The old world order
With all the propaganda surrounding the causes and eventually, the outcome of the Second World War, one would think that the United States and Britain were solely responsible for defeating
With all the propaganda surrounding the causes and eventually, the outcome of the Second World War, one would think that the United States and Britain were solely responsible for defeating Hitler. Recently, the Americans or specifically, Trump, have been claiming that they alone were responsible for the victory over Germany. According to the criminally garrulous Trump, but for the exploits of the gallant American forces virtually all Europeans would have been speaking German now. Ironically, he is ethnically German, his grandfather having migrated from Germany as he fled his native land in order to avoid being conscripted into the German army of the time. Two generations later, his grandson followed in his footsteps when he dodged service in the American army by claiming to suffer from bone spurs. So much for his personal courage. Going by his antecedents, it is clear that Trump would have found a way to keep himself from harm's way had he been alive and called upon to serve in the armed forces during WWII.
Every year since the end of WWII, the Allies have met on the beaches of Normandy to celebrate the landing of their troops on the beaches around there. They would be back in June for that celebration, with as many of those who were landed on the beach eighty-two years before to begin the match on Berlin from the west as are still alive and able to make the trip. The Allied forces finally arrived in Berlin in May 1945 to find out that the Soviet Red Army had beaten them to the price of forcing Hitler to commit suicide, thus bringing the war to a close. Since then, dozens of Hollywood epics have been produced to valorise the Western effort to rid the world of Facism and in doing so, save the world for democracy. The real story however is that without the involvement of the Soviet Red Army, the victory over Hitler would have remained in contention for very much longer than it took. The immense contribution of the Soviets to that famous victory which eighty-one years on is still so lavishly celebrated by the West is almost never acknowledged. But the truth is that whilst about 20 million fatalities were recorded by the Soviets in that war, less than one million lives were lost by the British and the Americans. It is therefore clear that victory in that war was purchased at great cost with the blood of the Soviets.
The usefulness of the Americans to the war effort was the supply of the weapons which were used by the Allies to prosecute the war. Even before the Americans entered the war, they had been sending weapons and food across the Atlantic to aid the British war effort through what was called the lend-lease agreement. And this is what allowed Britain to hold out against the overwhelming pressure exerted on them by the almost irresistible German forces which were rampaging throughout Europe like a pack of African wild dogs on steroids at that time. With their entrance into the war, the Americans began to arm the British in earnest. In addition to that, they began to send over food and arms to the Soviet Union making it possible for them to repulse the increasingly desperate attacks of the Germans.Their momentum was only checked when on their own volition, they threw themselves against the might of the Soviet Union and were broken, crushed by a mixture of arrogance on their part, the unconquerable Russian weather, the resolute nature of Soviet resistance and the availability of military aid from the Americans.
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The German war aim in the East was to crush the Soviets, occupy their lands and reduce their remnants to serfdom. It was not to be a war of conquest but one of extermination. The Germans assigned their best troops and most lethal equipment to complete this task and so, by the time the Allies landed in Normandy, they were confronted by second rate troops using refurbished equipment. In other words, the Soviets were really up against it in the battle for supremacy against the Germans.
It is important to establish and acknowledge the contribution of the Soviets to the outcome of the Second World War. This is because the world order after 1945 which is now referred to as the old world order was established initially by the USA and Britain on the one hand and the Soviet Union and her client states on the other. Military muscle was provided by NATO on the one hand and the Warsaw Pact countries on the other. For more than forty years these military alliances dominated the world and engaged each other for the first time in history in a nuclear arms race so massive that in any confrontation, the world would have been destroyed completely by the fallout of the war. Each side worked feverishly to stockpile arms they dared not use but the production of which they dared not stop as they were at war, the Cold War as it was called. The Soviet Union lost this war and the Warsaw Pact collapsed following the breakdown of the Soviet Union and the emergence of Russia and several new countries. The world which up till then had been bipolar became unipolar with the USA sitting triumphantly on the top of that world.
The destruction of the world's production capacity was all but total in all countries except the USA after WWII. This situation was seized by the Americans to spread their influence throughout the world as their businessmen spread their reach all over the world through the activities of their multinational companies. The USA quickly went into a boom period so massive that it threatened to be eternal even after both Germany and Japan,the two of them under the close supervision and military occupation by the USA, recovered from the after effects of the war.
In a very turbulent world, the Roman Empire is still remembered for the maintenance of the Pax Romana, centuries of Roman rule within which there was peace. Unfortunately, there has been no room for the development of Pax Americana. The world order up till now has been dominated by war and blood letting of quite astonishing proportions with Americans being involved in all of them from continuous little wars in Latin America and the Caribbean region, to Korea, which is still technically at war more than seventy years after the armistice which brought fighting to a close was signed. The Americans found a way of sending troops to Vietnam halfway around the world in an attempt to bend the Vietnamese to their will. In the end, they failed but not before taking the lives of at least three million Vietnamese as well as many thousands of their neighbours. The area in the centre of the world refered to as the Middle East has not known peace since 1948 when the Western proxy state of Israel was inserted into the region leading to the displacement of seven million Palestinians. The energy thirsty world order has seen to it that all the oil producing countries in that region have been reduced to puppets and sell their oil in a special currency called the petro-dollar which is denominated in American dollars. Through this mechanism, the global economy is carried on at American pleasure. Any dissent from any country attracts instant and unpleasant consequences from the bosses in Washington. When sanctions fail or are not thought to have put enough fear into offending states, military jets are scrambled from one of more of the 800 American bases or àircraft carriers roaming through all parts of the world. People in Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Somalia, Cambodia, Bosnia, Libya and even the tiny Caribbean island of Grenada have, at one time or the other felt the awesome power of American ordnance raining down on them from clear blue skies. For all it is worth, Nigeria has now found a place on that list. We must wait and see what the consequences of this will be.
As long as the old order held, and to all intents and purposes, it still does, the world remained and remains unipolar, with the West in control of our collective destiny. That there is now talk of an Old World Order is however strongly suggestive of the emergence of a New World Order, the birth pain of which is now being felt all round the world.
•We return to the highway next week.
