This short piece came about because of continuing discussions on the subject of Ukraine in a Discourse Forum I frequent. The forum contains its fair share of Ukrainians, Russians and Eastern Europeans, so often the discourse is somewhat different from the standard Western narrative, and the discussions have often been highly emotive. This was the article which provoked my response- Kremlintarians: Russia’s war on Ukraine exposes great libertarian divide
Peter, I think there is a false distinction on the part of the writer, even though he himself tries somewhat unsuccessfully to spell out the paradox. One can be complete against America’s history of Forever Wars, completely ineffective Regime Change Wars, and still be both sympathetic to the Ukrainian people and against Putin’s aggression.
Here’s the rub. It was and is not an unprovoked war of aggression. Don’t get me wrong- Putin’s casus belli was faulty, but America and her allies had ample opportunity to avert this unfolding human tragedy, to nip it in the bud. Before the war, they could have pressurised Zelenski to accept a deal which guaranteed that Ukraine joined neither NATO nor the EU, with additional provisions for independent investigators/monitoring in the Donbas.
In fact, regardless of my own personal dislike of Trump- I would be willing to bet good money that given his bull in a china shop approach to diplomacy and narcissistic belief in his own deal-making prowess, Trump would have averted the Ukrainian crisis entirely- or at least forestalled it temporarily.
But that wasn’t the political aim of the Western establishment. They wanted revenge on Putin for the humiliation suffered as a result of Crimea and to repay the insult in the same coin they were once offered. They wanted to humiliate Putin on the world stage and weaken him domestically. They honestly believed, erroneously, that he would back down. In addition, they were acting cravenly to save their own political skins. Can you imagine the political hit taken by the parties in power in both Westminster and Washington, by their respective opposition parties, for entertaining serious, concessionary, negotiations?
And let’s not fail to acknowledge the self-deception involved. Politicians as a species are entirely capable of the kind of mental gymnastics required to make their own self interest seem to them a matter of national priority- performing a metaphysical transmutation which substitutes their own selfish goals for national pride. It’s sheer hubris. Remember Jim Hacker, every time he waxed Churchillian? (British early 80s sitcom reference- Yes Minister)
Of course, if we are being brutally honest we British had more reason than most for bellicosity. The Salisbury Novichok incident was the deliberate deployment of a WMD on British soil. It inadvertently killed innocent civilians. One wonders why the Russians simply didn’t follow the example of the Israelis when dealing with matters of national sovereignty abroad and deliver a bullet to the back of Sergei Skripal’s head. Could it be perhaps because Putin himself had bought into the insane ravings of an envious Frenchman about how Britain is behind every modern conspiracy in the world?
The scene was set long before the earlier events this year. The mistake is in thinking that there was anything remotely military or geopolitical about this sad debacle. This whole affair was purely political- the deeply cynical maneuvering of vainglorious men conscious of their status in the world and how history will remember them.
Old men make wars and young men fight them. It was ever thus, and thus it will ever be. The mistake was in thinking that we as a collection of civilisations could ever rise above this sad truth. But don’t believe the propaganda from any source. Again, our leaders failed us- on both sides- they could have easily diverted this disaster for the Ukrainian people, the Developing World and both Russia and the West. The Great and Good play their sick and twisted games and it’s ordinary who people suffer- for what, I hear you ask? Nothing more than their own vanity- assigning the avoidance of political embarrassment a greater priority than human life.
Unfortunately, with a few notable exceptions, all politicians are ideologues. It’s in the very nature of the profession- it’s in the job description, selling ideas to their own people. This is one of the reasons why power corrupts- because, being in love with ideas they naturally fall in love with their own, and become like Narcissus staring at his own reflection. This in turn twists their priorities into something not quite human. Remember, most Great Evil is committed in the name of some entirely hypothetical and illusory Good.
We should reinstate the Roman chariot tradition and pay men to whisper in these great men’s ears ‘Memento Mori’. Perhaps in the modern context it might avoid needless civilian casualties.
Ukraine was about political hubris and pride- nothing more, nothing less.
It should be noted that I don’t entirely agree with this position. I was simply making a strong argument about the nature of politics and why we should all be highly sceptical of any clam made by a politician to some supposed higher good. One of the things I’ve found from staring at discussion boards on highly emotive subjects like COVID, Trump or Ukraine is the extent to which it makes one world weary in the sense that such topics innately divide people, and very little progress is ever made. Worse still, they only seem to harm the relationships we make online- which is tragic given that, putting the reductive cesspool of the likes of Twitter aside, the Internet can still offer the opportunity, for those so inclined, to finally understand the worldviews of those with radically different political philosophies from our own.
Plus, if I’m being brutally honest with myself, I’ve become somewhat fond of the libertarians I’ve met online. Yes, it can be somewhat infuriating to argue with them over politics and policy- given they don’t accept most of the usual political priors- but overall, they are very nice people. I found myself possessed of the natural urge to defend them upon reading the article above.
"they could have pressurised Zelenski to accept a deal which guaranteed that Ukraine joined neither NATO nor the EU"
Sorry, I don't think that would have done any good - because I don't think those were Putin's *real* main reasons for invading Ukraine - so 'fixing' them would have been an exercise in futility. (They were, I think, mostly just excuses he gave to sell the war to the Russian people - and a line that has found a lot of adherents among *some* conservatives in the West - although there may be a certain amount of truth to them, in that he does seem to see NATO as a 'threat' to Russia - the expansionist Russia I describe below.) What do I reckon were his real reasons?
The first Putin himself laid out in his essay "On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians" (http://www.en.kremlin.ru/misc/66182), which is critical reading for anyone attempting to understand Putin, and this war. Putin apparently sees himself as a new Peter the Great, whose destiny it is to re-build the Russian Empire. Russia has been on the same trajectory - absorbing its neighbours - for hundreds of years. That's why it stretches across *11 time zones*. Look at its whole history - the expansion to the Pacific in the 1600s; the annexation of the 'stans' in the 1700s-1800s; taking over its Western neighbours. (It's instructive to note that the wars/annexation involving Poland, Finland and the Baltics in 1939-1940 were the *second* time Russia had moved there; Finland had gained its independence in 1918, during the Russian Revolution.) The focus on the 'Communist threat' after WWII made the Cold War seem purely like an ideological battle, but that was only part of what was going on; in retrospect, it was just one more chapter in Russia's long arc.
The second was revealed by Farida Rustamova's (an un-paralleled source of information on what's *really* going on inside the Kremlin, *all* of whose columns are mandatory reading) column, "“Now we're going to f*ck them all.” What's happening in Russia's elites after a month of war" (https://faridaily.substack.com/p/now-were-going-to-fck-them-all-whats). She reckons that Putin really started the war to entrench his power in Russia (among other reasons). If you look at the arc of Putin's time in Russia (the clash with the oligarchs; the apartment bombings; the recent wave of dead oligarchs; etc, etc) the consolidation of personal power has been a consistent goal.
Were those his *only* reasons? Perhaps not; but they were certainly *very important* goals. In that light, 'neutralizing' Ukraine was a fool's errand - and anyone who thinks it would have solved the problem has an insufficient appreciation for the longer and larger historical context.
Did *some* in the West see an opportunity to cripple Russia, using Ukraine as the cannon fodder? Perhaps - but they didn't *lure* Russia into this foolish war to do so - far from it. In fact, any attempt to prevent it, with less than traditional 'great power' moves ('do it and we'll blow your head off'), was doomed to failure - given what Putin perceived as *his* incentives to do it. (His perception was flawed in so many ways I don't have time/space to list them - including the incompetence/corruption in the 'newly re-built' Russian armed forces.)
In fact, most in high places in the West thought Russia would succeed in fairly short order! That kind of blows up the theory that that this war was a clever plot to cripple Russia; a short war wouldn't have been more than a speed bump on Russia's path to power - unlike the current conflict. Although Hedrick Smith in some sense saw this coming 30 years ago, in his 'The New Russians': "Ukraine, the second-largest republic, and the only one capable of posing a serious armed challenge to Russia proper." (pg. 565).
The long-term result of the current conflict may well be beyond their wildest dreams: just as Afghanistan was a major factor in the collapse of the USSR, I wonder if the Ukraine war may result in the disintegration of the current Russian behemoth. If so, it will be one of the largest testaments in history to The Law of Unintended Consequences.
Munich - now there's an interesting comparison. Most of these comparisons focus on one side only. Thus German unpreparedness for war in 1938 is generally omitted particularly by Chamberlain apologists whereas allied unpreparedness highlighted. The German general staff admitted they couldn't have pierced the Czech frontier defences with the equipment they had.
The whole French and British leadership establishments panicked and rather than thinking what they could do ran away. Thankfully this didn't happen in the Ukrainian situation and the response has been pretty impressive especially on the British and American sides. Do you remember 'politically correct' language? I suspect that wokeness will go the same way.
A rather grandiose and Western-centric narrative don’t you think. Some libertarians ascribe to this position but others are far less hubristic about the supposed machinations of Western “great men.” Their position could be summed up as: because most things are beyond our control and we face such an incredible amount of uncertainty/lack of knowledge, any intervention on our part would likely only make things worse (just as Putin’s foolish intervention is backfiring on him).
In this narrative I see little role for Ukrainian agency. If anything, it’s the opposite of libertarian in that it sees a few Western fat cats as manipulating events behind the scenes. I’m not sure the West can determine events. Not in any meaningful way. I highly doubt Biden and Truss can control Zelensky, let alone Putin.
Good piece, but you left out the painful result for Britain: an energy crisis that led to a debt crisis that led directly to the shortest premiership in history and political and economic chaos. The debt crisis is a true crisis that can only be solved by allowing Russian energy back into the fold...but OMG, I can hear the screaming already. Reality does bite...
PS: Thanks for the Kremlintarians link; the link to the Liberpedia article within it was very interesting.
FWIW, I think the column is right on target; I just re-read it, but see little to disagree with. Their proximity to Russia seems to have focused the thinking of the Eastern Europeans quoted there. Ironically, I see the people outside Eastern European whom the column is about as ideological 3rd cousins to progressives, their notional opponents; the two groups' ideological ideas are of course completely at odds, but both groups are alike in living in their own imaginary reality, not the real world.
The popularity of Russian propaganda, among certain circles in the US, has been very eye-opening to me. I observed that that PR effort is likely part of Putin's plan to divide the West. His military is fairly inept, but as a life-long KGBer, his schemes to undermine people's minds are a little more functional.
I am not for Putting at all, but for Biden, the EU politicians and the UK political class even less. Am i a libertarian? for sure yes.
As a hetero white male with a job in the private industry and that had to study a good amount and fight everyday to keep my job. To who am i closer, to the Woke agenda of the west politicians and elites or to the speeches attributed to Putin in these matters?, hell i am much more like Putin, and i would like the world to come to its senses.
Having seen Libya, i live very close to it, having seen other "colors revolutions", i fully understand the fears of any country to keep its sovereignty and trying to control the "help of those ONGs" (these usual suspects. Can you name a country that having enjoyed a "colour revolution" is better off? the women with Sadam, with Gadaffi and previously in Iran had more rights they have today. Thanks very much western politicians, sorry but i would wish these politicians to be held accountable, who is going to help me? i do not see any of the commentators here willing to help me
Seeing how the democracies work, that is the most classical expression of a circus, Take, USA elections, take Spain government, my country, take Primer minister appointment in Italy and the technocrats (it has been 10 years without a government elected by its people). Sorry but i am really considering preferring a dictatorship, at least we would know what we have and we would not need to be bombarded with daily subliminal propaganda to be convinced.
Sorry but the west is a complete mess, elites, political class of the west, these could not care less about the inhabitants of these countries. In a certain way it seems that Putin cares more about the Russians than the west governments care about the people of the west.
Do i condemn Putin action? yes with all my might., do i approve it? for sure not, do i want him to finish Putin's power era? yes. Is Putin such a mastermind, well i think he is also on the payroll and that he has been elevated by the west media there is a book called "the best enemy money can buy" that i think is nearly 100% applicable.
Please do not ask me to defend the politicians from the west that i think hold at least 50% (yes, at least) of this war.
I really pity the people of Ukraine, being them of the Russian ethnic or the Ukrainian ethnic. I pray daily for this war to finish and that no more normal people dies.
On a frivolous point, this is the wet dream of Poland & France being able to regulate the energy to the German industry. Do you think they would let them to have a relative prosperity like the one Germany has enjoyed over them ..... It is going to be fun.
I'm with Noel. We can invent whatever we want when talking about what might have been, but it seems to me that Putin wants his empire back and that starts with Ukraine and he was going to invade no matter what. This is true irrespective of whatever critiques one might have of 'us' or the Americans or NATO or whoever.
War and sanctions; tax unequally and spend ever more into debt; propaganda; totalitarianism/authoritarianism; socialism/fascism/crony capitalism; cages for those who don't toe the line. What's not to trust about people who spend so much money to "serve" others by force?
It rather simplifies and distorts things, doesn't it. I think Jeremy Corbyn would have been proud of that one. The alternatives to the West don't exactly fill me with joy.
"they could have pressurised Zelenski to accept a deal which guaranteed that Ukraine joined neither NATO nor the EU"
Sorry, I don't think that would have done any good - because I don't think those were Putin's *real* main reasons for invading Ukraine - so 'fixing' them would have been an exercise in futility. (They were, I think, mostly just excuses he gave to sell the war to the Russian people - and a line that has found a lot of adherents among *some* conservatives in the West - although there may be a certain amount of truth to them, in that he does seem to see NATO as a 'threat' to Russia - the expansionist Russia I describe below.) What do I reckon were his real reasons?
The first Putin himself laid out in his essay "On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians" (http://www.en.kremlin.ru/misc/66182), which is critical reading for anyone attempting to understand Putin, and this war. Putin apparently sees himself as a new Peter the Great, whose destiny it is to re-build the Russian Empire. Russia has been on the same trajectory - absorbing its neighbours - for hundreds of years. That's why it stretches across *11 time zones*. Look at its whole history - the expansion to the Pacific in the 1600s; the annexation of the 'stans' in the 1700s-1800s; taking over its Western neighbours. (It's instructive to note that the wars/annexation involving Poland, Finland and the Baltics in 1939-1940 were the *second* time Russia had moved there; Finland had gained its independence in 1918, during the Russian Revolution.) The focus on the 'Communist threat' after WWII made the Cold War seem purely like an ideological battle, but that was only part of what was going on; in retrospect, it was just one more chapter in Russia's long arc.
The second was revealed by Farida Rustamova's (an un-paralleled source of information on what's *really* going on inside the Kremlin, *all* of whose columns are mandatory reading) column, "“Now we're going to f*ck them all.” What's happening in Russia's elites after a month of war" (https://faridaily.substack.com/p/now-were-going-to-fck-them-all-whats). She reckons that Putin really started the war to entrench his power in Russia (among other reasons). If you look at the arc of Putin's time in Russia (the clash with the oligarchs; the apartment bombings; the recent wave of dead oligarchs; etc, etc) the consolidation of personal power has been a consistent goal.
Were those his *only* reasons? Perhaps not; but they were certainly *very important* goals. In that light, 'neutralizing' Ukraine was a fool's errand - and anyone who thinks it would have solved the problem has an insufficient appreciation for the longer and larger historical context.
Did *some* in the West see an opportunity to cripple Russia, using Ukraine as the cannon fodder? Perhaps - but they didn't *lure* Russia into this foolish war to do so - far from it. In fact, any attempt to prevent it, with less than traditional 'great power' moves ('do it and we'll blow your head off'), was doomed to failure - given what Putin perceived as *his* incentives to do it. (His perception was flawed in so many ways I don't have time/space to list them - including the incompetence/corruption in the 'newly re-built' Russian armed forces.)
In fact, most in high places in the West thought Russia would succeed in fairly short order! That kind of blows up the theory that that this war was a clever plot to cripple Russia; a short war wouldn't have been more than a speed bump on Russia's path to power - unlike the current conflict. Although Hedrick Smith in some sense saw this coming 30 years ago, in his 'The New Russians': "Ukraine, the second-largest republic, and the only one capable of posing a serious armed challenge to Russia proper." (pg. 565).
The long-term result of the current conflict may well be beyond their wildest dreams: just as Afghanistan was a major factor in the collapse of the USSR, I wonder if the Ukraine war may result in the disintegration of the current Russian behemoth. If so, it will be one of the largest testaments in history to The Law of Unintended Consequences.
Munich - now there's an interesting comparison. Most of these comparisons focus on one side only. Thus German unpreparedness for war in 1938 is generally omitted particularly by Chamberlain apologists whereas allied unpreparedness highlighted. The German general staff admitted they couldn't have pierced the Czech frontier defences with the equipment they had.
The whole French and British leadership establishments panicked and rather than thinking what they could do ran away. Thankfully this didn't happen in the Ukrainian situation and the response has been pretty impressive especially on the British and American sides. Do you remember 'politically correct' language? I suspect that wokeness will go the same way.
A rather grandiose and Western-centric narrative don’t you think. Some libertarians ascribe to this position but others are far less hubristic about the supposed machinations of Western “great men.” Their position could be summed up as: because most things are beyond our control and we face such an incredible amount of uncertainty/lack of knowledge, any intervention on our part would likely only make things worse (just as Putin’s foolish intervention is backfiring on him).
In this narrative I see little role for Ukrainian agency. If anything, it’s the opposite of libertarian in that it sees a few Western fat cats as manipulating events behind the scenes. I’m not sure the West can determine events. Not in any meaningful way. I highly doubt Biden and Truss can control Zelensky, let alone Putin.
Politics inescapably is power games, and
💬 [u]nfortunately, with a few notable exceptions,
...power selects for the worst and corrupts even the best 😳
~~
PS Must admit your 'any *clam* made by a politician' does pack some meaningful overtones 👌
PPS You Brits just can’t help it being on the constant lookout for an exercise in sticking it to the French 😇
Good piece, but you left out the painful result for Britain: an energy crisis that led to a debt crisis that led directly to the shortest premiership in history and political and economic chaos. The debt crisis is a true crisis that can only be solved by allowing Russian energy back into the fold...but OMG, I can hear the screaming already. Reality does bite...
PS: Thanks for the Kremlintarians link; the link to the Liberpedia article within it was very interesting.
FWIW, I think the column is right on target; I just re-read it, but see little to disagree with. Their proximity to Russia seems to have focused the thinking of the Eastern Europeans quoted there. Ironically, I see the people outside Eastern European whom the column is about as ideological 3rd cousins to progressives, their notional opponents; the two groups' ideological ideas are of course completely at odds, but both groups are alike in living in their own imaginary reality, not the real world.
The popularity of Russian propaganda, among certain circles in the US, has been very eye-opening to me. I observed that that PR effort is likely part of Putin's plan to divide the West. His military is fairly inept, but as a life-long KGBer, his schemes to undermine people's minds are a little more functional.
Hello Geary and people,
Well here I am as the advocate of the devil
I am not for Putting at all, but for Biden, the EU politicians and the UK political class even less. Am i a libertarian? for sure yes.
As a hetero white male with a job in the private industry and that had to study a good amount and fight everyday to keep my job. To who am i closer, to the Woke agenda of the west politicians and elites or to the speeches attributed to Putin in these matters?, hell i am much more like Putin, and i would like the world to come to its senses.
Having seen Libya, i live very close to it, having seen other "colors revolutions", i fully understand the fears of any country to keep its sovereignty and trying to control the "help of those ONGs" (these usual suspects. Can you name a country that having enjoyed a "colour revolution" is better off? the women with Sadam, with Gadaffi and previously in Iran had more rights they have today. Thanks very much western politicians, sorry but i would wish these politicians to be held accountable, who is going to help me? i do not see any of the commentators here willing to help me
Seeing how the democracies work, that is the most classical expression of a circus, Take, USA elections, take Spain government, my country, take Primer minister appointment in Italy and the technocrats (it has been 10 years without a government elected by its people). Sorry but i am really considering preferring a dictatorship, at least we would know what we have and we would not need to be bombarded with daily subliminal propaganda to be convinced.
Sorry but the west is a complete mess, elites, political class of the west, these could not care less about the inhabitants of these countries. In a certain way it seems that Putin cares more about the Russians than the west governments care about the people of the west.
Do i condemn Putin action? yes with all my might., do i approve it? for sure not, do i want him to finish Putin's power era? yes. Is Putin such a mastermind, well i think he is also on the payroll and that he has been elevated by the west media there is a book called "the best enemy money can buy" that i think is nearly 100% applicable.
Please do not ask me to defend the politicians from the west that i think hold at least 50% (yes, at least) of this war.
I really pity the people of Ukraine, being them of the Russian ethnic or the Ukrainian ethnic. I pray daily for this war to finish and that no more normal people dies.
On a frivolous point, this is the wet dream of Poland & France being able to regulate the energy to the German industry. Do you think they would let them to have a relative prosperity like the one Germany has enjoyed over them ..... It is going to be fun.
Take care and nice weekend
I'm with Noel. We can invent whatever we want when talking about what might have been, but it seems to me that Putin wants his empire back and that starts with Ukraine and he was going to invade no matter what. This is true irrespective of whatever critiques one might have of 'us' or the Americans or NATO or whoever.
War and sanctions; tax unequally and spend ever more into debt; propaganda; totalitarianism/authoritarianism; socialism/fascism/crony capitalism; cages for those who don't toe the line. What's not to trust about people who spend so much money to "serve" others by force?
It rather simplifies and distorts things, doesn't it. I think Jeremy Corbyn would have been proud of that one. The alternatives to the West don't exactly fill me with joy.