TheMarketForIdeas

The decades following the 2^nd World War witnessed different armed conflicts scattered around the globe, varying in magnitude and consequences on the geopolitical stage. To name a few: the war in Korea, Indo-Pakistan war, the Vietnam War, Israel and war with the United Arab Republic, the Algerian war of Independence, the Cyprus division, the Falkland conflict, Iran vs. Iraq and so on. When we consider the term war in its broad meaning, we refer to an open armed conflict between two or more countries or a serious civil war that engulfs a country or large part of it, not guerilla fighting at low intensity in various provinces or separatist movements like ETA or IRA. It is true that the spatial distribution was not homogenous in mathematical terms, but it had nevertheless a wide dispersion. Moreover, another fundamental distinction must be made. From the point of compulsory conflict there are wars of necessity and wars of choice. The first one is clear; it is an action that must be taken in order to defend against or something. Can be taken pre-event (preemptive strike) or post-event (retaliation). It is easier to explain and to legitimize. On the other hand, war of choice is a bit harder to categorize and to legitimize. It can have multiple triggers, some real, some covering other interests.

Also, it must be underlined that these conflicts took place under the “umbrella” of the Cold War, with some of the disputes directly linked to it, like the War in Korea or Vietnam and others just indirectly influenced, like the Falklands War. What is of interest in this analysis is not the scale or the impact, but the actual location on the map. Between 1945 and 1990, we can observe that the major conflicts were spread around the world, with emphasis on developing areas from Asia, Africa or South America. It is somehow understandable that these zones generated disputes at the end of the colonial era and the emergence of new nations. The emerging states were fighting for land, resources, and perhaps most important, to set up a form of national ideology and identity – see for example the separation of India and Pakistan. This was a world of wars – multiple instances spread around the globe. And it was in line with the history of humankind to this point. In the deeper past, wars were fought for a much larger palette of reasons, ranging from controlling resources, protecting trade interests, land grabbing, imposition of tribute payments and even honor or problems with not keeping marriage promises among the nobility. All these reasons are mundane reasons, be it personal or pecuniary, but apart from colonialism and religious wars, rarely the reason was to impose a new model for society and a new mindset on core values. There were cases but these were not predominant.

Still, after 1990 and the end of the Cold War a peculiar phenomenon appeared. Armed conflicts tend to narrow to a specific area, running from Eastern Europe to Middle East and East Africa. In this key we can see those ex-Yugoslav wars, conflict between Israel and Palestine, the Iraq War (in 2003), Afghanistan (2021), Ukraine, Armenia vs. Azerbaijan, Yemen, Rwanda, Somalia, Libya and the latest Israel & USA vs. Iran - all are in the wide vicinity of a theoretical line that runs from the Baltic to Arabian Sea. It is indeed a large zone left or right of this imaginary line, but compared to the global map it is a slender zone. And it concentrates all the major armed conflicts of the last 35 years. Of course, minor skirmishes occurred in other parts of the world as well (Thailand-Cambodia, sub-Saharan Africa) but these were not large-scale wars as defined above. This is the war of the worlds.

Principal armed conflicts after 1989

So, we cannot ask ourselves why the big conflicts tend to agglomerate on this fault and do not keep the pattern of even distribution around the map.

This broad zone represents the confluence of the 2 worlds that emerged after the end of the Cold War. The west (Europe & North America), capitalist, democratic, with a higher standard of living and core values that emphasize human rights, individual freedom, entrepreneurship, market economy, freedom of religion and gathering versus “the East” (Russia and authoritarian states in the Middle East) that value traditions, religion, differences between social classes and ethnicity that leads to social hierarchy, but that are also prone to autocratic and even oppressive regimes. For the latter the “law of the land” (core values that are not always explicit translated into written rules) is more important than anything.

Needless to say, when a war erupts usually the causes are multiple and complex, and we cannot cover all of them, so that is why in this paper we aim to identify the transcendental reasons for conflict, not particular motivations that differ from case to case. In fact, each war has its set of causes and its own evolution, but we consider that at the base of each conflict post 1990 sits a deeper motive, an antagonism of “the way of thinking and portraying the society”. The war of the worlds can be seen as war that clashes not states or entities, not even surface and public ideologies like capitalism or communism, but root core values and views of the way society should look and function. The foundations lie in the way peoples and countries perceive the societal model to be constructed (or maintained). Overlapping on this base-level dichotomy are all the other reasons that we enumerated before: land, resources, national security, ethnic and religious etc. Even in civil wars like Libya or Syria a clash of proposed societal models can be foreseen: different factions propose various systems, be it civil, militaristic or religious in the extreme.

For example, in Ukraine the war is mainly fought for land, with the Russian Federation attempting to expand its territory, a movement that will serve two purposes – expanding the country and creating a larger buffer zone between Russia and NATO. But even in this case, beyond the desire for land and defense, there are deeper motives: there is an ethnic conflict smoldering in Eastern Ukraine ever since the dismantling of USSR (D’anieri, 2007), and even an opposition in terms of models in which should society function: the western model vs. the conservative Russian traditional model. The situation in The Middle East is different in detail level, but on core-level it is quite similar: irreconcilable ethnic and religious differences. Israel’s system of territorial expansion is opposed by Palestinian society. Each one wants to impose its core values and its style of living over the same land area.

The spatial distribution of these conflicts can be seen as a physical materialization in the field of Huntington’s wider concept known as the “clash of civilizations”. In most cases, society models are opposed and irreconcilable, and since no common denominator can be found in order to reach an agreement, the opposition of ideas (too) often leads to armed confrontation. If there were a compromise to be made, the result emerged from combining these principles would not resemble much the originals and by this would be rejected by the hard-liners on each side, resulting in a de facto prolonged conflict (e.g. Israeli – Palestinian peace agreements mediated by USA did not last long because of radicals on both sides). That is why the War of the Worlds is far harder to conclude. It involves group mentality, traditions, religion not just material gains. And more often people are prone to die for an ideal or for an idea than for something tangible. War motivations elude more and more the classical paradigm of wars conducted for economic or strategic incentives (Maynard, 2019).

From one perspective the recent Israel-USA vs. Iran conflict can be seen as another clash of worlds... The democratic West (Israel is in the Middle East but its society is founded on democratic principles similar to the Western world) versus theocratic and ideological-religious authoritarian regimes from the East. Of course, the more quantifiable motives exist too: nuclear proliferation, genocide against own people, oil and natural gas resources, but deep down at the essence is the same conflict that can be so simplistically reduced to “us versus them”, an approach that is available for either side. Now the question is if Iran will change just the leader and the regime will endure, the entire regime or the societal model. The person was changed already, the regime still hangs on and, even if we are speculating, there is little to no chance that Iranian society will drop its model and embraces Western modes.

What is interesting is that concomitant with the narrowing of the area of armed conflicts, the incidence of the wars of choice is increasing. As might be expected the propaganda “clothes” every armed action in a necessity (Edel & Joshua, 2018) – fake terrorist threats, defending national interests, defending ethnic minorities, blocking a certain regime in obtaining weapons of mass destruction and so on and so forth. It is true that in a smaller scale each one of these is a necessity in itself but keeping in mind that there are coercive but peaceful alternatives to solve these matters, then these wars are no longer an imperative with no other option left, but a choice. The perfect example is in Ukraine, where the Russian Federation invaded by choice in order to seize land and block Ukraine’s accession to NATO. It was not a real necessity, but a choice.

So why are there more wars of choice in the war of the worlds? Because it is usually a choice to try to force the opponent to adhere to your societal model, not a necessity. Imposing this scale of moral and human values on others is not a necessity for one’s existence. Perfect examples are the Arab Spring or the war in Iraq – there was no direct necessity for the Western world to change the regimes in these countries even if they were dictatorial and oppressive and to try to impose an occidental-democratic model. But it did happen, and, in the end, the result was a total failure and a void of power that led to civil wars and emergence of even more radical organizations. In fact, even if most rejoiced for the fall of the autocratic regimes, in the core mindset recipients rejected the new “proposed-imposed” model. In other words, changing the dictator was good but changing the dictatorship model was not. In Egypt. after the Arab Spring Uprising, the elections brought to power a radical group, and after just 1 year a coup d’etat brought back an authoritarian figure. This action was required in order to keep society together amid growing tensions between the secularist and Islamist factions (Saidin & Storm, 2024). Change the person but not the deep social system that the population was accustomed to.

In conclusion we can say that gradually we are facing a change in the essence of the idea of war. the multiple scattered conflicts in the past tend to accumulate in the zone of the rift between the two worlds, and beyond surface motivation like land or resources or ethnic minorities lie a deeper and harder to change series of motives: society structure and functionality, place and role of human beings, and core values. Even if at a first glance imperialism and afterwards globalization made the difference to be more obscure in some instances, and even if technology became a societal pillar in all parts of the world, in the deep-rooted mentality divisions still exist. Western world put a strong accent on individual freedom, business, with the extreme side-effect of atomization of population and dissolution of friendship and family ties while eastern more traditional societies adopt the exact opposite: family, tribe, ethnicity and religion count more than the individual.

There is no blame for this. There is not one single person or group responsible for the two contrasting models. These emerged naturally from customs, religion, traditions and ideology. We cannot say one is good and one is bad either. What we can notice is that this rupture leads in some cases to armed conflict. And where else to appear these wars if not at the confluence of the two worlds?

This does not mean that there can’t or won’t be wars in the future in other parts of the world – the analysis is not exclusive nor exhaustive. But so far, in the last 35 years all major military confrontations were located along this virtual line. And we dare to say there will be so in the next decades. Only time will tell...

Photo source: PxHere.com.

References

D’anieri, P. (2007) ‘Ethnic tensions and state strategies: Understanding the survival of the Ukrainian state’, Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics, 23(1), pp. 6-8.

Edel, M. și Joshua, M. (2018) ‘How authoritarian rulers seek to legitimize repression: Framing mass killings in Egypt and Uzbekistan’, Democratization, 25(5), pp. 883-884.

Maynard, J.L. (2019) ‘Ideology and armed conflict’, Journal of Peace Research, 56(5), p. 646.

Saidin, M.S.S. și Storm, L. (2024) ‘The challenges of regime change and political transition in Egypt and Libya after the Arab uprisings: Critical reviews of factors and implications’, Cogent Arts & Humanities, 11(1), p. 6.