History confirms how the present, destructive militaristic culture of the US-led Atlantic alliance stands on the shoulders of well over a thousand years of Western immersion in extraordinary levels of horrific warfare.
Introduction
In June 2021, the leading Singaporean international affairs commentator (and former President of the UN Security Council) Kishore Mahbubani published a short, robust paper which stressed that: “The Pacific has no need of the destructive militaristic culture of the Atlantic alliance”.
It is valuable to consider the roots of that destructive militaristic culture and why it is still profoundly influential across the Global West – a useful shorthand term explained in the Financial Times, around two years ago, as: An international network of US allies defined more by ideas than actual geography.
The global footprint of Western warfare
Earlier, in the 20th century, Europe brought us World War I, from 1914-1918 – the War to End All Wars. That war did not secure this outcome. World War II followed from 1939 – 1945. Currently, two terrible wars are raging with no end in sight within the primary geographic-sphere of the Global West, in Ukraine and the Middle East.
A Brown University study estimates that, following the 9/11 attacks in 2001, the US (relying on its 750+ worldwide military bases and multi-trillion-dollar expenditure) has caused: “4.5 million deaths and displaced 38-60 million people”. In the period since WWII the US, along with its satellite-allies, has been involved in an extraordinary number of wars – apart from fomenting repeated offshore uprisings and coups.
Looking back around 100-years, one is confronted by a shocking catalogue of colossal violence and destruction, anchored predominantly in the Western world.
However, this uncommon Western reliance on warfare dates back far longer.
After the collapse (in 476 AD) of the control applied by Western Roman Empire, fragmented European Feudalism steadily filled this political space. Meanwhile, before and after that fall, powerful tribes invaded by land from the North. Vikings later did likewise by sea. Within much of Europe, numerous kingdoms were recurrently engaged in gruesome conflict with one another. The Islamic invasion of Europe from the East had also begun by the 8th century leading to frequent confrontational responses, including the Crusades.
Europe (along with the world, in due course) was transformed by the Renaissance (1450 – 1650), the Reformation (1517 – 1648), the Enlightenment (1685 – 1815) the Industrial Revolution (1760 – 1840) and the Age of European Exploration and Colonisation (late 15th century – 19th century). None of these epoch-changing developments brought fundamentally increased peace to the world, however. In fact they all played a role in inflaming the level of warfare in Europe and beyond – especially the Reformation, the Industrial Revolution and the Age of Imperial Exploration.
The “Thirty Years War”, which arose out of the Reformation, ran from 1618 to 1648 It is still widely regarded as the most destructive war, ever, in Europe. Ultimately, this war led to the signing of the Treaty of Westphalia, in 1648. This collection of treaties established the concept of the modern, sovereign, essentially secular, Nation State.
Primary, ever more powerful European Nation States, were increasingly in conflict after 1648 as they each strove to be Top Nation. Their expanding, globalised, imperial-colonial rivalries, which added to intense local tensions, ensured this outcome.
Learning from history
Well over 2000 years ago China experienced a distinct, extended and bloody Warring States period, the recollection of which is deeply etched into the collective historical memory. This has not, however, prevented the regular outbreak of war within China ever since. Indeed, in the modern era, China has experienced a sickening rise in violence and destruction exemplified, for example, by the Opium Wars, the Taiping Rebellion, The Boxer Rebellion, two Japanese invasion wars, a terrible Civil War and the Cultural Revolution.
But each such outbreak has reinforced the fundamental lesson of that early, vividly remembered period of extended, intense bloody conflict: war is to be abhorred, not just in word but in deed. Moreover, China has never been drawn – especially in the modern era – into directing militarised attacks at other states on a scale remotely comparable to that seen across the Global West.
In the West, the signing of the Treaty of Westphalia was meant to mark a crucial turning away from a default resort to war amongst Europe’s many distinctly divided states, especially wars based on religious difference. It was hoped, too, that this lesson would be absorbed amongst Europe’s foremost states, each vying to assert themselves as Top Nation.
In fact, it took Europe almost 300 years (of further warfare, above all) until 1945 for a piercing consensus to emerge on the wisdom of that co-existence maxim embodied within the Treaty of Westphalia. The post-war creation of the European Union (designed to put an end to the terrible contest to be Top Nation) is the principal manifestation of this bloodily-forged agreement.
Unfortunately, the US has never experienced any sort of comparable, penetrating “post-Westphalia” shift in its worldview. Indeed, it emerged from WWII as the Top Nation globally. And it has gone to extraordinary, war-enhanced lengths, since – especially following its triumph over the USSR in the Cold War – to ensure the indefinite tenure of its global “full spectrum dominance”.
The very large, crucial European segment of the Global West remains measurably fragmented, even within the EU. Despite its bitter post WWII collective understanding, it has allowed its own geopolitical interests and thinking to be appallingly swayed (along with Australia, Canada, Japan and others) by Washington’s continuing, intense determination to impose its will globally, despite – and because of – America’s gravely endangered, international standing.
Today, this posse of America’s geopolitically anemic allies find themselves standing shoulder to shoulder with the US in the devastating prosecution of terrible Western-incubated wars in Ukraine and Palestine.
Conclusion
This contemporary, offensive, distorting US leadership can authentically be understood as the progeny, in significant part, of centuries of Western warring states history.
Early this year I argued that:
“Notwithstanding massive intensified marketing by the Mainstream Western Media arguing that the West is forever crusading for freedom, democracy and human rights, once one considers embedded, repetitive performance stretching back decades, the dominant motto guiding ultimate American hegemonic action is: Let’s go to war. China, however, has been living in accordance with a very different motto for over four decades: Let’s go to work”.
This presents a fundamental difficulty for Washington. Former US diplomat and leading international affairs commentator, Chas Freeman, cogently argues that, in China, the US does not primarily face just a rising military rival. Most of all it faces an economic and technological rival with which it increasingly cannot compete. Moreover, it does not know how to adjust to this profoundly changing geopolitical reality other than to lurch towards still greater militarism combined with a fevered injection of “national security concerns” into an extraordinary range of anti-China policy initiatives
History visibly explains how all this has come to pass. It also confirms how “the destructive militaristic culture of the Atlantic alliance”, which Professor Mahbubani abhors, stands on the shoulders of an ingrained, Western Warring States experience reaching back well over a thousand years. That dismal culture is today sustained and shaped, above all, by the increasing American embrace of forbidding warfare as a primary means to maintain: its messianic ambitions as a global hegemon.
This is an abridged version of an extended article recently published by Fridayeveryday,
Richard Cullen is an Adjunct Professor in the Faculty of Law at the University of Hong Kong. He was previously a Professor in the Department of Business Law and Taxation at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia.