Head-on | Russia-Ukraine war will remind world leaders at G20 summit in Bali of Europe’s violent past

As world leaders of the G20 meet in Bali this week, the economic and geopolitical consequences of the Russia-Ukraine war will weigh heavily on the summit.

After centuries of warfare, Europeans settled down to what they believed would be an era of peace. World War II was supposed to be the last conflict where Europeans killed other Europeans on a mass scale.

The Balkan wars and the dismemberment of Yugoslavia in the 1990s were an uncomfortable reminder of Europe’s violent tribal past. Saxons, Jutes, Vikings, Slavs and Visigoths had fought endless battles with one another since the end of the Roman Empire. But now surely, in the civilised 21st century, could Europe look forward to peace?

The European Union (EU), which began as a trading community after World War II, was designed for precisely this purpose. Countries that do business with each other rarely go to battle with each other. The entente cordiale has worked. EU nations have lived in peace for over 50 years and prospered.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine shocked Europe out of its gentrified slumber. An estimated 50,000 Russian and Ukrainian soldiers and civilians have been killed since the war began on 24 February 2022. Europeans had over the years watched quietly as more than 5,00,000 civilians died in Iraq, Iran, Yemen and Afghanistan.

But the over 50,000 who have been killed in the Russian-Ukraine war were relatively prosperous white Europeans, not poor Arabs, Afghans or Iranians. The anger against Russia for disrupting Europe’s peace and prosperity runs deep. Not only have more Europeans died in a conflict between two European states since World War I, but the Russia-Ukraine war has also ravaged European economies and disrupted European lives.

Germany has plunged into its deepest recession since the Berlin Wall came down in 1989. In Britain, 20 per cent of all households are limiting their intake of food and fuel. Many are likely to spend the winter choosing between “heating and eating”. Skipping meals to save money is now routine in low-income British households hit by food inflation.

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Has the past returned to haunt Europe? Back in the 1600s, most Europeans were relatively poor. Sanitation was rudimentary. Plagues and diseases were common. Casting their eyes east and west, Europe saw opportunities. Riches awaited them in Asia and Africa and in the barren lands of America and Australia.

The age of colonial conquest and the transatlantic slave trade had arrived. Between the 1600s and 1800s, per capita incomes in Western Europe soared. Seafaring countries prospered the most from Asian and African plunder: Britain, France, Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands.

Intra-European squabbles soon broke out over sharing the spoils. Britain and France fought over India and North America. Spain and Britain fought over the Caribbean. Portugal and Spain fought over South America.

The oddest fights were over Europe’s new African colonies in the 1880s. Europe’s great powers had noticed during the cruel centuries-long transatlantic African slave trade that Africa possessed more riches than they had ever imagined, but fighting over them would hurt every European nation’s interests. They decided instead to collaborate in Africa’s plunder.

The US Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) explains dispassionately the European strategy: “In 1884 the leaders of fourteen European countries and the United States came together to discuss control of Africa’s resources. Known as The Berlin Conference, they sought to discuss the partitioning of Africa, establishing rules to amicably divide resources among the Western countries at the expense of the African people. Of these fourteen nations at the Berlin Conference, France, Germany, Great Britain, and Portugal were the major players. Notably missing were any representatives from Africa.

“One of the tasks of this conference was for each European country that claimed possession over a part of Africa to bring ‘civilisation’ in the form of Christianity as well as trade. King Leopold II of Belgium promised just that and the Congo was formally recognised as Leopold’s personal possession. Extraordinarily rich in natural resources — including ivory, palm oil, timber and rubber — Leopold would seek to increase his personal wealth at the expense of the environment and the people of the Congo.”

But European nations, newly prosperous and militarily powerful, could not abandon their centuries-old habit of warfare against one another. With most of Asia and Africa colonised by 1900, Europe flung itself into two continent-wide wars in 1914-18 and 1939-45. It called both “world wars” but they were essentially European wars. Their origin lay in old disputes at the heart of Europe. The principal belligerents were Germany, Britain, France, Italy and the Soviet Union.

British and French colonies in Asia and Africa were drawn into the European war, their troops mostly serving as cannon fodder on the front lines and trenches of Western Europe. Having colonised and impoverished India, Britain offered Indian youth attractive wages to fight its war against Germany. Hundreds of thousands of Indians signed up.

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in the United States in December 1941 converted a two-year-old European war into a global conflict. But the source of the conflict lay in the great capitals of Europe: London, Berlin, Paris and Moscow.

In 1884-85, the infamous Berlin conference between 14 European countries had decided on how best to carve up colonial Africa. The agreement was torn up, ironically, by Berlin in 1914. The two world wars between 1914 and 1945 would cost millions of European lives, the majority in what are today’s Russia and Ukraine.

Seen through the prism of history, the Russia-Ukraine war is the unfinished business of Europe’s violent past. For gentrified Europeans, lulled by years of peace and bountiful trade, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has caused an energy crisis, inflation and recession. It has sparked both anger and shame. Europeans killing Europeans on the battlefield is a memory they thought they had left behind.

The barely restrained fury in European capitals at India’s nuanced stand on the Russia-Ukraine war erupts behind closed doors. How dare a former European colony not do Europe’s bidding?

In the 1600s, European envoys sailed to India to seek lucrative trading rights. As this decade unfolds, Europe’s business leaders are returning to India seeking markets in what they know will, by 2028, be the world’s third largest economy.

At the end of the latest intra-European war, Russia will emerge weaker, Europe less secure, China a growing threat, and the US ideologically polarised.

At the G20 summit in Bali, as India prepares to assume the group’s year-long presidency, it will be seen by many as the engine that helps propel the world forward.

The writer is editor, author and publisher. Views expressed here are personal.

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