When two countries engage in a
war, but it does not stir our own sense of patriotism or nationalism, we mostly
consume all information on it we are provided and draw opinions accordingly.
But in a globalized world, it is virtually impossible to remain unaffected by
any war in which major world powers are directly or indirectly engaged.
Besides, when the United
States gets involved in a war, the entire western media begins to speak in
unison. We hardly get to question the facts presented, for people generally
consider western media credible. Due to the superficial impression that the
western world is free and has a free press, most people tend to believe all the
lies told to them are facts. When it comes to war, not just the media, but even
Hollywood joins the patriotic bandwagon and propaganda machine.
Consider the comment most
people repeat: war is undesirable for it causes suffering, death, and
destruction. Of course, all war is undesirable. Still, hardly a year passes
without conflicts between countries. Ever since the Second World War, the
frequency of wars that cause ever-greater destruction and loss of life has
only increased.
Ironically, most nations tend
to preach non-violence and peace as the most desirable human values. Whereas a
longer view of history shows war has been the most frequent event in the world.
Maybe the western world is highly democratic and peace-loving, but it is
ruthless when it comes to the global economic order. Through direct or indirect
control over international institutions that regulate the world, it dictates
terms to the Global South. (Though Russia and China are
altogether different propositions!)
For understanding current
events, we must make sense of the world after the Second World War. Two new
world powers emerged, the United States and the Soviet Union. The former
claimed to be a free world, and the latter was labeled Iron Curtain. Soon, led
by the United States, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) came to
exist to prevent the Soviet Union from expanding to the West. In reaction to
the formation of NATO, the Soviet Union created the Warsaw Pact bloc. Thus
began the Cold War, which lasted almost forty years until the Soviet Union
collapsed in 1991, followed by its disintegration and the emergence of many new
countries.
These developments made both
NATO and the Warsaw Pact irrelevant, and the latter was discontinued. But even
though NATO lost its purpose, the United States never took any initiative to
disband it. Instead, it began adding more and more erstwhile Warsaw Pact
countries to the grouping.
Over time, the United States
developed economic stakes in some of these countries, including Ukraine, a
non-NATO country. Currently, we have the European Union, which is
primarily an economic bloc, and NATO, the military bloc of western
countries led by the United States.
Simultaneously, the western
world is attempting, quite successfully, to influence people’s perceptions by
projecting Russia in a particular way—and it is not doing this for the first
time. Central to what the West is doing is constructing Vladimir Putin as
the dictator and culprit, even though Russia claims it is a democratic
country.
One is reminded of what
happened in Iraq when the United States under George Bush similarly
painted Saddam Hussain as a dictator and culprit. We now know there were no
weapons of mass destruction in Iraq at the time.
When it comes to the media,
the construction of a dictator as the enemy may not be subtle, but if we
closely watch western news channels, an interesting politics of representation
emerges.
Instead of informing people
about events in this war, it is concentrating on the suffering of individuals
and their families in Ukraine. We know ordinary people suffer during a
conflict, but when stories of individuals and families occupy central space in
the news, the primary purpose is to create hatred against the invader.
