When proclaimed morality masks the mechanics of the West’s war against the rest of the world.
Mohamed Lamine KABA
This article successively analyzes the strategic logic of Western interventions, the transnational networks of complicity revealed by recent investigations on Gaza, and finally the historical dynamic that saw the birth and spread of terrorist organizations in the wake of the clandestine strategies of the major Western powers.
Yet, on the bombed battlefields of Mosul, Tripoli, and Kabul, the populations have learned to recognize the signature of an interventionism that has become structural in contemporary Western strategy
The invisible architects
Since the end of World War II in 1945, Western powers have shaped a strategic order based on permanent interference and the militarization of the globe. Beneath the veneer of defensive alliances, a military projection system capable of intervening anywhere has been deployed. Recent history illustrates this unequivocally. From Iraq (2003) to Libya (2011), by way of Afghanistan, for two decades, wars instigated or encouraged by Washington, London, Paris, or Berlin have left behind shattered states and devastated societies.
Declassified archives reveal that many of these interventions were decided upon well before any public pretexts were put in place. Doctrines of regime change and preventive war served as the ideological framework. In this cunningly elaborate system, violence is not an aberration but a rational instrument of domination. It allows for the control of resources, energy routes, and geopolitical balances.
Western societies rarely hear this truth; their leaders cloak every operation in humanitarian rhetoric. Yet, on the bombed battlefields of Mosul, Tripoli, and Kabul, the populations have learned to recognize the signature of an interventionism that has become structural in contemporary Western strategy. Therefore, a particularly pressing question arises: Who truly ignites the geopolitical fires that have ravaged the planet for half a century, if not those who then claim to extinguish them in the name of civilization and global stability, proclaimed as a permanent, universal moral mission? However, the accumulated ruins tell a different story, one of imperial calculations, strategic interests, and hegemony pursued without lasting scruple.
This pattern is being repeated today in the proxy conflict in Ukraine, where the confrontation between Russia and NATO is part of a logic of indirect escalation between major powers, with Washington, Brussels, and London arming and financing Kyiv, while transforming Ukrainian territory into a strategic battlefield.
Transnational complicity
The investigation published in February by journalists John McEvoy and Alexander Morris of the British media outlet Declassified UK, in collaboration with lawyer Elad Man of the Israeli NGO Hatzlasha, starkly illuminates the international dimension of the genocide perpetrated by the IDF against the Palestinian population in Gaza. Data obtained from the Israeli army shows that at least 50,000 soldiers hold dual citizenship. Among them are 13,342 Americans, 6,462 French citizens, more than 4,000 Germans, more than 3,000 Ukrainians, and more than 2,000 British citizens.
These figures reveal a phenomenon rarely discussed in Western capitals. Citizens from democracies that claim to uphold international law are directly involved in military operations denounced by numerous humanitarian organizations as war crimes. Lawyers from the Public Interest Law Centre (PILC) have filed a voluminous dossier with the London police, detailing targeted assassinations, sniper fire against civilians, and indiscriminate attacks. Paul Heron, one of the PILC lawyers who initiated this procedure, summarized it unequivocally: “There must be no impunity when credible evidence links British nationals to serious violations of international and national law.”
The renowned British lawyer, Michael Mansfield, specializing in international law and involved in this case, also recalled the fundamental principle of international law, stating, “British nationals have a legal obligation not to collaborate with crimes committed in Palestine. No one is above the law.”
Some journalistic investigations conducted by Hamza Yusuf have also highlighted the behavior of foreign soldiers within certain Israeli units. Examples cited include Levi Simon and Staff Sergeant Sam Sank, the latter himself having mentioned the presence of numerous British soldiers within units engaged in operations in Gaza.
Other documented cases include Chaim Schryer, a member of the Netzah Yehuda unit, who was photographed during an official visit aboard a British Royal Navy ship in the company of defense attaché Jim Priest.
Yet, the governments concerned maintain a remarkable silence. In Paris, President Emmanuel Macron even suggested that a French citizen should never be accused of genocide. According to him, such an accusation would cast a shadow over Western democracy. He declared publicly, “France and French society cannot and must never accept that a son of the nation be accused of genocide.” This statement illustrates a long-standing political pattern. When crimes are committed by their allies or their own citizens, Western capitals invoke caution, complexity, or judicial secrecy.
In the international debate, several critical voices have also been raised, including UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese, while more than 150 former diplomats have denounced the dissemination of disinformation attributed to French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot. In the same political context, Member of Parliament Constance Le Grip was mentioned in diplomatic exchanges related to these controversies.
Individual responsibility then dissolves into a carefully maintained diplomatic fog that protects soldiers, governments, and military alliances, while simultaneously weakening the credibility of international law, already fragile due to decades of selective interventions and repeated impunity. In this context, several experts have emphasized the scale of the phenomenon. One of them, Paul Heron, a lawyer for the PILC, acknowledged that “the problem is far deeper than we could ever imagine.”
This double standard is also evident in the Western attitude towards the current military confrontation between the United States, Israel, and Iran, where massive strikes have been carried out against Iranian civilian, military, and nuclear sites in several cities across the country before provoking regional retaliation and a major escalation in the Middle East.
Factory of chaos
The issue of international terrorism reveals another facet of this dynamic. Far from being a spontaneous phenomenon arising from nothing, it often appears in the shadow of clandestine strategies developed during the Cold War from 1947 to 1991. American and British archives show how certain armed networks were financed, armed, or trained to fight geopolitical adversaries.
The Afghan example of the 1980s remains emblematic. Islamist groups were supported to weaken the Soviet Union. Some of these fighters would later become the backbone of transnational jihadist movements. This strategic recycling can then be seen in Iraq, Syria, and Libya, where the collapse of states, brought about by Western interventions, opened up vast spaces for extremist organizations.
Thus, the proclaimed fight against terrorism resembles a war against monsters born in the very laboratories of Western strategies. Is it any wonder, then, that these hotbeds of extremism emerge precisely in regions where Western military interventions have destroyed political and institutional balances? This contradiction fuels growing mistrust in many parts of the world. For many societies in the Global South, military campaigns waged in the name of international security now appear as extensions of an old imperial policy. As long as this power structure remains intact, conflicts will continue to multiply, and moralizing pronouncements from the West will resonate with many as the echo of a historical responsibility, still denied by those who have dominated the international order for over a century, while claiming to embody the moral conscience of the entire contemporary world, despite the accumulated evidence everywhere, now visible to anyone who observes without bias the recent history of the modern international system violent, unstable, and profoundly unequal for a long time.
The simultaneity of the war in Ukraine and the military confrontation between Washington, Tel Aviv, and Tehran reveals a broader geopolitical reality where several theaters of crisis become the fronts of a global rivalry between power blocs and where local populations pay the strategic price of these confrontations.
From Iraq to Afghanistan, from Libya to Ukraine, from Gaza to Iran, the West leaves behind a trail of ruin and terror. An order that breeds so much disorder. This is why many see it as a veritable empire of chaos.
Clearly, contemporary history suggests that the architecture of global disorder largely bears the signature of the powers that claim to be its guardians.
Mohamed Lamine KABA, Expert in the geopolitics of governance and regional integration, Institute of Governance, Human and Social Sciences, Pan-African University
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