On being sick and tired of European wars of aggression

The Friday Flashpoints!

Why is it that in world history since 1853, that European powers have been the most war mongering and civilian murdering people on the planet—and it isn't even close?

Adolf Hitler (c) and the Nazi High Command walking near the Eiffel Tower in Paris only days after German forces routed the French in May of 1940…

Before answering today's thesis question, do know that if you are European or of European descent, that you shouldn't get too deep into your feelings as this blog is purely analytical and not emotional. A major part of this analysis is that the author, Ol' Hobbs, knows fully well that wars of aggression have been waged by nations in Asia (Japan and China terrorized Asia and the Pacific Rim in the 20th Century); Africa (the battles in Rwanda were horrifically brutal), and in the Americas (Overt U.S. imperialism in Cuba, Haiti, and Mexico, along with covert U.S. operations in Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, and Grenada, immediately spring to mind). 

But on the last point, lest we forget that among the very progenitors of U.S. wars of aggression since the 1850's, that 27 of the 28 American presidents during this period (from "Buck" Buchanan to Barack Obama) were of European descent—and students of old war realpolitik—and colonial expansionism. 

Which, again, leads me to ask why the very continent (Europe) that developed the highly racist (and suspect) concept of Aryan moral superiority through its famous philosophers like John Locke in Great Britain, Jean-Jacques Rousseau in France, and Immanuel Kant in Germany; or, the pseudo-science of Aryan "intellectual superiority" through the Eugenics movement of the late 19th and 20th Centuries that held that white brains were larger and more effective than all other peoples of the world, why have these supposedly smarter and more moral people focused on conquest, violence, murder, and mayhem all in the name of crown, country, and white supremacy?

God only knows, but keeping the continental killing score:

*The Crimean War, begun in 1853, left nearly 500,000 British, French, Crimean, Ukrainian, Russian, Polish, and Ottoman Turkish people dead before the war's end in 1856...

British literary giant Alfred Lord Tennyson's famous 'Charge of the Light Brigade’ was written in homage to British soldiers dying in the Crimean War, as depicted above…

*The Franco-Prussian (also called the Franco-German War), begun in 1870, led to almost two million casualties, with over 200,000 French and Prussian (German) soldiers dead before the war's end in 1871...

Some historians argue that the roots of the 20th Centuries two World Wars were planted during Otto Von Bismark's unification of modern Germany during wars with Austria (1866) and France (1870), as depicted above…

*World War I, begun in 1914, led to over 40 million casualties, including an approximate 22 million deaths among Germans, British, French, Austro-Hungarian, Russian, Italian, Ottoman Turk, and American soldiers and civilians before the war's end in 1918...

British soldiers wearing gas masks while firing a machine gun against German soldiers at the Battle of the Somme during the First World War…

*The Russian Civil War, begun in 1917, led to nearly eight million deaths among the Red Army, the White Army, the U.S. Army, and civilians before the war's end in 1919...

Czar Nicholas II and his entire Royal family (above) were among the nearly eight million people killed during the Russian Civil War…

The Spanish-Civil War, begun in 1936, led to over 500,000 deaths on the Iberian Peninsula as fascist and republican forces clashed in what essentially was a proxy battle between Nazi Germany and the West before the war's end in 1939...

Soldiers under the command of General Francisco Franco marching to the front during the bloody Spanish Civil War

*World War II, begun in 1939, led to an estimated 85 million battle and civilian deaths before the war's end in 1945. (Not included in this tally, but critical for this essay's analysis, are the over 10 million Jews, Roma, and infirm civilians that were murdered during the Nazi German Holocaust).

Nazi German soldiers mounting a counter-offensive against American forces in the December 1944 Battle of the Bulge in Belgium…

The Soviet-Afghan War, begun in 1979, led to over two million military and civilian deaths before the war's end in 1989...

The Soviet Army was soundly defeated by the Mujaheddin in Afghanistan in the 1980's. Less than 20 years later, the same weapons provided by the U.S. to the Mujaheddin to fight the Soviets were used against U.S. forces that invaded after the 9/11 terror attacks…

The Balkan Wars, begun in 1992, led to the deaths of over 100,000 Bosnians, Serbs, and Croats before the war's end in 1995...

Aftermath of a 90's era skirmish in Croatia…

Thus, a conservative estimate shows that since 1853, European wars of aggression have led to the deaths of nearly 150 million people! This number includes the aforementioned 10 million Jews and Roma killed during Hitler's Aryan supremacy Holocaust, but I would be remiss if I did not add that during this same period, that Belgium's King Leopold II was responsible for the deaths of approximately 10 million Blacks in the colonized Congo. 

Belgian soldiers were particularly brutal towards native Blacks, killing over 10 million during their colonial rule…

Nor should we forget the hundreds of thousands of Blacks killed by the British Empire (and Cecil Rhodes's DeBeers Diamond Mining Company) in South Africa, or the untold millions of Blacks and Native Americans who were killed by European slavers and colonizers from Great Britain, France, Germany, Holland, Portugal, and Spain.

Ironically, in 1945, Soviet Red Army soldiers liberated the notorious Auschwitz Concentration Camp where over two million Jews were murdered by Nazi thugs…

With just these highlights (or low lights, if you will) of European lust for territorial acquisitions and domination of mineral and human capital, there's little wonder that Vladimir Putin, a former KGB colonel and student of modern European history, did not hesitate to annex the oil rich Crimea in 2014—or further his aims for territorial expansion into the rest of Ukraine this year, all under the guise of "Russian security." 

Ukrainian man walks amid the rubble of a Russian military shelling of an apartment complex in Kyiv…

But if history proves nothing else, there's no such thing as "security" when European politicos, or their American, Canadian, and even Australian cousins, get all into colonizer mode. You see, while it's true that Vladimir Putin is a money hungry, blood thirsty tyrant, one could certainly argue that our very own former president, George W. Bush, was no better by launching wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that were in no ways direct responses to the 9/11 terror attacks—and left hundreds of thousands of military personnel and civilians dead during the 20 years of combat that followed!

In what ways was the American invasion of Iraq similar to the Russian invasion of Ukraine? Or different? Feel free to tell Ol’ Hobbs your thoughts…

One could also credibly argue that Bush's father, George Herbert Walker Bush, was more concerned about protecting American oil interests in 1991 than "protecting the self determination rights" of the Kuwaiti people during his clash with Iraqi Dictator Saddam Hussein that left nearly 200,000 military and civilian deaths that year. 

U.S. soldier checking Iraqi war dead in 1991

Which leads to my conclusion: One of the worst flexes of global white supremacy, often done under the guise of furthering the best interests of a given European (or European descendant led) nation, is the reality that billions of people are at risk of dying due to European’s (historical and modern) desire to dominate and control their neighbors—and the world writ large. A reality that makes me grit my teeth each time I turn on the news and see how the possibility of global nuclear war could start from Putin's latest invasion of Ukraine—and how our very lives could be in peril due to no fault of our own…

Thank you for subscribing to the Hobbservation Point—have a great weekend!