HOWARD EPSTEIN – ON THE ORIGINS OF WORLD WARS
For professional historians, the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941 did not mark the start of the war in the Pacific. The Japanese, who took over Manchuria (now Northeast China) in 1931, sought a quick victory over China and tried to enter it over the Marco Polo Bridge. The battle that raged there on 7 July 1937 developed into the Second Sino-Japanese War. The Americans, alarmed at Japanese expansionism, arranged for oil embargos to starve the Japanese of fuel. That led directly to Pearl Harbor. In retrospect, the warfare between Japan and China was the prelude to the Pacific side of World War II.
The spark that ignited the First World War (“The War to End All Wars” – some hopes) declared by (28 Jul 1914 – 11 Nov 1918) was the assassination of Austrian Grand Duke Ferdinand in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914. Multiple contradictory treaties and alliances led to the Soviet takeover of Russia and the deaths of millions of German, British and French soldiers in France. Those losses encouraged the policy of appeasement, opposed only by Winston Churchill, that encouraged and engendered fascism and the rise to power of Hitler. Thus the origins of World War II are to be found in WWI and its aftermath.
The origins of World War III will be traced by any historians who survived it to 11 September 2001 – 9/11, but they were foretold in 1996 when American political scientist, Samuel P Huntington published The Clash of Civilizations.
Huntington, anticipating the Iranian Revolution by thirteen years, argued that future wars would be fought not between countries, but between cultures. He died peacefully in the bucolic Martha’s Vineyard, an island in Massachusetts, USA. Today, our boys and girls in Israel are dying, and have been dying in large numbers, premature and horrific deaths around and in the hell-hole that is Gaza.
This is, indeed, the clash of civilisations that emerged from Huntington’s crystal ball, sparked by 9/11, that both empowered Islamist terrorists and took captive the psychology of the West, its politicians, media, and security establishments. The crucial organs of influence in the West are thus seen to be in thrall to the power, not merely perceived but massively kinetic, of Islamic civilisation that challenges directly the peoples of the West. The former know it; the latter pretend otherwise.
A new axis of evil is being formed by the Islamo-fascist dictatorship in Iran, and the fascist dictators in Russia, North Korea, and China. Still unsure whether WWIII has begun? You can trace it from 9/11, through the American reaction to it in the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and (taking just the most significant examples) the destruction of Syria, the Russian invasions of Ukraine from 2014 to 2022, and the 2023 Simchat Torah pogroms visited upon Israel.
Global warming – in the sense of the conflicts between nations and the clash of civilisations – has produced a tinder-dry landscape that stretches from America – itself possibly in line for a civil war following the next presidential election in 2024 – right around the globe, though eastern Europe, the Middle East, and the Gulf, to Taiwan. Each parched locale awaits one spark and the whole will be engulfed.
And the evidence for claiming a lack of appreciation in the West that the clash of civilisations has already begun? Whilst the BBC fiddles with semantics – no problem calling the 7/7 bombings, and the Manchester Arena bombing, “terrorism”, it studiously avoids calling Hamas, proscribed in the UK as a terrorist organisation, terrorists. No. Where Israelis are concerned, their attackers were initially labeled by the BBC as “militants”, and now, cryptically, “Hamas”.
Similarly, the Metropolitan Police Force stood aside after Simchat Torah, whilst multitudes gathered on the streets of London vociferously to support the attackers, not the victims, baying for Jihad. The most criticised police force in the UK, still mired in multiple scandals too numerous to detail here, have elevated themselves to be experts on Koranic elucidation. When told to break up large gatherings calling for Jihad, the Met responded that there were several interpretations available. Really? Does not “Holy War” come out as a clear winner?
Our non-Jewish neighbours, particularly those with no empathy for the butchered and the slaughtered, need to realise that playing with semantics is like the Romanovs indulging in their last, pre-Leninism banquet.
Zero hour is almost upon us. Western democracy, affording the ignorant the luxury of not enquiring into the true history of conflict in the Holy Land, is an affront to the handful of dictators who oppose it. Democracy threatens their sinecures, paid for by the blood of the masses whom they manipulate. They need to be stood up to before it is too late.
For three hundred and fifty years the Western mind has been shaped by the Enlightenment, with its emphasis on reason and scientific consideration. The goals of rational humanity were considered to be knowledge, freedom, and happiness. On the other side, they proclaim “You love life and we embrace death”. That shows the fundamentals of the clash of civilisations.
The first hit is the cheapest. The whole of the British Army can fit into Wembley Stadium. Unlike Boris Johnson, I do not claim to be the natural successor to Winston Churchill but I may say that if he were here now he would be warning of impending doom and the need to confront the forces of evil.
Hamas make no secret of their desire for world domination. Islamic terror is coming to a place near us, and soon. Israel is merely the canary in the mine, and its urgent warning warbling is of the war Israel is having to wage in Gaza. It should awaken the Free World, or what is still left of it, to the whiff of noxious fumes drifting through it.
© Howard Epstein – November 2023 – www.howard-epstein.com
