Western Imperialism and the War on the Russian Orthodox Church

By Mohammed Khaza, PhD.

Dixitque ad illos videte et cavete ab omni avaritia quia non in abundantia cuiusquam vita eius est ex his quae possidet.
Lucam XII-XV, Biblia Sacra Vulgata.

The immediate cause of the discord between the two churches, Moscow and Constantinople, was the latter’s decision in 2019 to recognize the “autocephaly” (independence from Moscow) of the Ukrainian Church and subordinate it directly to Constantinople, even though Kiev is the cradle of Russian Orthodoxy and its church was under the jurisdiction of the Moscow Patriarchate for centuries.

This decision is connected with a serious crisis in Ukraine and is due to the current situation in the country. On the territory of Ukraine is a bloody civil war; it is here that the front line of the Second Cold War lies. All this is the result of an armed coup in Kiev (2014), carried out with the support of the United States and activists of Nazi paramilitary groups. Having provoked the crisis in Ukraine, the Americans have used it to start the “Second Cold War” and to bring strife to the relations between Europe and Russia.

The destruction of Russian-Greek relations
Now the Americans are planning to use their influence in Greece and Constantinople to strike at relations between the Greek and Russian worlds. This is their long-term strategic goal, which is of great importance along with the “Ukrainian” agenda. The impairment of relations between Greece and Russia, as well as the undermining of the image of Greece as perceived by Russians and vice versa, has been a key strategic objective of the British Empire over the past two or three centuries, as well as of US policy after 1946. They don’t hide it. Their thinktanks openly regard Greece and Cyprus as Moscow’s Trojan horses.

This Western strategy has acquired special significance at the present time, for at least two reasons. Greece remains on the verge of default due to a huge debt burden and may rebel, as it did in 2015, and turn to Russia for help. In the event of the EU’s collapse, the question of where Greece will orient itself towards in international affairs may arise once more.

The second reason is that in order to wage a war against Russia or create such a threat, full control over the Balkan Peninsula is required. For a new large-scale campaign in the Middle East, the establishment of full control over Cyprus seems essential. Any influence of Russia, even indirect, in these two countries must be neutralized.

The geopolitical agenda that no one really hides
Both sides put forward canonical and ecclesiastical arguments to defend their position. But we are not interested in them. Instead of analyzing them, let’s look at the geopolitical factors that accompany them. This ecclesiastical crisis is closely linked to, and intertwined with, two distinct geopolitical trends:

The “Second Cold War”, with Ukraine at its forefront
The rise of the totalitarian Empire of Finance in the context of the profound transformations brought about by the era of neoliberalism.

The “Greek experiment” that has been going on since 2010 should be viewed precisely in the context of the formation of the aforementioned Empire of Finance, which seeks to take control of Greece’s state authorities, its political forces, symbols and any manifestations of resistance and discontent in order to use them contrary to the identity and to the national interest of Greece. (Roughly the same thing happened with the USSR, when they managed to impress Western attitudes upon the Soviet leadership headed by Gorbachev, provoking the collapse of the system in a way similar to the development of immunodeficiency diseases in humans.)

Post-Cold War
Samuel Huntington is considered the pre-eminent, most influential non-conservative theorist of US-Israeli imperialism and rising totalitarianism. For him, the only criterion for classifying civilizations is religion, which is used to structure and “justify” his neo-conservative-imperialist, racist project for a post-Cold War world dictatorship.

As a thinker close to Kissinger, Huntington became one of the authors of the “urbanization” of Vietnam as a result of the bombing of the countryside. In 1975, he served as one of the main promoters of neoliberalism on the Trilateral Commission. His ideas became the starting point for a dozen wars in the Middle East, with disastrous consequences. They continue to be guided by the Trump administration and people like Steve Bannon and now as in The Biden-⁠Harris Administration.

Huntington’s ideas marked the transition from “democratic” imperialism to totalitarian imperialism. With such a transformation, certain difficulties arise, since in order to express totalitarian ideas one has to use the language and ideology of the bourgeois-democratic system.

In 2014, Moscow did not threaten Ukraine; the incorporation of Crimea into the Russian Federation at the request of the peninsula’s population came after the fascist regime attained power in Kiev. Ukraine’s problems were created by the United States, which disrupted an agreement between the president and the opposition, with the participation of the European Union. After that, peaceful protests against the legitimately elected president turned into an armed uprising with the support of Nazi militias. The reaction to these events, and to the first anti-Russian measures of the new Kiev authorities, was the uprising of Russians in the east of the country, demanding their right to self-determination. US actions had upset the delicate balance of power in a country with a heterogeneous population, leading to civil war. As for the independence of Ukraine, in fact, the main threats to it come from NATO.

Orthodox world under siege
The teachings of Christ were extremely popular among the underprivileged masses of the Palestinian people, and then throughout the Eastern Mediterranean, as they seemed a suitable means of surviving in the suffocating atmosphere of the Roman Empire, which personified the idea of globalization in ancient times.

Now, in order to gain significant influence for any church, it is necessary to act as a champion of suffering peoples and countries, primarily professing one religion. In the struggle against the Orthodox countries, Western imperialism and neo-colonialism used both military force and political and financial methods.

At the present time, almost all Orthodox countries are under severe pressure from the West, this all-pervasive Empire of Finance, which is trying to subdue the whole world to its totalitarian regime:

The Serbs were the first to experience this, while the Vatican played an important role in the campaign to break up multinational Yugoslavia.
In 2010, Greece became the subject of an unprecedented experiment that led them to a social, economic, political and demographic disaster.
The Second Cold War has been unleashed against Russia.
Large portions of Orthodox-dominated Southeast Europe, from Cyprus to Ukraine, are in ruins, entire regions turned into protectorates, oligarchic pseudo-democracies with less sovereignty than they had during the Cold War years. The entire Orthodox world (with the exception of Russia), both in the European Union and outside it, finds itself under the heel of neo-colonialism, which until 1991 was the lot of the global South countries.

The future of Orthodoxy
From all that has been said, we can conclude that the Orthodox Churches must be allies of their countries in their struggle for survival. The Orthodox world has no other way of viewing the forces of Western capitalism that threaten and attack it. The ability to resist will largely depend on his ability to form an alternative strategy.

This does not mean that the eastern part of the continent must come into conflict with its western part. By defending their interests, the peoples and countries of Eastern Europe can contribute to the formaق