Mercenary Warlords as a Sign of Imperial Decline

Western timidity and historical takeaways for Eastern Europeans in their confrontation with Russia

So, we have a mercenary warlord, who built his power base, made his fortune and achieved renown through successful campaigns in the Middle East and Africa, then at some point turned against and marched towards the imperial capital almost unopposed, only to turn back when he was at striking distance. Let me introduce to you, ladies and gentlemen, Kavalalı Mehmet Ali Pasha - the Ottoman governor of Egypt.

Kavalalı Mehmet Ali Pasha, himself of Albanian origin, was the commander of a mercenary force sent to reclaim Egypt for the Ottoman Empire after Napoleon's withdrawal from the region. By winning the sultan's trust and skilful political manoeuvring, he later became the Viceroy (Vali) of Egypt. He successfully crushed the Wahhabite rebellion in the Arabian peninsula, thereby re-conquering Hijaz and other Arabian territories for the Ottoman Empire. He also conquered Sudan on his own accord. With time, on the backdrop of the decaying empire and weakening central government, he became the de facto ruler of Egypt independent from Constantinople.

During the Greek War of Independence (1821-1829), the Ottoman Sultan Mahmud II, unable to deal with the rebellion, desperately asked Mehmet Ali Pasha for help in dealing with the Greek revolutionaries. Mehmet Ali Pasha agreed to help with his huge and highly competent Egyptian fleet. However, the European powers intervened on behalf of the Greek revolutionaries in 1827 and decisively defeated the combined Ottoman-Egyptian fleet at the Battle of Navarino in 1827, completely destroying Mehmet Ali Pasha’s navy in the process.

Furious about the loss of his entire fleet, Mehmet Ali Pasha demanded compensation from the sultan, which he refused (as a matter of fact, was not even able) to provide. Then, sensing his own might and the weakness of the Ottoman central government, Mehmet Ali Pasha decided to challenge the sultan. In 1831 he started his march on Constantinople with a regiment of his loyal mercenaries. After conquering Syria, he entered Anatolia meeting little resistance on his way. But when the capture of Constantinople seemed imminent, he made a deal with the sultan and agreed to withdraw. What happened was that the European powers intervened on behalf of the sultan and forced Mehmet Ali Pasha to abandon his goal of capturing the capital.

Then, in 1840, he challenged the sultan and began moving towards Constantinople again. The capital was again defenseless and the sultan helpless and despondent. But the European powers saved the Ottoman Empire again and negotiated a brokered deal between Mehmet Ali Pasha and the Ottoman central government according to which Mehmet Ali Pasha and his descendants acquired hereditary rule over Egypt and Sudan. In return, Mehmet Ali Pasha agreed to leave the territories he conquered in Levant and Anatolia, renounce his claims to the throne and to nominally accept the suzerainty of the sultan.

Although the Ottoman Empire was saved (twice within a decade), the fact that a mercenary warlord who had risen to power in a province could humiliate it and march on the capital virtually unchallenged exposed its weakness for all to see. The Sick Man of Europe was impotent and dependent on the life support provided by the Western powers, who didn't want to see it collapse because they saw it as an important component of the balance of power within Europe at the time.

This whole saga with Mehmet Ali Pasha reminds us of the story of Evgeniy Prigozhin, his rise to power and the challenge he posed to the ruler and the central government in Moscow. Like Mehmet Ali Pasha, Prigozhin rose to power as the head of a mercenary formation ignominiously named after the great German composer Richard Wagner. His paramilitary formation first came to prominence with successful miltary campaigns during the civil war in Syria providing military support for its dictator, Bashar Assad.

Later, he switched to Africa, where his Wagner PMC conducted successful operations in several countries, most notably the Central African Republic, where it was sent by the Russian secret service to protect the government from rebel forces. In the process, he got rich from the control over and extraction of precious metals and other natural resources in the area. One uncanny similarity here with Mehmet Ali Pasha is that Prigozhin, like his 19th century Ottoman counterpart, was also filling a power vacuum left by the French in Africa. Moreover, like Mehmet Ali Pasha, Prigozhin was also asked to relocate from Africa to help the empire to subdue and reconquer a former province that was fighting for its national independence. Both ultimately failed, suffering heavy casualties and losing much of their highly skilled army. And in both cases their fury from the losses they sustained while helping the central government and its refusal (or inability) to provide satisfactory compensation were essentially the main driving forces behind their decision to march on the imperial capital.

Thus, on June 24th 2023, Prigozhin marched on Moscow with his mercenary group with substantial combat experience on Ukrainian battlefields. However, at the last moment, while being 200 km away from Moscow, he strangely stopped and turned back for hitherto unknown reasons.

In spite of this, not even failed, but voluntarily aborted coup, the whole series of events showed how fragile the central government in Russia is. And how Russia itself is nothing more than a giant Potemkin village, a house of cards prone to destruction and disintegration at the slightest of challenge. The same was true of the Ottoman Empire in the 19th century, whose fragility and utter ineffectiveness were revealed in all their naked truth by Mehmet Ali Pasha's marches on Constantinople.

However, there are also important differences between these two figures that need to be mentioned. Unlike Prigozhin, Mehmet Ali Pasha was a successful and respected statesman when he marched on the capital. Many historians regard him as essentially the founder of modern Egypt, and his contributions to the modernization and development of the region cannot be underestimated. Prigozhin, at least for the moment, cannot boast such achievements. Moreover, unlike Evgeniy Prigozhin, Mehmet Ali Pasha was not involved in criminal activity and came from a notable middle-class family of merchants.

Nevertheless, the stories of Mehmet Ali Pasha and Prigozhin, their rise to power and relationship with the imperial government, their rebellion and march on the capital, and, most importantly, the attitude of the Western powers to their rebellions in relation to the internal state of the respective empires share a lot of parallels. In particular, these events represent an historic opportunity for the nations directly threatened by Russia and that have been the object of its expansionist encroachments (i.e., countries of Central-Eastern Europe), but also provide important lessons to take into account.

The West prefers a stable Russia today, just as it preferred a stable Ottoman Empire in the 19th century

In 1831 and 1840, when the Ottoman Empire was on the verge of collapse as a result of Mehmet Ali Pasha's rebellion, the European powers intervened to save it, as they'd repeatedly do later in the course of the 19th century. They preferred stability and predictability within the Ottoman state to the turmoil that its collapse might unleash with unforeseeable consequences. Although they helped the Greeks achieve their independence, notably with their involvement in the Battle of Navarino in 1827, the European powers fell short of going all the way and seizing the opportunity to finish off the Ottoman Empire once and for all. As mentioned above and elsewhere, they saw it as an integral part of the European balance of power and therefore had an interest in maintaining it. Thus, during the Greek War of Independence, they interfered more actively only in response to the Ottomans escalating by calling on Mehmet Ali Pasha for help.

This is totally reminiscent of the West’s current attitude towards Russia, particularly in the context of the war in Ukraine. While Western countries have been helping Ukraine defend its independence and regain its territorial integrity, they're still unwilling to crush Russia completely once and for all, and look askance at the prospect of its disintegration. Moreover, like their support for the Greeks in the nineteenth century, their military aid to Ukraine has always been reactive and lackluster, increasing incrementally only after the next Russian escalation.

During Mehmet Ali Pasha's rebellions in 1831 and 1840, European powers intervened directly to save the crumbling Ottoman state. In the case of Prigozhin’s rebellion, although Western governments did not intervene directly to suppress it, they urged the Ukrainians not to take advantage of the turmoil and not to attack Russian positions inside of Russia during this time. Moreover, instead of seizing this opportunity to create more chaos in Russia and help Ukraine gain momentum in its counter-offensive, the U.S. government chose to remain cautious, and urged other Western governments to do the same, its main concern being simply not to give the Russians any reason to blame the West (hint: Russian propaganda went on and blamed the West anyway).

In essence, then, like back in the 19th century, the West keeps on treating the symptoms instead of curing the disease and eliminating its root cause. Helping Greece against the Ottoman Empire in the Greek War of Independence was only treating the symptom. Accelerating the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire, or at least allowing it to collapse and disintegrate by itself already in the first half of the 19th century, would have solved many problems and have prevented many tragedies in the Balkans and the Middle East that were to occur in the following decades. Similarly, helping Ukraine in its current existential struggle against Russia (and even that in a reactive rather than pro-active way) is only a band-aid solution that treats the symptom. For as long as Russia remains intact, it'll continue to be a threat and create more "symptoms" in the future that would need to be treated again. The ultimate solution to the whole problem (i.e. the ultimate cure) is clearly the destruction of Russia and its total disintegration, the step the Western powers are reluctant to take.

All in all, it is safe to conclude that the West's main fear is not Russia's existence, not that it routinely threatens and invades its neighbours, but rather its potential collapse and the instability it might unleash. We must be aware that Western governments would certainly prefer Putin, or rather someone from Putin's or the more pro-Western "liberal" clique, at the head of a unified, stable and predictable Russia, rather than a warlord like Prigozhin seizing power with the prospect of Russian civil war and disintegration. Just as they preferred to keep the Ottoman state intact under sultan's rule rather than allow it to crumble under Mehmet Ali Pasha's pressure.

What's noteworthy is that this fear of Russian disintegration is actually what Dmitriy Medvedev, among all people, tried to tap into in his plea to the Western governments not to allow Prigozhin to seize power. The usual horror stories about nuclear weapons being spread around and/or seized by dangerous criminals (as if Putin and his gang, to which Medvedev also belongs, are not dangerous and criminal enough) and other drivel aimed to scare the weak and timid Western elites devoid of any passionarity, devoid of any aspitation to great historical deeds, and afraid to move even a millimeter out of their comfort zone.

Another important factor to bear in mind is that the West, especially the United States, have always treated Russia with sympathy and regarded it as an integral part of the world order. Thus, they have been willing to overlook Russia’s repeated transgressions against both its captive peoples and its neighbours - i.e., the aggression against Moldova in 1992, two Chechen Wars (1994-1996 and 1999-2000), the invasion of Georgia in 2008, and the aggression against Ukraine in 2014 in the form of the annexation of Crimea and the invasion of Donbas. It’s just that Russians have managed to squander the West’s goodwill and the huge bonus of trust with their ingratitude and increasingly blatant transgressions, which at some point no decent person could overlook.

Solving the Russian problem will be the mission of Central-Eastern Europe

It’s necessary to come to terms with the fact that the default position of the Western powers is pro-Russian. Their natural preference is to trust Russia too much rather than confront it decisively. Therefore the help that they provide to Russia’s victims is, and will always be, reactive and thus defensive in nature. Everything else being equal they’d be content with, and would even prefer, Russia absorbing Ukraine, and even all of Eastern Europe. One need only to recall how, instead of welcoming the collapse of the Soviet Union, the U.S. was rather concerned about it and initially tried to prevent such an outcome by pressuring Ukraine not to declare independence. Then how, instead of disarming Russia and demanding that it renounce its nuclear arsenal (in return for material aid that Russia desperately needed in the early 90s, which the U.S. anyway went on to provide no strings attached), the U.S. pressured the young Ukrainian republic to prostrate itself before Russia by transferring to it its nuclear weapons and other nuclear-capable conventional weapons. How U.S. President Bill Clinton also brushed off Russian brutalities in Chechnya and compared Chechens to Confederates of the American Civil War.

Eastern Europeans will therefore have to take matters into their own hands. Eventually Eastern Europe must become strong enough to crush Russia without Western help. Defeating Russia in the current war and Ukraine regaining all its pre-2014 territory won't be the end of the mission. What should follow is something akin to the Wars of the Holy League against Russia by the alliance of Eastern European states (potentially joined by Nordic countries such as Finland, Sweden and Denmark) - i.e., the long overdue Holy Crusade against Russia that should have taken place since 1917.

During this next phase, the most powerful Western countries, such as the U.S., U.K., Germany and France will most likely back off. However, the good news is that, as history has repeatedly shown, an alliance of militarily not the strongest but focused and committed European states is able to defeat and wreak significant damage to a seemingly mighty empire.

The countries that comprised the Holy League, which defended Vienna and later fought against the Ottoman Empire in The Great Turkish War (1683-1699), were not the strongest European states of the time - the disunited Holy Roman Empire composed of Habsburg Austria and a few other smaller German principalities, the crumbling Poland-Lithuania, the Kingdom of Hungary and a few detachments from the Republic of Venice. The mightiest military power in Europe at the time - i.e., France refused to help. In fact, its sympathies were even on the Ottoman side and it was, not only not helping, but actively thwarting the combined Central-Eastern European attempts to defeat the Ottomans. The other powerful militaries of the continent, such as England and Spain, were far away, engaged in their own war against France and thus the war in Eastern Europe was not of immediate concern to them at the time.

However, in spite all this, the Central-Eastern European coalition prevailed and dealt a heavy blow to the Ottoman Empire. The result was the Treaty of Karlowitz in 1699, according to which the Ottoman Empire lost its territories in Central-Eastern Europe and was kicked out of there completely.

Another very good example is the Balkan Wars at the turn of the 20th century, when the coalition of Balkan states - Greece, Serbia, Montenegro and Bulgaria, which had recently gained their independence after centuries of Ottoman rule - waged a successful war against their former conqueror.

In 1912-1913, the Balkan countries resoundingly defeated the Ottoman Empire in the First Balkan War. As a result, the Ottoman Empire lost almost all of its remaining European territories to the four countries of the Balkan League. But, the history of the Balkan Wars also contains a cautionary tale for Eastern Europeans in their upcoming joint struggle against Russia.

Soon after, the Balkan coalition fell into disarray, with Bulgaria being unhappy about its share of territorial gains. This precipitated the Second Balkan War at the end of which Bulgaria was defeated, which allowed the Ottomans to recapture Adrianople (Edirne). More generally, such a turn of events prevented the Balkan states from pressing home their advantage against the Ottoman Empire and acquiring more territory. 

Another cautionary tale is the Greek defeat in the Greco-Turkish War of 1921-1923. Having gained the western part of Anatolia centered around the city of Smyrna (Izmir) and Eastern Thrace with Adrianople at the end of the First World War, Greece made further conquests deep into Turkish territory in 1921. However, soon afterwards the country fell into discord, which ended with the ousting of the successful prime minister Venizelos, who had been at the helm of all the Greek successes since the beginning of the century. The aftermath was an unmitigated disaster for Greece, which lost not only its later acquisitions in 1921 but also the territories it had gained after WWI. Despite this late setback, however, Greece ended up doubling its territory from the time of acquiring independence in 1830.

All these examples should inspire, and at the same time, serve as valuable lessons, for Eastern European countries in their confrontation with Russia. They can defeat and gain an upper hand against it provided they are focused, united and assertive. Western countries might continue to provide some help along the way, but it will always fall short of conclusively solving the Russian problem. Needless to say, the Eastern European countries should make the most of this Western help to build their own power base. At the same time, they should form their own military and political alliance along the lines of the Holy League of the 17th century or the Balkan League of the 20th century to confront Russia. This will be similar to the idea first articulated by the Polish leader Józef Piłsudski during the interwar period, namely the Intermarium, which envisioned uniting the former territories of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth into a single polity.

One thing that must be avoided at all costs is internal strife, whether within a country or between countries. There will be exhaustion, there will be war-weariness along the way, but all that must be brushed aside. Focus and perseverance will prove crucial in this upcoming struggle. The thing that should motivate the Eastern Europeans is that if they do things right, the rewards will be great in the end.

The road ahead and the steps to take

The task for Central-Eastern Europe will be to acquire the ability to confront Russia militarily, to sow discord within it through propaganda and support for irredentist national/regional liberation movements, but also to constantly counter Western sympathies towards it along the way and convince Western countries of the appropriateness of their tough and uncompromising stance towards Russia.

Eastern European countries such as Ukraine, Poland and the Baltic states will therefore need to ramp up and coordinate their efforts in several directions.

Firstly, and this is the most obvious, they should be able to produce their own weapons and will therefore need to strengthen their own military-industrial complexes - either individually or as a joint venture. The aim must be to have the capability to jointly defeat Russia in an offensive conventional war.

Poland, for instance, has recently gone on a buying spree of U.S. and South Korean weapons to strengthen its army. While this is a welcome and absolutely necessary step, it’s only a half measure. It goes without saying that unless the country establishes its own strong military-industrial complex capable of producing all kinds of conventional weapons, including its own tanks and long-range missiles, it’ll always remain vulnerable and dependent on the conditions set by others.

The same, of course, applies to Ukraine. We’ve witnessed enough how Western countries attach conditions to their arms supplies to Ukraine (beside the fact that these supplies are never enough in the first place), the most blatant and disturbing of which is that they’re not to be used to strike targets inside of Russia or to be used to enter Russian territory. It is therefore imperative for the Eastern European countries to become self-sufficient and fully independent in terms of arms production.

In this context, it is also important to be aware that NATO membership provides only an illusory sense of security and, more importantly, as has been painfully demonstrated in the context of the current war in Ukraine, it actually acts as an obstacle to action and often strangles individual member states.

Another important step that specifically Ukraine should take using the current opportunity is to claim the moral right to re-acquire nuclear weapons and to start its nuclear programme. Ukraine was forced to give up its nuclear arsenal in 1994 in return for security guarantees from the U.S. and Russia, among others. Needless to say, the Russian invasion made that whole agreement moot. Ukraine therefore has all the moral and legal arguments on its side to reclaim its former status of a nuclear power. At the very least, the Ukrainian government should be using this as a bargaining chip in negotiations. Let's not forget the simple fact that there is no better security guarantee than the possession of nuclear weapons.

Beyond its obvious purpose, the military self-sufficiency will be crucial for another important, but often overlooked, task that Eastern Europeans will have to accomplish, namely supplying weapons to the national/regional liberation movements that will inevitably emerge within Russia in the coming years and decades. The goal should therefore be to be able to produce enough weapons to defeat Russia in a conventional offensive war, and also to have enough surplus to supply to freedom fighters inside Russia so that they can defend themselves and eventually prevail against the central government forces. And this is where having its own strong arms industry will prove indispensable for Eastern Europe, because, as many are aware, countries are not allowed to export weapons imported from elsewhere - for example, Poland obviously won't have the right to transfer to the freedom fighters inside Russia the military equipment it is currently buying from the U.S. and South Korea.

The part about likely internal Russian unrest or civil war is very crucial. One must be aware that once things flare up in Russia, the default position of the Western states would be to preserve its integrity. Needless to say, they’re highly unlikely to provide any weapons or other kind of support to secessionist movements within Russia. On the contrary, they might even try to thwart their attempts to achieve independence, and in any case their sympathies will be with the Russian central government, as we have seen in the Chechen Wars for example (see above) and their default stance will be in favor of stability inside Russia as we saw in their reaction to the recent Prigozhin Rebellion. It's therefore going to be entirely up to Eastern Europeans to support those freedom fighters militarily, while at the same time fending off the likely Western attempts to thwart their undertakings.

The next area where Eastern Europeans will need to ramp up their joint efforts is propaganda. Like now, also in the future Eastern Europeans will need to repeatedly and excruciatingly convince the West of a tougher and uncompromising stance towards Russia and, what’s more important, argue their case for sowing instability and propping up the irredentist movements inside of it in order to promote its final collapse and disintegration.

For decades Russia has had a monopoly on spreading its propaganda in the West, with channels like Russia Today and more covert ways - e.g., sowing confusion and spreading its narratives in the online discourse through influencers and “troll factories”. Eastern European countries need to do something similar. This is absolutely necessary. There needs to be an analogue of “Russia Today” promoting Eastern European narratives in the West and Eastern European influencers, bloggers, etc. need to build a long lasting and formidable online presence. And yes, also there’s no need to shy away from building their own “troll factories”.

Conclusion

One must come to terms with the sad fact that the West strongly sympathizes with Russia and will once again try to save it from total collapse and disintegration as it has done repeatedly at various points in the last century. This is compounded by the filistine timidity and lack of any positive fervor that characterises modern Western society.

It will therefore be up to Eastern Europeans to take matters into their own hands. Finishing off Russia will be the mission of Eastern Europe united around Ukraine-Poland. Succeeding in this will require not only the right political decisions, but also the right mindset in the whole society. Eastern European societies will have to live and reorganize around a different ethos, rather martial in nature. Simply achieving a high standard of living like in the West and wallowing in insouciance as a result should not be the goal.

Eventually, especially in Ukraine, but also in all Eastern European countries close to Russia, the whole social life will have to be centered around the military and the higher civilizational aims that transcend the mundane, namely nothing less than reorganizing the whole western Eurasia and bringing it to the bosom of Western Civilization. They’ll need to become militarized societies. Which, however, does not mean that civilian needs must be ignored. A holistic societal framework based on the unity of military and civilian spheres in science, technology and education should be the model for Eastern European countries to implement in order to both grow strong militarily and at the same time avoid the strain that such militarization might entail for civilian life.

In the past, Central-Eastern Europe managed to come together and prevail against a mighty empire despite all the difficulties, including a rather favourable attitude towards it on the part of the Western powers. History can serve as a source of optimism and guidance.