Why mankind keeps returning to its old bloodthirsty ways and new battlefields
“I am the enemy you killed, my friend. I knew you in this dark: for so you frowned Yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed. I parried; but my hands were loath and cold. Let us sleep now... .” — “Strange Meeting” by Wilfred Owen
In 1845, the German philosopher, political theorist and economist Karl Marx wrote about his theory of historical materialism in Theses on Feuerbach. It states that the direction of history is determined by material forces and that the ultimate result will be a communist utopia. With the proletariat (workers) emerging as victors, and that it would be the “end of history”.
Exactly 144 years later, two events happened. In the summer of 1989, the American magazine The National Interest published an essay, “The End of History?”. Its author, the political scientist Francis Fukuyama, said that the ideological battles between East and West were over. Western liberal democracy had triumphed. At that time, anti-communist protests were breaking out across the former Soviet Union. Fukuyama had put his neck on the line with that essay.
He was remarkably prescient. On November 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall was torn down, marking the end of the Cold War. It was exactly the opposite of what Marx had theorised. Capitalism won, not communism. It should have been the end of all disagreements. It should have been the beginning of an era of peace, brotherhood, sisterhood and chill vibes.
It has been anything but that. The US invaded Iraq in 1990 when Iraq invaded Kuwait. By 1991, the US had won. It took just
