When I wrote about the possibility of the 3rd World War happening, I categorically stated that war on the scale of 3rd World War will not be caused by nationalism or economically-driven desire to control world resources as was the case in the 1st and 2nd World Wars when feudalism and capitalism sought to control the world resources through nationalist consolidation and colonialism. First World War was sparked off by Germany’s quest to expand its frontiers after its unification by Otto von Bismarck. So, it started the consolidation of Germanic racial lines by seeking the integration of part of France’s coal and iron resources-laden Alsace-Loraine, parts of Austria, Poland, the Baltic provinces which raised nationalist consciousness that led to the assassination of Austria’s Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo. The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand triggered the World War I. The 2nd World War was a continuation of the unresolved issues that led to World War I as Germany lost most of its acquired territories including overseas colonies and was further subjected to unconscionable reparations dictated by Britain. The resolution of the World War II by the emergence of the United States of America which was not part of the imperialist European States struggling for the control of the world resources engendered a new power based on ideology of capitalism and democracy. Most of the principles governing the resolution of the issues arising from World War II were deliberated by the Allied Powers led by the United States, Britain, USSR and assisted by China and France that were added for geo-political considerations. Most of the deliberations for the institution of a new world order took place at Potsdam and Yalta conferences and the architects of this new world order were President Franklin Roosevelt of the United States, Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin of the USSR. As a result of these deliberations in the Potsdam and Yalta Conferences, they approved the principles on which the new world order was founded. The legal order is founded on the United Nations charter in replacement of the League of Nations that was established in 1919 after the First World War. The economic system was based on Bretton Woods Institutions. The United Nations Charter enunciated the principles of freedom, liberty and democracy to govern the new world order. The principal article of this new charter of freedom was the recognition of the human rights and the peoples’ right to self-determination as opposed to the then reigning culture of international customary law rule of right of conquest and colonialism by which most European and Asiatic powers based their imperialistic enterprises. The new world order could hardly take off when the two foremost powers thrown up by the dynamics of the resolution of the World War II squared up to each other. These new world powers were the United States of America and the defunct Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The first confrontation was the occupation of Germany when USSR took control of Eastern provinces while USA, Britain and France took control of the Western Provinces. The two world powers (USA and USSR) could not agree on the management of these occupied territories thus resulting in the division of Germany into two countries of East Germany (German Democratic Republic, GDR) and West Germany (Federal Republic of Germany, FRG) with Berlin as GDR’s capital while West Berlin called Bonn became the capital of FRG. This confrontation in Germany was later repeated in Korea where the country was divided into two as a result of the contest between Capitalism and Democracy and Socialism/Communism and totalitarianism. With time, these new ideological divides got consolidated into formalized alliances with the United States and Western European countries coalescing into the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) while the defunct Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and Eastern European countries and some Baltic and Asiatic countries formed an international alliance based on the Warsaw Pact. With these two divergent politico-military alliances the world was plunged back to the Cold-War between these geopolitical blocs. At the close of the World War II, the United States of America was the sole possessor of the Atomic Bomb but by the early 1950s the USSR has detonated on atomic bomb and so the arms race for military superiority ensued between these blocs especially between the United States and the defunct USSR. This cold-war continued until the close of 1980s when the USSR unraveled and disintegrated between 1989 and 19991 thereby leaving USA as the sole super-power. Somehow, Russia that rose from the ashes of the defunct USSR emerged after its teething problems of re-organisation to become a super-power alongside China which economically is even stronger than Russia. This is the present state of the world. How safe is the precarious state of world dependent on what USA, Russia, France, Britain and China do or fail to do to maintain world peace as is clearly shown by the Russia-Ukraine quagmire that has created the present world tension and global unease? The answer could be gleaned from the statements of Mr. Vladimir Putin, the Russian leader’s addresses to his people on February 21, 2022 and particularly on March 3, 2022.
In the March 3, 2022 address Mr Putin stated that the “tragic events taking place in Ukraine’s Donbass” centre on the “key issues of ensuring the security of Russia itself” which to him is being threatened by the expansion of NATO right into the former WARSAW PACT territories” as the USA and its allies through NATO are “bringing its military infrastructure closer to Russian borders.” This is the central issue in the Russia-Ukraine war. This Russian fear of its encirclement by the USA and its socio-cultural and military allies under NATO induces a sense of fear and insecurity which accordance to Mr Putin’s Russian had made effort to contain by trying to reach agreement with the NATO on “the principles of equal and indivisible security in Europe.” Putin pointed to the recent effort by Russia in December 2021 when it “made attempt to agree with the United States and its allies on the principles of ensuring security in Europe and on the non-expansion of NATO, but they failed to negotiate but instead continued pursuing their own goals, they neglected our interests.” And Mr Putin emphatically declared that Russia “cannot feel safe, develop, exist with a constant threat emanating from the territories of modern Ukraine.” Russian fears that Ukraine may join the NATO which exposes Russia as an immediate neighbour to the threat of NATO’s military arsenals. Not only the NATO military infrastructure but also what Putin described as “their pseudo-values that would corrode us, our people from the inside, those attitudes that they are already aggressively planting in their countries and which directly lead to degradation and degeneration, because they contradict the very nature of man. It won’t happen, no one has ever done it. It won’t work now either.” In the address, Putin castigated USA as the harbinger of all those threats he has identified as being posed by NATO to Russia and called the USA ‘a real empire of lies’ which “has been created inside the United States and this ‘empire of lies’ controls the western bloc.”
In the address Putin pointed to the founding of the United Nations on certain principles of which Russia through the defunct USSR contributed enormous resources militarily and diplomatically. According to him NATO has undermined those principles by its unbridled expansionism and imposition of its own cultural values and system on other countries and a resistance has resulted in military attacks and destablisation and he cited Iraq, Syria, Libya and even Russia where he alleged separatist tendencies were promoted and supported. According to Putin, this kind of polar politics cannot work or guarantee world peace and stability. In the address, he adverted the mind of NATO to the danger inherent in pursuing the present western schemes which may lead to war. Putin told whoever cares to listen especially NATO and Ukraine that Russia “has certain advantages in a number of the latest types of weapons. In this regard no one should have doubts that a direct attack on our country will lead to defeat and dire consequences for any potential aggressor.” To justify Russia’s support and military involvement in Ukraine’s Donbass region’s quest for statehood, he relied on Articles 1 and 51 of UN Charter that assure all peoples their right to self-determination.
Despite all the skirmishes taking place in Europe between Russia and Ukraine on one hand and between NATO and Russia on the other, those developments will not lead to World War III or be a prelude to it. By the present state of world arsenal of lethal military infrastructure, it will be difficult for any European or American state to make a war the potential of which may degenerate to the detonation of atomic or nuclear arms devices. That would be catastrophic and they know it. Putin pointed to this disaster but he is sensible enough that despite his boast of his country’s “certain advantages in a number of the latest types of weapons”; he could not be foolhardy to underestimate the capability of the other countries to use theirs if attacked. That would be the mutually assured destruction for mankind. I still hold that the third world war may never be sparked off by Western Europe or America but by fringe elements now professing religious fundamentalism whose sense of reason does not accord with present civilisation. If they acquire atomic or nuclear technology, then the world would be imperiled. The peril does no lie with NATO or Russia. It lies somewhere. But let USA and NATO hearken to the entreaties contained in Putin’s address particularly the need to reorganise the world on the principle of international law that makes Rule of Law a Customary International Law Principle and make it to operate and govern world or international group and states’ conduct. Democracy should not just be a domestic political scheme. It should also operate in the international organisation especially the United Nations so that the majority opinion rules instead of the present system the permanent members scuttle world opinion with their veto power. This is the real threat to the world!
- Barrister Onu John Onwe is a former Political Adviser to two-term Governor of Ebonyi State, Chief Martin Elechi (May 29, 2007-May 29, 2015).
- He writes from Abakaliki, the Ebonyi State capital, where he practices Law