As the neoliberal-dominated world order seems to be approaching its demise in favor of a multi-polar world order, the fight for identity resurges at the forefront of global conflict. For decades the US, through NGOs, IGOs, military alliances, and soft power policies, has sought to fragment any identity that could question their policies, and instead, made it a point to emphasize fragmented ethnic or religious identities that have successfully been Westernized.

The idea of Westernization followed from the successful experience of Latinization which impacted group identities for centuries. For example, Latinization changed the name of the famed Islamic Scholar Ibn Sina and turned him into the poetic thinker Avicenna in order to undermine the Islamic culture under the pretext that knowledge, civilization, and development could only be a product of the West. This idea continued to underscore the policies of Western hegemons for centuries to come, maintaining that anything that is not a product of the West is backward, uncivilized, and a threat to humanity.

Latinization played a significant role in undermining Syriac and Arab Christian churches through the globalization of Catholicism, which continues to divide identities across the Arab nation today. In turn, Westernization, in its war on Russia and the emerging multi-polar world order, using Ukraine as a primary vessel, has been engaged in a war of manufactured identities, countering the prominent reemergence of indigenous collective identities through the division of the Russian Orthodox Church. This comes to show that the hostile policies of the colonial West have never changed and that religion continues to play a significant role in the face of liberal demoralization driven by the West and grounded in consumerist ideology.

It is worth reminding that such policies come in parallel with economic, military, and political policies serving the continued looting of resources as well as the expansion of consumer markets.

While the topic requires a full-scale multi-level analysis, this piece will focus on highlighting the role of religion in forming collective identity, and how the West has been pursuing fragmentation policies to create a new Ukrainian identity that believes itself to be independent of its historic ties to Russia on the social and political levels of identity.

Building the rhetoric

The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, for example, one of the US’s most prominent think tanks, has written in one of its recent publications titled Holy War: The Fight for Ukraine’s Churches and Monasteries that “Historical ties with Moscow had long prevented the formation of a unified national church in Ukraine.”

Terminology, which is often overlooked, has often been used to stimulate deeper underlying positive, or negative, conceptions. For example, the word “regime” in politics, is associated with a lack of legitimacy, triggering a sense of threat and violence, whereas the word “administration” is associated with excessive democracy and confidence offering “the people” a sense of security. This creates what has become known as 'unconscious bias', whereby when the term regime is used to identify a government, people expect violence, extrajudicial killings, violations, and other practices as normal. Similarly, when the term administration is used, people assume that the legal grounds and requirements for justice have been properly adhered to and fail to question many of the practices and actions that result from them.

The CIA has historically studied the operational potential of “Subliminal Perception”. Similarly, the terminologies used often stimulate deeper collective, and unconscious, conceptions of “right,” and “wrong” based on the collective historical myths and stories. Consequently, this results in real and conscious, either positive or negative, motives to act or feel. The collective unconscious entails a set of collectively shared mental concepts among a specific group of people.

For example, famed Psychiatrist Carl Jung argued that the Collective Unconscious is “a distinctive component of the human psyche…a collection of knowledge, imagery, and concepts shared by humankind,” adding that it “plays a significant role in influencing our current behavior.”

The propagator of rhetoric, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, titled the publication as A Holy War. This title implies a multitude of concepts and information. Primarily, a holy war, as defined by Britannica, is any war “fought by divine command or for religious purposes.”

However, “The Holy War” often refers to the Crusades, which were a series of religious wars allegedly for Western Christians to right a wrong as the rise of Islam in West Asia became more dominant. This is often perceived as a war between Christians and Muslims over the holy land and the cradle of Christianity, in Al-Quds, Palestine.

Regardless of the fact that Pope Jean Paul II, in 2,000, made a "sweeping apology for 2,000 years of violence, persecution and blunders," in a clear reference to the crusades, the campaigns continued to be considered, by many, as “rightful” in the face of “blasphemy”.

What remained unspoken was the fact that the crusades were fought not only against Muslims but also against Levantine Christians who allied with their muslim counterparts to remain steadfast in the face of Latinization seeking to protect their West Asian Christian identity which has become an integral part of the region's identity.

In other words, the Crusades were a colonial campaign for Western dominance in the face of all non-Western denominations.

This is significant because the first sentence of the publication then goes on to purposely frame Russian-Ukrainian relations in a negative light. It frames “historical ties” in a colonial light when in reality it has been the result of the natural development of relations among a single people of a single nation dwelling in multiple nation-states.

The historical ties between Russia and Ukraine stem back to an era prior to the nation-building process, and the existence of a collective Orthodox Church speaking several tongues under spiritual guidance stemming from Moscow has been natural and has unified the Orthodox Christians of Eurasia and beyond.

The Kiev regime is again trying to block the entrance for monks and parishioners to the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra - Ukrainian security forces check the passports of the Orthodox pic.twitter.com/Yz4BWpLmFd

— Sprinter (@Sprinter99880) April 23, 2023

The usage of the term “unified national church in Ukrainian” thus becomes inherently counterintuitive, as it would divide a more unified and natural identity only to isolate the Ukrainian “national church” under the pretense that all that is “national” is an inherent right in the Western unconscious bias, and all that stands in the face of that, even when it’s more sociologically and geographically homogenous with the historical context, threatens “national interest.” It is worth noting here that national interest for modern nation-states is fundamental and serves an existential purpose.

However, the religious identity and national identity of Ukraine have never been one and the same. The think tank, thus, is fading out the line between Ukraine’s underdeveloped national identity and its historical context over the past hundreds of years.

Eagle-eye vision: understanding the deep-rooted conflict

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has been since its conception seeking to contain Russia following the defeat of the Soviet Union. As such it endeavored in the 1990s to break up former Soviet states, most notably through its involvement in the former Yugoslavia war.

In 1997, Russia and NATO signed the Founding Act which sought to end the Cold War rivalry, and better relations between Russia and the Alliance while taking into consideration Moscow’s concern about the block’s eastern flank expansion.

However, at the time, Henry Kissinger unveiled the deeply rooted and well-coated concerns for NATO and the US who clearly intended to continue to contain Russia and maintain NATO’s supremacy.

Kissinger at the time noted, in his criticism, that the “so-called Foundation Act seeks to reconcile Russia by diluting the Atlantic Alliance into an UN-style system of collective security,” explaining that the act gave Russia a “veto no matter how often administration spokesmen repeat that ‘Russia has a voice, not a veto’.”

The man behind much of the US’ most bloody endeavors then confesses “Had I known that the price of NATO enlargement would be the gross dilution of NATO, I would have urged other means to achieve the objective.”

In the early 2000s, NATO had begun its eastern flank expansion with hidden intentions veiled under the Foundation Act. In 2002, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia were invited to begin their accession process to join the Alliance and in 2004, they officially became NATO member states.

Read more: Merkel confesses NATO plans for Russia since 2007 in new interview

Until then, Ukraine had no intention of joining NATO. However, in 2004, the Orange Revolution took place, one of the most exposed color revolution ops conducted by the US, the NATO Alliance leader. The Orange Revolution tipped the scale in Ukraine in favor of NATO and began the mission toward pushing non-alignment leaders out of the Ukrainian policy administrations.

What the new NATO members and Ukraine had in common at the time was that Orthodoxy was considered the historical religion of these nations. Unironically, the case was similar in Russia.

During that time the US had advanced its theoretical and operational knowledge in soft power through the experiences gained from various CIA ops throughout the years and the color revolution experiences which began under various operations in Yugoslavia to become a clear operational framework during the Orange Revolution.

In 2014, years later, and under the US guidance of Major General Michael Repass, Commander, Special Operations Command Europe (SOCEUR), the Resistance Operating Concept (ROC) was released. It contained the information and analysis of years of experience by the US and NATO.

What stands out in that paper is that the ROC highlighted a number of necessary prerequisites to establish a successful resistance. This also comes to show that ‘resistance’ here is manufactured, similar to manufactured consent, the concept expanded by Noam Chomsky.

The prerequisites were, in order, Building a Strong Foundation for Resilience, National Identity, Psychological Preparation, Identifying Vulnerabilities, Vulnerability Reduction, Potential External Threat Identification, and Preparation Against the Threat.

While it is impossible to dissect all these factors in an essay, it becomes clear that with Ukraine the US and NATO found it necessary to establish a national identity that would lead Ukrainian to identify with the block and away from Moscow given that historical ties between Ukraine and Russia and difficult to uproot as they extend for thousands of years.

The Eastern Orthodox identity that ties Russians with Ukrainians and others became the most notable obstruction to developing a Ukrainian national identity far away from Moscow. 

A dirty war under sacred veil: a US Strategy

With the Orthodox identity as a forefront problem to stripping Ukraine away from its historical identity and closer to NATO, the US went to search for weakness in the institution.

Thanks to Julian Assange’s Wikileaks, this report sought to corroborate the above analysis and study through direct messages between US officials and Washington.

In 2004, a then-confidential cable message identified a problem within the Eastern Orthodox Churches, and identified the key player as the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew I of Constantinople who struggled “to maintain Istanbul as a viable seat for the Ecumenical Patriarchate,” given that the archbishop “faces a rising challenge for moral and ecclesiastical authority within the Orthodox world from Moscow-based Russian Patriarch Alexy II [Former Patriarch of Moscow and all Rus Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow].”

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The cable was sent from Turkey, reveals Wikileaks, on September 22, 2004, and was tagged “PGOV - Political Affairs--Government; Internal Governmental Affairs | PHUM - Political Affairs--Human Rights | PREL - Political Affairs--External Political Relations | TU – Turkey.”

Thus, the telegram cable published on Wikileaks under the Public Library of US Diplomacy shows the information divulged to be of interest to the internal affairs department as well as the External Political Affairs Department of the US government. Significantly as well, the human Rights office of the US government was also tagged on the Telegram possibly hinting, at the time, to the need to frame the Orthodox issue as a human rights issue merely for the fact that Russian affiliation and identity are involved.

In a subsection of that cable titled “Struggle for the Heartland: Ukraine,” it was noted that “Looming …. is the impending struggle for the loyalty of 40 million Ukrainian Orthodox faithful in Ukraine, the original heartland of Eastern Slavic Orthodoxy.” The same cable then confirmed, “The Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate (UOC-MP) has the most parishes, followed by the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyivan Patriarchate (UOC-KP).” However, the cable notifies of some unclear polls which the ambassador then claimed suggest that “most of the population islyal [is loyal] tothe [to the] smller [smaller] UOC-KP.” That being said, it is fair to say that the reason to tag the Human Rights Office in Washington has become clearer.

In the next section of that same 2004 cable, this one titled “Worldwide Battle for Hearts and Souls” the ambassador underscored that “Erol Muterimler, an influential academic, suggested to us recently that resistance among the Turkish military and bureaucracy to acknowledging the Patriarch' ecumenical status nd eopening [ and opening] the Halki seminary ay ste [set] from desir [desire] to move closer to  Russia and aoid [avoid] an involvement in what they see as a roxy [proxy] rivalry between Washington and Moscow.”

Months following this cable communication, the Orange Revolution, a renowned color revolution, takes place in Ukraine tipping the scales closer in favor of the US and its NATO allies.

Read more: Beyond Manufacturing Consent: A world of color revolutions

In 2006, another cable communication brought forward the topic, discussed amongst pro-US and anti-Kremlin Ukrainian officials, denoting that “Ukraine needed a unified, national church.”

In that cable it was revealed that Ukrainian then-MP Volodymyr Stretovych claimed that “like other European countries, Ukraine needed a unified, national church; such a church had existed in Ukraine prior to the 1654 Treaty of Pereyaslav, but had been subjugated by the Russian Orthodox Church.”

However, Stretovych’s claim was disputed by the former head of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) and then-Tymoshenko campaign chief, Oleksandr Turchynov, an ordained Baptist minister, who stressed that “one of Ukraine's great strengths was its tolerance and diversity; no single denomination lorded it over society.”

While the debate among Ukrainians could be traced back historically, the issue remained irrelevant in the US except for the fact that this disagreement offers an opportunity to embrace the division and support one claim in the face of Russia: the Moscow Patriarchate must have no influence whatsoever in Ukraine. While this is an impossible task, given the church ties that exist across Eurasia which extend over 1500 years, it had become the central approach for the US to the creation, establishment and authentication of a Ukrainian national identity that will completely detach it from its historical national identity. Here is worth pointing at the Donbass region where people, from 2014 until today have been continuously marginalized and consequently oppressed for the mere reason that they speak Russian.

Shortly after debates regarding the “need” for a unified Ukrainian Orthodox Church, noting that Ukraine also has a number of Catholic Christians as well, and the fact that in an objective reality a unified religion does not qualify a geographic location to become a nation, at best, it could become and independent state affiliated to a larger unified national identity encompassing multiple intersectional religious, social, and political groups united by their historical extensions, shared values, and unified social and economic destiny.

In 2008, a cable titled “Interfaith Dialogue”, revealed that the debates starting in 2004, to our knowledge, have started to become fruitful:

The US ambassador explained: “The Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, the spiritual leader of Eastern Orthodoxy, arrived in Ukraine on July 24 for a five-day visit to celebrate the 1,020th anniversary of the Christianization of the Kyivan Rus.”

It is significant to note the terminologies being used in this cable, such as Kyivan Rus and 1,020th anniversary, as they denote the historical identity of the region.

The US ambassador then made an unfounded claim and explained: “Although he [Bortholemew] has no jurisdiction over other Orthodox patriarchs, Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople is viewed as the spiritual leader and primary spokesman for Eastern Orthodoxy and many anticipated his visit might help begin resolve the long-running split within Ukraine's Orthodox community and lend support for President Yushchenko's push to establish a unified Orthodox church free from Russian influence.”

Former Ukrainian President Victor Yushchenko, for anyone who is unaware, led the Orange Revolution which brought him Presidency in 2005 after sidelining Viktor Yanukivych who was known for his vision that Ukraine must remain closer to Russia and not get driven into the arms of NATO and the West.

Read more: Zelensky admits he never intended to implement Minsk agreements

War on Orthodoxy: an attempt to thwart post-Western world amid diminishing Western influence

In 2010, as part of the leaked Clinton Emails, it was revealed that Hilary Clinton was forwarded an article by Dr. Scott M. Thomas titled A Globalized God, which identified external threats vis-a-vis what later became the ROC, and argued that Christianity will soon become the US’ most challenging and urgent challenge with regards to its foreign policy.

Thomas has been a Senior lecturer in International Relations and the Politics of Developing Countries in the Department of European Studies at the University of Bath in the United Kingdom, as well as a research fellow at the Centre for Christianity and Interreligious Dialogue, Heythrop College, University of London.

The researcher explained that despite the fact that multiple US policymakers “consider Islamism to be the most urgent religious challenge to Washington's foreign policy” it remained that “the politics of global Christianity may soon prove just as pivotal.”

He offered a historical approach to understanding the diminishing influence of Western Christianity, which this article offered an overview by explaining briefly the process of Latinization.

Albeit Eurocentric and very simplistic, Thomas’ explanation underscored the significance of the diminishing influence of Western Christianity in US foreign policy and highlighted that the resurgence of religiosity was grounded in the “disintegrating relationship between the West and Christianity.” He stressed that “Christianity evolved from its Jewish origins in Palestine, conquered the pagan world, and spread east to Iraq, India, and China before the Mongol invasions reduced it to its European setting,” adding “It is now returning to its roots by becoming a post-Western religion dominated by the peoples, cultures, and countries of the global South.”

While Thomas made no mention of colonization and it is important to mention the revolution taking place in the Global South liberating its people, through various means, from multifaceted colonial practices that have both institutionalized colonialism across developing countries while also having taken control of their resources.

Significantly to the topic of this report, Thomas brought to Clinton’s attention that the Orthodox Church’s role “is especially crucial given that cultural and political power seem intertwined in modern Russia.”

Thomas also argued, from a Eurocentric point of view, that “The Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church… sees the reunification of the church's various branches as an important step in spreading the patriarchate's influence worldwide.” And in parallel, the Russian state, a close friend of the church, “views reunification as a means to boost ties between Russia proper and the Russian diaspora as part of its quest to regain global power.”

He did remind and reaffirm that no official of the Orthodox Church in Russia has made that claim, on the contrary, this claim has been refuted time and time again reaffirming “no wish to serve as an organ of the [Russian] state.”

In 2014, Henry Kissinger, who needs no introduction, wrote a piece for the Washington Post titled How the Ukraine Crisis Ends in which he explained: “The West must understand that, to Russia, Ukraine can never be just a foreign country. Russian history began in what was called Kievan-Rus. The Russian religion spread from there. Ukraine has been part of Russia for centuries, and their histories were intertwined before then. Some of the most important battles for Russian freedom, starting with the Battle-of-Poltava, were fought on Ukrainian soil. The Black Sea Fleet — Russia’s means of projecting power in the Mediterranean — is based by long-term lease in Sevastopol, in Crimea. Even such famed dissidents as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Joseph Brodsky insisted that Ukraine was an integral part of Russian history and, indeed, of Russia.”

In 2018, the Economist interviewed Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev, who then served as the chairman of the Department of External Church Relations of the Patriarchate of Moscow who explained “We are also very concerned about the pressure of the Ukrainian state authorities on the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church because there are several laws which are being proposed and all of them have a discriminatory character with regard to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchy. “

For example, he said, “One of the laws proposes that it should be called The Church Whose Administrative Centre is in the State Aggressor. Though, in fact, the administrative state of the Ukrainian church is in Kiev, not in Moscow,” highlighting that “We only have spiritual links with this church but we have no administrative authority whatsoever on the Ukrainian church.”

In 2022 the US and NATO put their plans in motion and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky signed an order authorizing the decision of the National Security and Defense Council (NSDC) on restrictive measures against representatives of religious organizations allegedly connected with Russia to protect national security, which included the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchy.

On its part, the UOC, at the time, said it had always followed Ukrainian law, according to the Strana.ua online publication.

"The UOC has always carried out its activities in accordance with the Ukrainian legislation. Public reports on multiple inspections of its temples and monasteries confirm the absence of prerequisites for accusations relating to national security," a UOC representative said.

In March of 2022, Ukraine's National Kiev-Pechersk Historical and Cultural Preserve announced that it had ordered monks of the UOC of the Moscow Patriarchate to leave the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra, one of the most important Orthodox Christian monasteries by March 29, claiming a breach of contract.

Patriarch Kirill of Moscow slammed, in the same month, Ukraine's National Kiev-Pechersk Historical and Cultural Preserve's order to expel the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) clergy from the Kiev Pechersk Lavra monastery.

At a UN Security Council meeting on Ukraine, in January of 2023, the Chairman of the Department of External Church Relations of the Patriarchate of Moscow Metropolitan of Volokolamsk Anthony told UN delegates of the political repression exercised against the Orthodox Church clergy of Ukraine and called on the UN to intervene. 

One example he evoked at the meeting was the revocation of Ukrainian citizenship of the Orthodox Church clergy of Ukraine.

"Depriving the citizenship of Ukrainian religious figures is undoubtedly a form of mass political repressions, which contradict the Constitution of Ukraine and international agreements that have been signed by that state," Metropolitan of Volokolamsk Anthony said via videoconference.

He added that "In 2022 alone, 129 churches of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church were seized. At the same time, the legal registration of its new communities was completely blocked."

It was also witnessed that Ukrainian army members threatened people and religious figures of the UOC-MP.

In the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra, a distraught patriot in military uniform pestered a priest of the 🇷🇺 Orthodox Church, forcing him to take the 🇺🇦 flag

— If you love 🇺🇦, take the flag! The flag was taken quickly!
— I love the Lord God!
- In Ukrainian, you are a moskal, speak! pic.twitter.com/z2kiA5B6cN

— Zlatti71 (@djuric_zlatko) April 23, 2023

Despite all efforts by the US and NATO, the global world order continues to shift toward a more multipolar world in which national identities, exceeding the geographic formations of nations established post-WWII, are reemerging alongside a set of values grounded in religious beliefs free from colonial ideologies dubbing people adhering to non-Western values as “infidels”; be it directly or indirectly.

While such interventionist soft power strategies have been at the forefront of Western foreign policies, the war in Ukraine will determine the future of such practices. In the event of a military win for NATO and its allies, which appears highly unlikely, will result in the containment of Russia, but it will remain that the oppressed national identity of the people of Eurasia, grounded in the Orthodox Church and its values, will if not today, resurge and seek to return to its roots once again because politics is grounded in objective reality and not just made-up rhetoric.

In turn, objective reality is grounded in a set of rules which dictate behavioral frameworks and institutional mechanisms. In other words, politics is not about opportunism but it is a science based on the comprehensive need for the multiple peoples encompassed within a single nation to realize that their destinies are intertwined.

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