A new history begins
The 12-Day War of aggression against the Islamic Republic of Iran by USA/Israel began the periodisation of a new history of the final phase of the defeat of imperialism and Zionism in West Asia.
The old period began when the British army had defeated the Ottoman army at Rafah in 1917. It lasted for 108 years until the 12-Day War (13-24 June 2025). The new period began on 25 June 2025 with the defeat of USA/Israel by Iran. The new history of Iran-plus nations includes the liberation forces in Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and Iraq.
The new reality
The 12-Day War created a new reality in which two nuclear-armed states (USA/Israel) invaded sovereign Iranian air- and cyber-space by ignoring international law and bypassing multilateral institutions. It further proved that no peaceful state is safe from predatory states.
The world watched, paralysed.
The Alaska Summit
This new reality served as the backdrop to the Alaska Summit of 15 August 2025 between President Vladimir Putin and President Donald Trump to attempt negotiations over Ukraine as the third-party state. Again, the European Union as the USA’s NATO partner and Ukraine as EU proxy watched, paralysed.
Zelensky is insisting on premature negotiations though he had issued a decree in 2022 that banned negotiations. The decree still remains in force. Russia and USA met with adversarial agendas to serve each one’s own national interests. It set a dangerous precedent for further actions outside of multilateral institutions.
The features of the new precedent
- Combined use of war and diplomacy to achieve a ‘balance’ of great power rivalry.
- Diplomacy seems financially more cost-effective than war.
- USA unilaterally acts for NATO, EU, and Ukraine without their consent.
- Trump’s limousine functioned as a private space for a secret 10-minute talk, which has global implications.
- The positional diplomatic war continues together with the hard war.
- The negotiations are fast-paced because of reduced bureaucratic encumbrances.
- The abandonment of critical objective public scrutiny of real-life history.
- Isolationism and sanctions are impermanent and only delay inevitable negotiated solutions.
- The ‘morality’ and ‘ideology’ associated with them eventually collapse.
- Economics resumes its foundational role and puts profit before ‘morality’ and ‘ideology’.
- Imperialism is divided over sharing the burden of global commitments and foreign entanglements, in terms of financial and material losses. When to stop the war and cut losses?
- Imperialist strategy of the continuation of an undeclared WWIII through multi-layered regional wars is collapsing as was evident in the 12-Day War.
- Global resistance to imperialism is increasing daily as is evident in the Gaza Genocide protests.
- The direct involvement of USA, EU, and NATO in the Gaza Genocide.
- Hence, the imperialist attempt to recalibrate the hard war with ‘soft’ diplomatic war.
- There should be visible diplomatic momentum towards political solution.
- It is now a law of history that all wars end through political negotiations.
History as process
While the development and evolution of history are a multi-layered societal process the ‘big-men’ of history are known to play outsized roles – driven by adversarial egos, charisma, and personality cults. It is an outdated and harmful idea which history has repeatedly demonstrated since WWI (1914-18). Executive presidents must be subjected to control by their peoples who are the real creators of history.
While some journalists and political scientists offer good diagnosis and prognosis from the perspective of postcolonial history, they take a short-term view compared to the historian’s long-term view of how the old gives way to the new in order to avoid the pitfalls of history.
A historian is equipped with historiography or the theory of history to encapsulate the present in the past for a clearer view of the future in order to act, primarily, in the interests of a nation. Compromises are made on tactical and not strategic issues, chief amongst them are national sovereignty, territorial integrity (land, sea, air, and cyber space), and security guarantee.
The historical focus should be on societal developmental processes and not on the ‘big men’ of history who show up at pernicious media spectacles. The mistakes that they make may take decades or a century to rectify, for which ordinary people are punished by having to live with their mistakes. History is a whole-of-society process.
The primary purpose of history
The primary purpose of history is to explain the past truthfully so that it better informs the present for a safer and more secure future. The old period of 108 years of colonial rule holds lessons in moving forward into the new period. Some of the painful lessons of the old period is to discard the tenets of neoliberal democracy, western constitutionalism, structural adjustment program of IMF/World Bank, chronic national debt, rural underdevelopment, energy insecurity, neo-colonialism, and sub-imperial role.
Media and democracy
Massification of media as a reflection of the expansion of democracy on the ground that increasingly finds itself alienated from centralized democracy and with it the enlarged gap between politicians and ordinary citizens in constituencies that become disparate.
In the expansion process, social classes and ‘racial groups’ with high level of political consciousness mobilize reconfigured support bases that pull away from political leaders who take their votes for granted. Electoral defeat grows incipiently and creates space for authoritarian or fascist rule.
‘Coalition of the Willing’
On 18 August 2025 the coalition of the willing European powers led by Mr Volodymyr Zelensky met with President Trump in the White House in haunting obeisance. The impotent coalition insisted on ceasefire, security guarantees, territorial integrity, release of prisoners, the return of 40000 children allegedly kidnapped by Russia, the return of refugees, and trilateral summit. The meeting unintentionally confirmed EU/NATO dependence on, and subordination to, USA. Zelensky is an illegitimate president and the Rada or parliament is also illegitimate because they remain unelected since their terms expired in 2024.
Russian response to the coalition demands
Putin attended the Alaska Summit with real military victories on the battleground that outmatched the few victories of EU/Ukraine. Putin has a dynamic historical approach to finding a lasting solution while Trump and the coalition have a mechanical political science approach. Putin insists on addressing the root causes of the conflict as part of preparing for a summit: Russia’s security concerns and recognition of the current territorial realities of the status of Crimea and the four former Ukrainian regions, which voted to join Russia in 2022.
Crippled Ukraine
On 20 August 2025 many European media reported on the hacked information from the EU’s eufordigital.eu. In the period 2020-2025 – 1721000 Ukrainian soldiers were killed, many of who were under the draft age of 25 years. Also hacked were the Special Operations Forces and Main Intelligence Directorate, which revealed all the countries that supplied weapons to Ukraine and the lists of all weapons transferred in the same period of 2022-2025. In February Zelensky lied to CBS that since 2022 only 46000 Ukrainian soldiers were killed. At that time when Ukraine was expanding the number of its military cemeteries and its counteroffensive had failed, Russia estimated 1.08-million Ukrainian soldiers killed.
According to the USA Centre for Strategic & International Studies (3 June 2025), 250000 Russian soldiers were killed. According to BBC (19 Sep 2024), 70112 Russian soldiers were killed.
Fractured NATO
The dilemma for fractured NATO is that the USA has spent $184.8-billion while Europe has spent $217.6-billion on the Ukraine war. USA will not spend any more money but will supply the weapons (which Europe lacks) to Ukraine only if Europe pays for them. But Europe does not have the money. This is the power that Trump has over Europe-on-its-knees.
According to Statista (24 Feb 2025), Russia has personnel of 69-million while Ukraine has 18-million. Russia has 1.32-million active soldiers while Ukraine has 900000. Russia has reserve force of 2-million while Ukraine has 1.2-million. In war materiel and infrastructure Russia outweighs Ukraine.
Russia’s historical approach
The Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov gave an interview, reported by teleSUR on 19 August 2025. Zelensky he said had false expectation of an ‘unconditional meeting’ with Putin within two weeks, which is what the coalition had demanded to reach a premature ceasefire. Lavrov said that any form of summit must ‘begin at the expert level and then go through all necessary stages to prepare summits. This is the kind of serious approach we will always support.’ He added that it is ‘impossible to talk about a long-term solution’ without considering Russia’s security interests and the rights of Ukraine’s Russian-speaking population. Settlement is a process. He emphasised that Zelensky should repeal laws that ‘violate the rights Russian speakers.’ (The Russian language is banned in Ukraine.) He firmly rejected the proposal for NATO troops to act as peacekeepers in Ukraine.
Do Ukraine, Europe, and NATO have the capacity and capability to prepare for expert–level summit?
Impact on geopolitics of Latin America
Latin American countries hold the view that all geopolitics relates back to the Gaza Genocide where the imperial order has been unmasked like never before. The Hague Group defied Washington DC and met in Colombia for an emergency summit on Gaza Genocide. Several countries that included Bolivia, Cuba, Colombia, Nicaragua, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines pledged to take measures in support of Palestine. The Genocide motivated President Gustavo Pietro to declare that Colombia must leave NATO and keep its distance from ‘militaries that drop bombs on children.’ This courageous international solidarity, which was emboldened by the 12-Day War and the Gaza Genocide has deep meaning for the Iran-plus nations.
Warning to Trump from USA army
In February 2025 the USA military’s Southern Command warned, ‘Time is not on our side’ in tackling Russia’s and China’s influence in the region. Trump has further militarily penetrated Brazil and a few other countries. His ambition to control the Panama Canal and reduce China’s influence provoked massive public protests.
After first stealing about $40-billion of Venezuela’s sovereign wealth the USA positioned its warships in the Caribbean Sea near the Venezuelan coast waiting ‘to fabricate a pretext to justify a military intervention against a sovereign nation’ (Venezuelan Embassy in South Africa – 20 August 2025).
Imperial racism
The USA, EU, and NATO are unanimously agreed on providing security guarantees to Ukraine and Europe but not to Russia. This also contradicts their refusal to provide security guarantees to Gaza, West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Iraq, and Iran as well as to Latin American countries. President Macron said, ‘When we speak about security guarantees, we speak about the whole security of the European continent.’
Israel’s interference in Guatemala
In the wake of the Gaza Genocide there are now revelations of how Israel in 1977 equipped the Guatemalan military with Galil automatic rifles and Uzi submachine guns. About 200 Israeli ‘advisors’ provided surveillance and interrogation training to police and military units. They assisted Mr Rios Montt to stage the 1982 coup that brought him to power. They helped Guatemala plan military sweeps, which was modelled on the erasure of Palestinian villages and massacres of 1947-48. The Guatemalan military commanders referred to the genocide as the ‘Palestinization’ of the indigenous Mayan population.
Proliferation of imperialist wars in non-European countries
While the Americans and Europeans sought an end to war in Europe, they proliferated wars in West Asia, Central Asia, South China Seas, Latin America and the Caribbean islands – not to forget proxy wars in Africa. At the UNSC on 20 August 2025 evidence emerged that Ukraine was providing weapons, drones, and training to militarists for coordinated attacks on Sahelian governments. The Ukrainian Special Services and Defence Intelligence of Ukraine are involved not only in the Sahel but also in other regions of Africa. The UN Office of Counter-Terrorism and the Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate are doing commendable investigations.
The USA/NATO transferred ISIS terrorists from Iraq to Azerbaijan to sow chaos in Central Asia as they had once transferred them to Libya to overthrow Col Muammar Gaddafi in 2011. Azerbaijan allowed IDF to use its airspace to launch military attacks on neighbouring Iran during the 12-Day War.
American Association of Jurists
The American Association of Jurists (AAJ), which has a consultative status with ECOSOC rejected Trump’s international policy toward Latin America because of his Monroe Doctrine interventionism and territorial invasions in violation of peaceful coexistence among sovereign nations, which is a fundamental international law for security guarantee.
Interim conclusion
Imperial racism is systemic to Eurocentrism, colonialism, imperialism, Zionism, and diplomacy or ‘soft’ war.
(To be continued in Part 2)
By Dr Haroon Aziz, South Africa
