If a country is entangled in a destructive and messy war what is its leader most likely to say?
In most cases the answer would be that the leader would be looking for a very early end to war.
But at least two leaders placed in such a situation today are saying or suggesting something very different.
They appear to be suggesting very strongly—I want a bigger war! Please give me a bigger war!!
Of course they are not saying this in so many words, as it is not at all considered politically correct to say so, but all their actions appear to suggest something very similar to wanting a bigger war instead of ending the present one.
Despite this similarity it would be wrong to push the similarity in the response of the two leaders too far and their differences should also be noted, and we’ll be doing this too in this article. But first read on regarding their similarity in wishing for or even taking actions for wider wars.
In the case of the Prime Minister of Israel Mr. Netanyahu his record going back to several years, even to his earlier tenures as Prime Minister, suggests strongly that he has been keen to involve the USA in a bigger Middle-East War that would lead to Israel becoming an even bigger regional power with the ability to expand its territory or increase its control over a wider area.
The ongoing conflict has offered opportunities for this, and several attacks by Israel, such as one in early April on an Iranian consular building in Syria or the one in late July killing a Hamas leader and negotiator staying as an honored guest in Tehran or the ones which resulted in the killing of prominent Hezbollah leaders (along with a large number of innocent civilians) in Lebanon more recently, have been seen widely by observers as highly escalatory attacks aimed at provoking bigger retaliatory actions which can draw the USA into a wider war against Iran and Hezbollah. Such provocations have continued, and the possibilities of a bigger war with varying degrees of US involvement have led to the world being on the edge several times. Despite these wider concerns of the entire world regarding disruption of world peace caused by a wider regional war, Mr. Netanyahu has gone ahead with his highly aggressive and escalatory ways.
Moreover, this leader’s close identification with a highly aggressive agenda for his country is accentuated in the present context greatly by his even more narrow interests. He has serious corruption cases and perhaps even more serious allegations of negligence preceding the October 7 attack pending against him. So if the war stops today this will save a very large number of human lives but in addition this can also lead to Mr. Netanyahu facing very serious allegations of corruption, negligence and worse, losing his position and finding himself in jail. So apart from the highly aggressive agenda he has always been identified with, his self-interests also serve as a big additional motivation for him to try to start a bigger war with the more active involvement of the USA on his side, his ambition being to win a bigger war against Iran that ends on such a note of ‘glory’ for him (seen in a very narrow sense of course) that his corruption cases and other crimes will be forgotten or at least not pursued within Israel.
In the case of the other leader we are discussing here, the President of Ukraine Mr. Zelenskyy, the one notable difference is that he has not always been a man of aggression. He was once professionally a comedian and fought elections on an agenda of peace and reconciliation. However after victory he soon came under the pressure of far right, neo-Nazi, aggressively anti-Russian forces who had become very powerful and well-armed after the 2014 coup engineered by western forces. Under their pressure he soon gave up the peace agenda and became a part of the aggressive anti-Russian agenda. However he and like-minded colleagues asserted themselves briefly when they were on the verge of clinching a ceasefire and peace deal with Russia based on neutrality, in or around April 2022. Unfortunately this was again sabotaged by western interference. Since then Mr. Zelenskyy has clung to an aggressive agenda against Russia, despite increasing distress, displacement and longer-term problems (such as indebtedness) faced by Ukraine.
More recently, he has been very active in pursuing his agenda of securing increasingly more destructive weapons from USA/NATO and technological support to use these weapons, including weapons that can strike deeper into mainland Russia.
In all these efforts, he has shown hardly any concern for the dangers to world peace and safety arising definitely from more direct confrontation between the USA/NATO and Russia, including the threat of nuclear war and World War 3. Without sparing a thought for the wider concerns, he and his close supporters have calculated that all their wrong decisions, distress caused to people by these, curbs on democratic freedoms and military reverses will be covered up if the USA/NATO can be involved in a bigger war. This is of course a very flawed and dangerous line of thinking, but it appears that Mr. Zelenskyy has been guided more and more by this, as evident from his recent insistence for permission to attack mainland Russia with more destructive western weapons, his flaunting of those peace proposals unlikely to result in immediate peace and unwillingness to consider those more practical possibilities which can bring immediate peace.
What is extremely important is that the interests of world peace and avoiding World War 3 and a nuclear war should get the highest priority but the recent actions of Mr. Zelenskyy do not show any such realization and sensitivity on his part.
In the case of Mr. Netanyahu the situation has become even more controversial due to the intense debate over what really happened on October 7, 2023 and over a few months preceding this. The testimonies of some Israeli surveillance officers, even a former Israeli Prime Minister, widely circulating videos of trainings for attack, an NYT expose mentioning a blueprint of a similar attack being available long before to Israeli authorities, news reports of advance high-level warnings of the attack received from Egypt and others, extraordinarily weak security on the borders on the day of the attack, unexpected delays in attack response and the nature of the response resulting in several additional Israelis being killed by Israeli fire—all these have suggested that something is very wrong in the official version. One possibility is that the Israeli authorities led by Mr. Netanyahu had foreknowledge of the coming attack, but instead of stopping it deliberately let it go ahead, even aggravating its harm, so that they would get an opportunity for ethnic cleansing and hence for moving forward towards greater Israel, in the process gaining control over valuable resources (gas, water, land, coastal zone etc.) also. Another possibility is even more frightening. This is that the attack was not just allowed to go ahead but perhaps was even facilitated, in terms of previous inter-actions between a very small section of Hamas and Israeli hardliners, leading to an understanding that on a certain day for a few hours the attackers would not be disturbed too much even if they kill and take hostages.
This would appear impossible to many people, but then the facts of Mr. Netanyahu’s help being available to Hamas up to a certain stage (with the aim of preventing secular leadership to emerge in Gaza and ensuring that there are different and mutually hostile Palestinian leaderships in Gaza and West Bank) were also very difficult to accept earlier. Whatever the truth, the fact remains that there is much that is highly inconvenient regarding the October 7 attack for Mr. Netanyahu if all the facts are investigated properly. So one future prospect for him and close colleagues is that one day they would be prosecuted for all their wrong and illegal acts even within Israel. The other possibility is to have a bigger war that ends in ‘glory’ for them, however misunderstood. Clearly Mr. Netanyahu would do all he can to try to move ahead fast on the second option.
The challenge for the peace movement is that the narrowly conceived self-interests of a few leaders and their close colleagues should not be allowed to disrupt world peace.
Bharat Dogra is Honorary Convener, Campaign to Save Earth Now. His recent books include Protecting Earth for Children, Planet in Peril, Man over Machine and A Day in 2071.