De Facto World War: Hegemonic Religious Warfare of the 21st Century
What Is a De Facto World War?
(A de facto world war is one in which war is continuous, global, undeclared, and administered through economic, informational, clandestine warfare and contained military force, as well as proxy mechanisms, rather than formal military declarations of war. It is asymmetrical, hybrid, and maintains Western Judeo-Christian civilizational hegemony, with the United States as the chief hegemonic officer. By “Western Judeo-Christian,” I am denoting a European empire-building alliance among specific Western formations of Christianity and Judaism. It does not refer to all Christians or all Jews, but to a particular civilizational project and alliance.)
While wars of the past have often included trenches, combat lines, full-scale deployments, and invasions of beaches like D-Day, this model has largely disappeared in the age of technological imperialism—imperialism based on technological superiority—aside from the case of Russia and Ukraine, as well as the destruction of Gaza by Israel. Instead, a new type of warfare has emerged from hegemony: the idea that power systematically shapes the terrain of warfare, with geopolitical consequences. This is not an abstract shift; it is a material one that is redefining hegemonic violence and the way that war is carried out. In this context, the United States functions as a white supremacist hegemonic imperialist power, inheriting the cross of the Crusades and deploying warfare methods that differ from past full-scale invasions, such as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In this essay, I argue that contemporary warfare—particularly as waged by the United States—is characterized by a de facto world war driven by hegemonic ambitions and legitimized through a specifically Western Judeo-Christian and white nationalist ideological front. By advancing this framework, I seek to clarify how religion, through a Judeo-Christian alliance, alongside technological and geopolitical strategies, is central to both the rationale and the execution of modern imperial conquest.
The past decade has not been defined by declared wars backed by UN approval or, in the case of the U.S., with the “approval” of Congress, which has not occurred for some time. Instead, a series of de facto wars has emerged in which war is neither announced nor declared, but carried out through departments of war and intelligence agencies. These hegemonic blitzkriegs of extreme violence know no borders and are not confined to a single hemisphere. Rather, they are fought across the globe in asymmetrical ways. While no one names it as World War III, we are already in it.
Propaganda and language are key components of this warfare. Social media, podcasts, and X (Twitter) pundits are used for information warfare. Language is weaponized, and terms such as “regime,” “dictator,” and the call to bring “democracy” to the Global South are propaganda efforts designed to generate public buy-in (as if they ever needed it) for regime change. These terms are used to undermine and overthrow Global South sovereignty while masking imperial power behind a pseudo-moral language of imperialist intervention. Yet many—even on the so-called left—repeat this framing, echoing CIA talking points by referring to Venezuela’s Maduro as a dictator, the Islamic Republic as a regime, and insisting these societies must be “democratized.” This is the language of hegemony, with real-world, de facto implications for a world war.
The de facto world war also involves sanctions, proxy battles in which intelligence agencies fund sectarian militias, mercenaries, coups, cyber warfare, and tanker wars, to name a few. Its objective is not territorial conquest in the classical sense, but the maintenance of U.S. hegemony in a world that has attempted to move toward multipolarity. In many ways, this form of warfare is designed to eradicate multipolarity before it can effectively consolidate, particularly through economic federations like BRICS.
If we take the most recent case of Venezuela, the United States engaged in a high-intensity decapitation-limited military operation in which it captured and kidnapped President Maduro and first combatant Cilia Flores, while killing Cuban and Venezuelan soldiers. This was done with the goal of controlling Venezuelan markets and dictating where the trade routes and logistical hubs that emerge from them would flow—ensuring that the Global South can no longer maintain interdependent relationships and that Venezuela becomes dependent on U.S. approval. This removes Cuba, China, the Islamic Republic of Iran and Russia from the logistical and trade equation, undermining economic sustainability in already sanctioned economies that also exist in the shadows. These de facto wars always carry geopolitical consequences and are designed to keep the United States in a hegemonic position.
In the context of Venezuela, Donald Trump’s Make America Great Again slogan must be read literally. It was never about the United States alone, but about reasserting dominance over all of the Americas. Venezuela was not an exception—it was a warning to the region and the world. And yet, the scale and intensity of this violence cannot be explained solely by secular geopolitics.
Religion as the Architecture of Empire
Behind all of this—though often debated by traditional Marxists who reduce religion to a secondary concern if one at all—is the role of religion itself. The United States, while advocating for the separation of church and state, operates as a Western Christian white nationalist power that believes in global domination through an alliance between a Western Christian-Judeo front. This ideological formation cannot be reduced to “capital accumulation” alone. Rather, it reflects a deeper civilizational logic in which European Christianity—rebranded as “Judeo-Christian values”—continues to determine who may rule, who may be dispossessed, and whose resistance to hegemony is deemed illegitimate.
This worldview is often expressed openly. The Department of War leader, Hegseth, sports a tattoo of a kafir and a Crusader cross, proudly signaling his ideological orientation. Similarly, Senator Lindsey Graham, speaking from occupied Palestine while advocating for war on the Islamic Republic of Iran, described the conflict as a “religious war.” This reflects an ideological tendency that transcends simple capital accumulation and instead advances control of capital through a western Christian theological justification. It also builds upon what former President George W. Bush Jr. once referred to as a “crusade” prior to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
This de facto world war and alliance between the U.S. and Israel is an extension of the Crusades (Kiracofe) in a technological age. It is an empire-building Western Christianization project operating in alliance with the Western Judeo world. The Zionist and American genocide in Palestine reveals this clearly. While the U.S. claims it was not directly involved on the ground, as the chief hegemon of the de facto world war, it provided military intelligence, special operations deployments, strategy, logistics, weaponry, and billions of dollars to Israel. It also supplied diplomatic cover, threatening other nations to comply or face the fate of Gaza.
This was done so that the Zionist project could destroy Muslim Palestinians, attempt to eradicate Islam as a political force in Gaza, and prevent the liberation of Al-Aqsa. At the same time, it served a broader goal: reshaping the Middle East under U.S. hegemony through an Israeli alliance. While there is no doubt that Trump has his economic goals through real estate and neo-colonial development, to ignore the religious foundations of this genocide is to reject reality.
This is also where the Western Judeo-Christian hegemonic front reveals its ideological unity. Though it expresses itself through different political and cultural fronts, it unites around shared civilizational interests. Christian Zionism—an explicitly theological movement that views Israeli expansion as the fulfillment of biblical prophecy—has become one of the most powerful ideological forces shaping U.S. foreign policy (Friedman). Millions of American Christians support Israeli territorial expansion not for Jewish safety, but because it aligns with apocalyptic Christian eschatology. Here, religion does not mask power—it organizes it. Understanding this is essential to understanding the de facto world war.
The de facto world war has extended beyond Palestine. In Lebanon, the Party of God was punished for intervening on behalf of the Palestinian people. While the U.S. was not directly involved militarily, it functioned as a key ally enabling Zionist aggression on behalf of the West. Once again, this was a war fought through a proxy state aligned with the Judeo-Christian order.
The United States was also directly involved in Syria, where it spent over a billion dollars attempting to topple Assad’s government. Central to this strategy was the cultivation of reactionary militant fronts with religious branding, deployed as mercenaries to advance Western objectives while simultaneously reinforcing propaganda that frames Islam as backward and addicted to violence. Although U.S. troops were deployed into Syria, the warfare that proved most effective came through the funding of AQ and HTS—groups that operated at the behest of Western power while maintaining a pseudo-jihadi image that justifies war on terror spending and operations. What many falsely believed to be a “blessed revolution” was yet another Western intervention, culminating in a joint Israeli, U.S., and Syrian letter emphasizing cooperation, sealed with Trump spraying perfume on Jolani.
Yemen’s resistance movement has likewise been targeted through sustained naval and air campaigns because it refused to abandon support for Palestinians. This was not a full-scale invasion, but a contained military operation aimed at destroying Yemeni resistance and reopening shipping lanes closed as part of its oceanic humanitarian mission to stop the genocide in Palestine.
Somalia, too, has been bombed by this same front. At the same time, the Zionist recognition of Somaliland functions as a means for the West to expand its footprint in the Red Sea and the Horn of Africa, establishing a strategic beachhead in East Africa. Though the recently announced Somalia, Egypt, and Saudi defense agreements may prevent further Israeli expansion in the region, only time will tell.
Nigeria has been bombed under the pretext of protecting Christians. The United States claimed it was targeting ISIS; however, Nigerians with no connection to ISIS were impacted. Yet ISIS’s former member is a U.S. ally in Syria. Here, the U.S. drives sectarian divides to be able to create further instability in Nigeria while justifying the bombing of Muslims.
Why Iran Is the Central Target
But in many ways, all roads lead to the Islamic Republic of Iran. The central target of this religious de facto war is the attempt at “regime change” in the Islamic Republic of Iran. The CIA, Mossad, MI6, DGSE, and other Western intelligence agencies have engaged in hybrid warfare against Iran through some of the most unconventional methods. This is where we see unity in the Judeo-Christian front. The Israelis attempted a decapitation strike during the so-called “12-day war,” seeking to eliminate Iran’s political leadership, military command, nuclear facilities, and scientific research capacity. The U.S-Zionist axis has repeatedly shown its intent to assassinate Ayatollah Khamenei, one of the leading Shia clerics in the world. This again reflects a limited form of war: undeclared and waged through intense bombing campaigns rather than full-scale invasion. Iran, however, absorbed these strikes, engaged in self-defense as defined by international law, and forced a cessation of attacks.
Since then, the United States has pursued continued economic strangulation through sanctions designed to force the population into submission to U.S. hegemony. These sanctions are not merely instruments of economic warfare; they serve to impose a broader ideological and religious order—one in which U.S. power is justified and enforced through a Judeo-Christian civilizational logic.
The world economy, under U.S. hegemony, is backed by the dollar, which itself becomes a weapon of economic control. Through market manipulation and the creation of instability, the dollar is used to manufacture the conditions necessary for regime change. This method has been extensively deployed against Iran, and the U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has admitted to this, calling it deliberate and “economic statecraft” that creates a “dollar shortage,” and it manipulates the economy, causing banks to crash.
While some have attributed Iran’s sole economic challenges to mismanagement and corruption—conditions intensified by sanctions—the central contradiction remains that Iran is one of the most heavily sanctioned nations in the world. This environment allows protests that may begin with righteous intentions to be easily co-opted and transformed into regime-change terrorism through the deployment of foreign intelligence agencies and ethno-separatist groups. The objective is disunity: fracturing the system and pushing Iran toward Balkanization or a state of permanent civil war.
What all of these cases share is that they target Muslim societies or regions densely populated by Muslims. Venezuela stands as the lone exception—and even that exception was identified by Maduro himself, who noted that once the West is finished targeting Muslims, it would come for Catholic Venezuelans. This reflects a form of Catholicism rooted in liberation theology rather than submission to imperial authority. Venezuela itself was allied with the Axis of Resistance and had a long history of solidarity with Muslim West Asian resistance movements. What becomes clear, then, is that the West reserves for itself the power to decide who belongs within its Christendom and who does not. Take, for example, the Palestinian Christians who’ve had their churches desecrated and been spat on by Zionist settlers, and this is supported by Christian Zionists. This mirrors the crusades, in which crusaders attacked orthodox indigenous traditions.
This de facto world war may yet escalate into an openly declared global conflict, where the de facto is dropped, and beaches are invaded. But even now, one reality is clear: the Western Judeo-Christian world order is engaged in a campaign to eliminate the Islamic tradition of resistance and any ideology that resists its civilizational and economic domination. Understanding the de facto world war as a framework allows us to grasp not only the changing nature of warfare but the central role of religion in its hegemonic justification. The question now is not whether this war exists—but how long the world will pretend it does not.
References:
Bush, George W. “President: Today We Mourned, Tomorrow We Work.” The White House, Office of the Press Secretary, 16 Sept. 2001, georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2001/09/20010916-2.html. Accessed 22 Jan. 2026.
DropSiteNews [@DropSiteNews]. “WATCH: U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent brags at Davos about the role U.S. sanctions have played in collapsing Iran’s economy.” X, 16 Jan. 2026, x.com/DropSiteNews/status/2013738959273078880. Accessed 22 Jan. 2026.
Friedman, Daniel. “Christian Zionism and Its Impact on U.S. Foreign Policy.” Religious Studies and Theology, vol. 28, no. 1, 2009, pp. 47–62, https://doi.org/10.1558/rsth.v28i1.47.
Kiracofe, Clifford A. Dark Crusade: Christian Zionism and U.S. Foreign Policy. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2009.
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