Despite hopes that the end of the Cold War would make the world a safer place, it has been increasingly plagued by violence and instability, prompting some, including Pope Francis, to compare this trend to a the early stages of or a "piecemeal" global conflict.
Losurdo highlighted several post-Cold War conflicts, including the US-led wars in Iraq, the bombing of Yugoslavia, the 2011 military intervention in Libya and the foreign-sponsored war in Syria. All of them, according to the historian, have two things in common: they were not authorized by the UN Security Council and they have ravaged sovereign nations, which carried out policies not outlined in Washington.
This logic suggests that the primary target for those, who harbor imperialist ambitions in the West, is China. Some in the US, according to the historian, once hoped that China would become a "semi-colony."
Russia, Losurdo notes, has long been the second target. The country also once "ran the risk" of becoming a "semi-colony of the West."
The Italian historian accused Western monopolies of trying to grab Russia's social wealth during the privatization in the 90s. During the 1990s, "they managed to take major energy reserves in Russia under control. Vladimir Putin put an end to this process," Losurdo noted.
