Conflict: The History of the World
By Col Dencio Acop (Ret) | Date 05-11-2024
‘History repeats itself’, so the oft-repeated phrase goes! And, indeed, history does.
More than we realize. But the problem of the world today is that it no longer reads. And if it does, it is with a short memory reading only the headlines.
The nature of today’s generations, coupled with overly rapid technology, has only managed to exacerbate the observation.
The history of the world is one of conflict and power. First, the strong have always waged wars to conquer the weak. Second, man’s selfless nature has been battling his selfish nature. And third, the pragmatic has emerged as the preferred course of action in global affairs.
Let us take a look at the first. Strong nations have always conquered weaker nations throughout mankind’s history. Between 2686 BC (during the time of the old Egyptian kingdom) and today, there have been 296 empires and dynasties. Strong civilizations, with their superior armies, subdued weaker ones to impose their will and gain economic resources for survival.
In turn, threatened tribes and villages learned to raise armies to defend themselves against their invaders.
Soon, other strong nations in other parts of the world invaded weaker ones and did the same.
The map of the world kept being rearranged by how the strong carved their extended territories at the expense of conquered neighbors.
The scale and brutality of warfare intensified as technology made weapons increasingly lethal through the centuries. Times may have changed but the ‘might is right’ law of the jungle among peoples is still the same reality that we see today in the world.
Even when the world thought that wars were a thing of the past due to the cataclysmic reality of nuclear weapons, humanity has still witnessed the invasions of Iraq (1991 and 2003), Afghanistan (2001), Syria (2014), Crimea (2014), and Ukraine (2022) by powerful countries like the United States and Russia and their coalitions.
The aggression of the weak by the strong is continuing.
China is poised to invade Taiwan by 2027 if the timetable of the Xi Jinping-led Chinese Communist Party is to be believed. The ongoing conflict in the Middle East is in danger of escalation if the balance of power reaches a tipping point involving Russia and the United States in their support of Israel and the Arab entities.
Second, man’s selfless nature has been battling his selfish nature. It may be difficult for the greater part of humanity to accept. Still, the truth is that leaders of empires and dynasties have prosecuted wars against other nations more for themselves than for the people they led.
Early leaders rationalized their actions and justified their demands for obedience from the people by claiming that they were descended from the gods. Following the birth of Christianity, subjects obeyed their monarchs without question, believing that God anointed their earthly authority.
But even this supposedly selfless calling did not prevent many monarchs from abusing their authority for themselves at the expense of their flock. Fast forward to today, and the world still sees the same abuse happening with many national leaders, authoritarian or democratic.
From various examples in the world, this fact may be truer with authoritarian leaders (individual or collective), but it certainly does not exclude some democratic leaders.
Many leaders may have served the interests of the countries they led, but many also managed to amass ill-gotten wealth during their reigns in power. The list through history is long, but just to name a few, the list includes: Saddam Hussein (Iraq, 2003), Mohamed Suharto (Indonesia, $25 billion, 1998), Ferdinand Marcos (Philippines, $7.5 billion, 1986), Viktor Yanukovych (Ukraine, $5 billion, 2014), Mobutu Sese Seko (Zaire, $5 billion, 1997), Sani Abacha (Nigeria, $5 billion, 1998), Slobodan Milosevic, Serbia/Yugoslavia, $1 billion, 2000), Jean-Claude Duvalier (Haiti, $800 million, 1986), Alberto Fujimori (Peru, $600 million, 2000), Pavlo Lazarenko (Ukraine, $200 million, 1997), Najib Razak (Malaysia, $4.5 billion, 2018), Arnaldo Aleman (Nicaragua, $100 million, 2002), and Joseph Estrada (Philippines, $80 million, 2001) among others.
The current leader of Russia, Vladimir Putin, is allegedly worth some $200 billion. With skeletons in the closet to hide, national leaders often divert their domestic troubles from local constituents by distracting them with foreign policy matters like imperialistic invasions disguised as patriotism.
Democratic leaders are generally thought to be Theory Y because they are the choice of the people who naturally aspire for the virtuous to lead them.
On the other hand, authoritarian leaders are theorized to operate more from a Theory X perspective because they become paranoid about the impact of their unpopular decisions, hence, becoming suspicious of the opposition whom they often scapegoat to redirect public outcry away from their wrongdoing. At the end of the day, for the leader and the led, the balance is either in favor of the public interest or the leader’s personal interest.
Third, pragmatics has emerged as the preferred course of action in global affairs. This one is tricky because while one ideology followed by a national leader may have a sense of what is right and wrong for its citizens, the other may not. The main difference between the liberal order adhered to by democratic nations and the non-democratic order followed by authoritarian leaders is the moral law. Liberal adherents respect the value of human life, while authoritarians often do not. The difference between the two is quite simple. While political power in democracies resides with the people, it is only exercised by the autocratic leader or party in authoritarian states.
As history narrates, peoples’ lives and well-being have often been sacrificed in favor of the uncontested discretion of authoritarian leaders.
From statistics, the following numbers of people perished under their rulers: Mao Zedong (China, 70 million in 1949-1976), Genghis Khan (Mongol Empire, 60 million in 1206-1227), Joseph Stalin (Soviet Union, 40 million in 1924-1953), Adolf Hitler (Nazi Germany, 19.3 million in 1933-1945), Leopold II (Belgium, over 10 million in 1865-1909), Pol Pot (Cambodia, 2 million in 1975-1979), Saddam Hussein (Iraq, over 1 million in 1979-2003), Idi Amin (Uganda, undetermined thousands in 1971-1979), Vlad the Impaler (Wallachia/Romania, around 20,000 in 1448-1476),
Rodrigo Duterte (Philippines, est. 21,000 in 2016-2022), Ivan the Terrible (Russia, over 60,000 in 1547-1584), among others.
Classic examples of pragmatic leadership through conflict management can be seen in Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping leadership styles. While each follows the authoritarian ideology of communism, each also uses practical ways and means to manage national power, transcending ideology to cut across various international systems and orders. In the case of Russia, for instance, Putin has managed to engage Israel as well as Arab nations aligned with the West in a balancing act that advances the interest of Russia as well as his power.
For his part, Xi has followed Putin’s lead and now projects the same multipolar order as an alternative to the global liberal order led by the United States. Both leaders talk of the ‘Asian way of doing things.’
The trend away from a global order that advances world peace is bringing the world closer to conflict. While leaders like Putin and Xi like to dangle their nuclear capabilities to scare the world towards their interests, such a threshold below war in an age of greatly increased nuclear proliferation just may ignite what each is merely threatening to do. The result of such reckless actions will be counterproductive even for Russia and China. Russian and Chinese nukes will face counteraction from those emanating from the United States, France, the United Kingdom, and possibly Israel, Pakistan, and India. No one wins a nuclear war. Not even a bluff will. Such a war will be the end of mankind. Pragmatism in the nuclear age is a dead-end.