With the collapse of the alternative ideologies of the 20th century, capitalism has had several decades of unopposed influence across the globe. This has had an increasing result of changing the lives of people in the mold of the west to the dismay of many people. No ideology unites them, no international organization can protect them from armies and corporate militias and death squads. National governments call those who resist “terrorists” and so class any actions of self-defense. We have entered an era of global conflict between traditional people and corporations where one way of life is being exterminated. While it is in general a continuation of the assault of western colonialism, today’s indigenous rebels, instead of being considered devil worshipers, are now often seen as minions of terror. Political rebellions, armed gangs and drug lords and religious terrorism appear to form a range of types with conquest of territory the goal on the one end and operational integrity (e.g., business) on the other as in oligarchs morphing into warlords and presidents (as in Chechnya and Ukraine). At the same time, international confrontations and competition for resources are escalating. The defeat of the USSR is often described as a “collapse” of authority and transition to a new civil entity, Russia, but like the defeat of the Ottoman Empire, it has resulted in the dismemberment of the Soviet Empire. While the Middle East remains unstable 100 years after the Ottoman defeat, the Russian periphery has become unstable in both independence movements along its southern borders as well as those flanking Europe. The demise of both empires threatens the stability of the world today.

Today, we find a rising threat to the daily life of people from terrorism and anti-terror activities by governments. Yet the only organized resistance to global development exercised by transnational corporations, drug gangs and death squads and the nations from which their power has risen, is increasingly seen by the poor and dispossessed of the world as al-Qaeda or similar entities. Similar local offshoots like ISIS/IS have also appeared, though remnants of Maoist movements persist in some areas as in India with the Naxalites.1,2 Other guerrilla groups are remnants of states failed in the Cold War struggle as in the case of Somalia and Yemen. Yet around the world, from the uprisings in India by traditional people against the Vedanta mining and development schemes,3 the Ngobe-Bugle Indian tribe in Panama, to the recent massacre in the Amazonas province of Peru, native people are striving to protect their lands from resource extraction and environmental pollution.4 We have entered an era of global conflict between traditional people and corporations where one way of life is being exterminated. While it is in general a continuation of the assault of western colonialism, today’s indigenous rebels, instead of being considered devil worshipers as they were in the past, are now often seen as minions of terror. The roots of contemporary terror are not just seen in the disorder created by colonialism, but in the very form it has taken. Saudi Wahhabism was brought to power by the British in their support of Abd al-Aziz or Ibn Saud with arms and advice before the First World War to undermine Ottoman attempts to suppress the violent fanaticism of Abd al- Wahhab and Muhammad Ibn Sa’ud that followed their uprisings after 1746.5,6 What is contradictory is that while the west concentrates on militant groups in various Islamic countries that are fighting for Sharia law and an Islamic state, this is what Saudi Arabia has now and has promoted abroad through its donations, foreign aid and educational foundation activity. But as Doran7 notes, the Saudi government has a long history of promoting conservative Islam, trying to balance its role in a secular and Christian dominated world and yet attempting to limit the role of Shia Islam.

International Relations Journal, Local Resistance, Era of Capitalist Globalization, Clash of Cultures, Central America, USSR, Ottoman Equals Chaos, UNITA in Angola, 21st Century.