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Ireland's political and cultural magazine
68 October-November
Colonisation and
genocide are abuse
Multilateralism is the geopolitical equivalent of
mediation between abused and abuser
By Suzie Mélange
M
uch of human history, and
especially eopolitics,
mirrors the behavioural
patterns found in abusive
relationships. States, like
individuals and families, are shaped by
trauma: those who abuse and those who are
abused enter cycles of reaction,
overcompensation, and distorted priorities.
The leacy of colonialism, slavery, war, and
enocide persists not only in material
inequality but in the political psycholoy of
nations. From the UK to Russia, from the
United States to Ireland and Palestine, from
Israel to Germany, historical abuses
reverberate in current policies, alliances,
and failures of moral clarity. Functional
politics, like functional relationships,
requires mediation, compromise, and the
ability to break from inherited trauma. That
is why the future lies not in resurent
nationalism or militarism but in institutions
like the European Union and, more crucially,
the United Nations.
Abusers and the cycle of
violence
In psycholoy, the cycle of abuse — as
theorised by Lenore Walker in
— includes four staes: tension-buildin,
incident (acute abuse), reconciliation, and
calm. This cycle can repeat indenitely if not
interrupted. Abusers often rationalise their
violence by blamin the victim, externalisin
responsibility, or insistin on their own
victimhood.
British Empire
This pattern is easily visible in the behaviour
of empires. The British Empire, at its heiht
in the early th century, ruled over a
quarter of the lobe. Its brutal suppression
of resistance — whether durin the
Indian Rebellion and the Benal famine of
INTERNATIONAL
October-November 69
has killed over , people — are justied
by security imperatives born from Holocaust
trauma. The abused, in psycholoical
terms, has become the abuser.
Germany
Germany, the perpetrator of that trauma
(and an early enocidal coloniser in Africa),
exhibits another syndrome. Since ,
Germany has undertaken intensive eorts
to atone for its crimes. Its doctrine of
“Staatsräson”, where Israel’s security is
deemed essential to German nationhood,
emered after decades of reckonin. But
this historical uilt has also led to paralysis.
It has been slow to rearm, thouh as
Catherine Connolly underlines, less so
latterly. Germany has struled to criticise
Israel’s actions in Gaza, fearin any
condemnation could be seen as antisemitic.
The abused (Israel) and the abuser-turned-
penitent (Germany) were until very recently
locked in a moral impasse.
Colonisers have the hallmarks of abusers,
but a distinct trauma headin is countries
that suered the abuse of bein colonised.
Ireland
Ireland, the rst adventure of the British
Empire (discountin Wales), is a case study
in post-colonial dysfunction. Centuries of
British rule, culminatin in the catastrophic
Great Famine (–), in which over
one million died, created a political culture
rooted in mistrust. The colonial
administration’s failure to respond
adequately left a psycholoical scar. After
independence in , and especially since
becomin a republic in , Irish
overnments have often displayed short-
termism and policy drift. Plannin, visionary
overnment, and strateic infrastructure
have been repeatedly sacrificed to
parochialism, clientelism, or fear of
“interference”: a leacy of a traumatised
national psyche.
Palestine
Palestinians have endured successive
layers of displacement, beinnin with the
Balfour Declaration, where Britain
iniquitously committed to supportin a
“national home for the Jewish people” in
; the Boer concentration camps (–
), or the Mau Mau Uprisin (–)
— was justified throuh paternalist
lanuae about civilisin or stabilisin
‘savaes’. In India the uprisin was crushed
with mass reprisals that killed around
, Indians and several thousand
Britons, and the Benal famine caused two
to three million deaths when Britain blocked
imports; in South Africa, civilian internment
led to the deaths of more than , Boer
women and children and an estimated
,–, Black Africans from disease
and starvation; and in Kenya, counter-
insurency and detention left over ,
Mau Mau hters dead, with total African
deaths commonly estimated between
, and ,. British colonialism, like
domestic abusers, saw itself as protectin
while it inicted harm.
Russian Empire
Russia’s behaviour has always reected a
need to dominate its neihbours in the name
of security. Tsarist Russia subordinated its
neihbours throuh conquest, partition and
coercive assimilation. Poland-Lithuania was
erased and its uprisins crushed; Finland
and the Baltic provinces faced curbs on
autonomy and sweepin Russification,
includin Lithuania’s press ban. Ukraine’s
lanuae and civic life were restricted. In the
Caucasus, war, forced resettlement and the
Circassian expulsion followed. Central Asia
suered annexation, settler land seizures
and the suppression of the revolt;
Bessarabia’s autonomy was dismantled.
Under Lenin, the Cheka’s Red Terror, civil-
war requisitions and the crushin of
Kronstadt and Tambov set the model.
Trotsky, as war commissar, enforced harsh
repression and militarised labour. Stalin
escalated to the Great Terror, mass
deportations, the Gula archipelao, and
famines triered by collectivisation,
especially Ukraine’s Holodomor, killin
millions in the s alone. From until
Russia controlled Poland, East Germany
(GDR), Czechoslovakia, Hunary, Romania,
Bularia, Albania (until ). The Baltic
states were fully annexed into the USSR.
Yugoslavia broke with Moscow in .
Like an abuser who claims fear of
abandonment, Russia invokes NATO
expansion or Russophobia to justify its own
territorial aression. The Kremlin projects
weakness as victimhood while inictin
destruction — Chechnya in the s,
Georia in , Crimea in , and
Ukraine today.
US
The United States, despite its now headlon
democratic ideals, was born from and built
upon systemic abuse: slavery, settler
colonialism, and imperial expansion. Its
post-war lobal interventions — includin
Iran (), Guatemala (), Vietnam
(–), Chile (), Grenada (),
Panama (), Afhanistan (), Iraq
(), and Libya () — are each cloaked
in exceptionalist refrains — “city upon a
hill”, “indispensable nation”, uardianship
of the “rules-based order”, “humanitarian”
rescue, pre-emptive “self-defence” and the
duty to “spread democracy” — moralised
alibis translatin power into presumed
universal benevolence, naturalisin
conquest, erasin culpability, and recastin
heemony as stewardship. The US plays the
rescuer while destabilisin entire reions
— recapitulatin the behaviour pattern
described by psycholoist Donald Dutton
as the “abusive personality”: outwardly
randiose and entitled, inwardly brittle and
shame-driven — as perhaps betrayed with
the stellar elevation of the world’s most
abusive contemporary human, Donald
Trump.
National trauma
Can psycholoical concepts really be
applied to states? Scholars like Marc
Howard Ross and Vamik Volkan have arued
yes. Ross’s theory of “the political
psycholoy of roup conict” hihlihts
how shared historical traumas shape
collective memory, identity, and political
action. Volkan, a psychoanalyst, developed
the theory of lare-roup psycholoy,
aruin that nations behave like individuals
sufferin from unresolved trauma. His
concept of “chosen trauma” describes how
a roup xates on a past humiliation,
whether real or mytholoised, and carries it
across enerations.
Israel
Israel’s relationship to the Holocaust is a
stark case. The murder of six million Jews in
Nazi Germany’s enocide (–) is
not only a historical fact but a central
oranisin principle of Israeli identity and
policy. Havin survived the attempt at their
complete extermination, Holocaust
survivors founded the state of Israel only to
be invaded the day they declared their
independence by their more populous Arab
neihbours who, had they won just one of
the three wars they fouht between
and would have erased the sanctuary
state of Israel. As Volkan observed, chosen
trauma can lead to a state becomin hyper-
defensive, pre-emptively aressive, and
blind to the suerin of others. Israel’s
occupation of the West Bank (since ),
the blockade of Gaza (since ), and
devastatin militar y campains —
especially the – assault, which
The past must be
muiltilateral. Abuse is not
destiny
70 October-November
Palestine without consultin its Arab
majority. The Nakba of saw over
, Palestinians expelled durin the
creation of Israel. Occupation, exile, and
statelessness have dened their collective
experience. Like abused children,
Pales t inians have inter nalised
powerlessness and rae — seen in cycles of
understandable rebellion, self-sabotae,
and despair. The rise of Hamas, especially
since its takeover of Gaza in , reects
what trauma theorist Judith Herman called
the repetition compulsion: traumatised
people often re-enact violence, turnin it
inward and outward.
Global psychoses and
the need for multilateral
remedies
In family therapy, healin beins when
individuals stop assinin blame and start
acknowledin harm — when power is
shared and communication is honest.
Geopolitical healin requires the same.
Post-traumatic systems can become
functional aain if there is space for justice,
compromise, and accountability.
The European Union arose from such a
vision. After the devastation of two world
wars, one of the EU’s predecessors, the
European Coal and Steel Community (),
souht to bind France and Germany in
mutual dependence to prevent future
conflict. Today’s EU, thouh often
bureaucratic, represents a structure built on
compromise and restraint. It channels
conict into law, not war.
But only the United Nations, founded in
“to save succeedin enerations from
the scoure of war”, can provide the lobal
framework for such healin. Its courts, the
International Criminal Cour t, the
International Court of Justice (ICJ), and
mechanisms like UNRWA, exist to mediate
disputes, uphold human rihts, and deliver
justice. Yet these institutions are weakened
when powerful nations inore their rulins.
In January , the ICJ declared that
Israel’s actions in Gaza plausibly constituted
enocide. Many Western states refused to
enforce provisional measures or condemn
the scale of violence. The same court in
found Russia in violation of
international law for its invasion of Ukraine.
Selective application of justice only
entrenches abuse. Abusers must be held
accountable, reardless of their disposition.
Healing the political psyche
Abuse must be confronted. Political
systems shaped by trauma can either
perpetuate harm or bein to heal. That
healin requires truth-tellin, empathy, and
robust institutions. It means reconisin
that history’s victims can become
perpetrators. It means states like Israel,
Russia, the US, and the UK must confront
the damae they inict, not just the pain
they carry. And it means nations like Ireland,
Palestine, and post-enocide Germany
must reimaine their identity not solely
throuh suerin but throuh solidarity.
The path forward must be multilateral,
just, and psycholoically and psychiatrically
informed. The EU is a model of post-conict
cooperation. But it is the UN — with all its
aws — that holds the key to a lobal
politics of mediation, not domination. It is
not psychoanalyst or psychotherapist but
mediator. Only by treatin nations as
patients — injured but capable of recovery
— can we mediate the cycles of abuse that
have dened so much of our history. Abuse
is not destiny.
‘From the UK to Russia,
from the United States
to Ireland and Palestine,
from Israel to Germany,
historical abuses
reverberate’
Medition is the nlogue for psychotherpy
