#BTColumn – Cry havoc and loose the dogs of war

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the author(s) do not represent the official position of Barbados TODAY.

In the aftermath of World War II Africa and the Caribbean took a waft of the air of political self determination and loved what they were smelling. Ghana under the shrewd leadership of Kwame Nkrumah created the first breach in the colonial iron curtain that had settled on Sub-Saharan Africa.Five years later in 1962 Alexander Bustamante gained for Jamaica the right of political determination as he donned the mantle of the first Prime Minister of Jamaica.

Ghana and Jamaica set the stage for an explosion of independence movements in Africa and the Caribbean. Two winds of change were blowing that favoured the success of the independence movements in Africa and the Caribbean. The first wind came in the macabre form of World War II that decimated all of the capitals of the colonial powers in Europe. At the culmination of the war, Europe was in economic shambles and lacked the wherewithal to maintain their colonies in Africa and the Caribbean.

The second wind of change was occasioned by the creation of a new economic order under the auspices of the United States of America. Under the new order the US undertook the financial reconstruction of both sides of the combatants in the war. The US also became the guarantor of international trade as a way of making sure that every nation would have access to the resources their needed to prosper. Empires and colonies were given the thumbs down by the Americans and all our former colonial rulers in their state of economic mendicancy were only too happy to drop us as though we were hot potatoes.

Wars are ugly, horrendous destructive events but occasionally, they act as the catalyst for some really positive developments in world history. The almighty Europeans who for centuries had treated the world as their oyster, sucking out other nations’ people and resources at will, found themselves on the receiving end of the mayhem and madness they had been dishing out on the rest of the world.

White Jesus proved powerless to save the Europeans from their own hubris and greed.Interestingly enough, the Vatican was the only European city to escape serious war damage.This of course could be interpreted in two ways. Either the deity of the Europeans was very pleased with the Vatican or maybe he was just saving the Vatican for a much worse fate that is coming. Only time will tell and I suspect we all will hear when time tells its tale.

The current saber rattling going on in Europe between Russia, NATO, and the European Union has the potential to plunge Europe into the dark netherworld of total, all out, no holds barred, nuclear bombs exploding, Armageddon-producing war. President Putin struck a sensitive chord when he stated that NATO and the US were neocolonial powers that supported totalitarianism, despotism and apartheid. Oh, how the truth must hurt!

President Putin also echoed a thought expressed by Osama bin Laden and many Muslim clerics opposed to the hegemony of the West. President Putin accused the West of practising the reverse religion of Satan. The Taliban and right-wing conservative Christians must have been doing cartwheels of joy as President Putin made this satanic quip. It is quite possible that the cat is finally out of the bag and the truth has dropped from the horse’s mouth.

Will President Putin be the agent in the hands of the cosmic dispensers of justice to bring the US and its allies to heel?Will the war in Ukraine escalate into World War III? Is Caucasian supremacy breathing its last breath in a world that has moved on to a higher plain of racial egalitarianism? Is the might is right age finally about to end as a new age of cooperation and brotherhood is birthed? If an escalation in the war in Europe will bring these benefits and act as a catalyst for a new era in which white supremacy will find few holes to hide under then all I can say is, “Cry havoc and let loose the dogs of war.”

Lenrod Nzulu Baraka is the founder of Afro-Caribbean Spiritual Teaching Center.