place like voter suppression, polling place closures, redlining; all together it’s designed to give the illusion of democracy.’ The whole system is rigged in favour of the 1 per cent — the plutocracy. All the government institutions including the so called free media are deployed to pursue the interests of this group. The inner wheel of this deep state is anything but open, anyone who dares to inquire into its crimes is branded traitor and treated like Assange, Snowden or Chelsea. It simply doesn’t care about public opinion or rules/regulations.

America’s insatiable desire of a global empire through diplomacy, fiscal control, or sanctions and, if necessary, military intervention is the root cause of much of the instability in the world. A journey that began in the late 19th century has now grown into a Frankenstein monster; it needs to go on threatening the world for its own survival. Europe and G7, reluctant and grumbling, went along with this project, thus giving shape to what is widely known today as the collective west. It envisions a neoliberal, rule based (clearly the collective west rule) world order to be enforced by NATO/US military machine; a globalist policy that enriches a few but disempowers many. Anyone who dares to oppose this imperial project at home or abroad is a deadly enemy.

After the Soviet collapse, the collective west had expected Russia to cave in and open its massive natural resources to be exploited by their MNCs. Russia initially went along with such a ruinous policy but soon realised they were being led on a primrose path and with its fiercely nationalist spirit turned around. This enraged the collective west; Russia once again became the enemy. It’s not new, ever since the Bolshevik revolution generations of westerners grew up hating Russia. They revived an organised smear campaign against Russia by every way and means possible and threatened it by extending NATO right up to the Russian border. Ukraine, so long neutral, was cajoled into submission in 2014. It was turned into a handy tool for provoking Russia at NATO’s behest.

NATO weapons flooded Ukraine. Reckless Ukrainian leadership made a pact with the devil. They let go of their right to make independent choices. It was pushed to wage a proxy war on NATO’s behalf against Russia in its eastern region where most ethnic Russians live. Russia objected, tried a diplomatic solution in the Minsk agreement, and finally when the collective west refused to agree to Russia’s peace proposal in December 2021 it had no choice but defend itself and pursue the old maxim ‘a stitch in time saves nine’ that stopped NATO’s missile deployment. Only in this light Russia-Ukraine war with no end in sight begins to make sense.

Just as every action has an equal and opposite reaction, so will this one. While Russia sees its military operation in Ukraine as a defensive action, the collective west sees it as a challenge to the west-dominated, rules-based world order in place for more than three centuries. At stake are the collective west’s power, reputation, and control over the world. Initially it showed a knee jerk reaction. Slowly it is dawning upon them that there is no easy option. Yes, it faced a similar defiance from the Nazis and the Soviet Union and successfully withstood both. But this time there is a variation. When the collective west was busy rejoicing the Soviet fall they could hardly imagine that within just three decades the China-Russia axis would pose a daunting challenge. Moreover, the collective west’s chief power, the US, is living on borrowed money, socially and politically a broken and sick country. On top of all these conditions, no major power outside the collective west is willing to take sides.

Given such constraints, the collective is finding itself in a dangerous quandary. Their declared intent is to destroy Russia, if doable, or at least weaken it as much as possible. If they mean business they will have to escalate the war, meaning their full participation including sending troops. In such a case it will be an existential threat for Russia, meaning it will strike back with full fury if necessary using nuclear arsenal, triggering the Third World War, and perhaps Armageddon. In this tense situation with no dearth of hostile rhetoric an accident or an act of provocation can cause such an eventuality. Is the collective west at all aware it is sleepwalking into such a scenario and endangering existence itself? The First World War had more or less a similar beginning except they had no nukes.

Ali Ahmed Ziauddin is a researcher and activist.