The Great Roman Empire was split into East and West in the year 395. The Eastern Empire called the Byzantine adhered to Orthodox Christianity while the West was committed to Roman Catholicism. Their differences grew in time while the Western Rome collapsed in 476 but Byzantine lasted until 1453 to be ended by the Ottoman conquest of Istanbul. While sides were inspired by the Roman history as the Russian Tsar adopted this title in reference to the Roman Ceasar. In the meantime, the Western world witnessed the arrival of Protestantism and fierce struggle between the Catholicism and Protestantism and later a similar class between the Catholic Church and Secular movements.

Like the Russian Tsar, the Spanish, French and British Kings referred to the Roman Empire’s grandeur and competed with Russia as their main rivals. That’s why French Napoleon and Adolf Hitler tried to invade Russia but failed dearly. The spread of the British empire and the Tsarist empire competed in Asia, in the Baltic and the Middle East until the First World War. The competition continued even after the arrival of the Soviet Empire and following the replacement of the Great Britain by the USA as a superpower after the World War II. The competition continued almost in all continents. When the Soviet Empire was collapsing, the Russian elites made a deal with the West to maintain their prestige and nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.

After Russia realized that it would not be accepted in the Western club, it began to become bolder against the West. In the meantime, the West was expanding its areas of influence to Russian areas of influence under the umbrella of the NATO. When Putin’s Russia began to question its status of a land-locked country, it began to expand the borders of the initial deal with the West and began to annex territories of Georgia and Ukraine (namely, Abkhazia in 2008 and Crimea in 2014). Then Russia intervened in Syria but did not receive a serious condemnation from the West. They even overlooked the Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons.

The gradual NATO expansion in the Eastern Europe worried Russia and began its threats to both Ukraine and the West, leading to Russian attempt at a direct invasion of Ukraine by Russia that called it a special operation rather than a total war in February 2022. This evolved to being a world war because it involved three of four superpowers in the world. Of course, both sides used high-tech weapons and smart weapons to cause a major damage to the infrastructure and casualties reaching 15 thousand deaths and 62 thousand injuries from both sides.

The Ukraine war came with several surprises. One, the world was surprised by Russia’s unpreparedness for after the first incursion to invade the capital Kiev. Two, Russia was surprised by Ukraine resilience and resistance. That was because the West prepared the Ukrainian public and military for it, and also provided unlimited military, economic and diplomatic support for Ukraine. Three, the West was surprised by Russia’s economic resilience as they could not prevent Russia from selling its oil and gas. That was because Europe needed Russian gas and alternatives were easily available. Many Western allies like Arabs, Turkey and India did not support the West in this war. Arab countries, especially Saudi Arabia, indirectly supported Russia by raising oil prices.

Today the Ukraine war reached a stalemate between the West and Russia. The expected Ukrainian counter-offensive failed to push Russia out of invaded territories in the East of Ukraine. Russia withdrew from the grain deal to pressure the global economy to export its grain in the new harvest season. Nobody knows if the war will involve using nuclear weapons and how long it will last. We also know that US-China competition is accelerating. The sudden US withdrawal from Afghanistan and its inability to stop Houthi attacks on the Saudi Aramco shows that the superpowers have their own priorities over our security concern. Therefore, the superpowers’ occupation with each other gives an opportunity for the Muslim countries to cooperate more closely especially to take care of our joint security and economic concerns.