AS the confrontation between the ‘West’ and Russia hots up following the annexation of Crimea, a number of commentators and political personalities have raised alarm bells about the real possibility that Europe could go to war for the first time in seven decades.

Admirable as they are, the apparently pacifist sensibilities of those crying out for caution betrays the fact that war and suffering are ever present in the contemporary world, even if Europe has remained relatively peaceful for three generations.

Of course, the escalation in tensions between Russia and Western countries is not good. I wish only to point out that all the rhetoric about Russia’s transgression of democratic norms and international law currently doing the rounds in Western capitals and on corporate media channels rings hollow when one considers the reality of the international system.

After the Second World War, Western Europe, alongside North America and a handful of states in East Asia aligned with Washington, entered what the conservative American economic historian W. W. Rostow called the era of ‘high mass consumption’. Then followed the fantastical proposition that peace and prosperity were guaranteed to all societies that emulated the ‘West’ by adopting the ‘non-communist’ path of development.

What Rostow and the other high intellects of capitalist imperialism neglected to disclose was that incessant wars remained a constant on the peripheries of the world system throughout this golden age of capitalism. Brutal conflicts claimed millions of lives and destroyed the social fabric of innumerable countries in Africa, Indo-China, and Central/South America. In short, colonies seeking freedom were subjected to the wrath of a new brand of imperialism.

Rhetoric about democracy and freedom abounded then just as it does today, even though Western countries sponsored some of the most retrogressive death squads against legitimate freedom fighters. The Contras in Nicaragua and Unita in Angola come to mind. The truth is that wars and death squads on the peripheries and high mass consumption in the core regions of the world system are, and have always been, two sides of the same coin.

We have been told that, following the end of the Cold War, a new era of peace and prosperity has dawned. Yes there are inconvenient bumps in the form of terrorism etc, but the ‘international community’ is united like never before and continues to face up heroically to transgressors like Saddam Hussein, Muammar Qadhafi, and, recently, Vladimir Putin.

Is Putin an autocratic demagogue who has transformed Russia from a relatively egalitarian society into one of the most unequal, unjust countries in the world? Absolutely. Do his nationalist rants and adventures endanger the world and the Russian people? Without a doubt.

But if one were to start moralising about recent and not-so-recent leaders of Western countries, an indictment just as damning as that of Putin’s would be forthcoming. The capitalist world system did not come into existence due to a moral imperative. It was in its genesis as ruthless as it is today.

In this endless game the people of Ukraine and countless other countries in whose name ‘good wars’ have been waged in the post-Cold War world are meaningless instruments. It is worth remembering that Ukraine is only one of many ex-Soviet republics over which Western countries and Russia have been engaged in a ‘Cold War’ for the best part of the last two decades. A major front of this war is so-called civil society; it was in the aftermath of the USSR’s dissolution that civil society started to be heralded by Western country donors as the new frontier of democratisation.

Whatever the popular nomenclature, genuinely democratic principles and practices are conspicuous by their absence today. At least in Eastern Europe there are no 21st-century death squads to match those that existed at the height of the Cold War. These days that privilege is reserved for Muslim-majority countries where rebel armies propped up by the US and its allies in the name of fighting terrorism use means as deplorable as the despotic regimes they are charged with deposing.

And if the world we live in was not cynical enough, consider this: in the past week Russian and US astronauts launched a joint expedition to the International Space Station with a Nasa administrator sending them into orbit with the promise that the US-Russia “partnership in space remains intact and normal”. Of course the sanctions that have been imposed upon Russia are hardly crushing; it remains to be seen whether or not either side will actually take definitive steps to sever economic ties. Whatever does happen, realpolitik will continue to reign supreme.

The writer teaches at Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad.