The hints if not the drums of war had started to fill the air even before my last blogpost. We are now in the middle of this war of Russia against Ukraine and, along with many others, I am trying to make sense of it. Of course, we know who the aggressor and the victim are, respectively. Wars happen for some reasons. Wars can be also avoided. Also, sadly, wars sometimes cannot be avoided given some historical context. I start to think that Ukraine is a victim of history; its own and of others.
For one thing, Ukraine is victim of the allure of imperial hegemony in its part of the world. It is interesting to note that the two world wars of the twentieth century were catalysts for the dissolution of two empires, the Austro-Hungarian and the Ottoman Empire, the emergence of independent nation states, and the unwinding of the colonial possessions of Britain and France.
And yet against this trend, one entity went the opposite way. That was the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, or Soviet Union in short. Composed first of Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine, the Soviet Union grew to include a total of 15 republics, including the reincorporation of the Baltic states. The Soviet Union collapsed around 1990, when one after the other its constituent parts declared their independence. This however did not dim the nostalgia of its core nation, Russia, for its old imperial past. No wonder Putin has lamented the dissolution of the Soviet Union as the greatest geopolitical disaster of the 20th century. Ukraine for better or worse was part of this empire and now it is falling victim to the imperial doctrine of her neighbor.
Ukraine is also a victim of overreaching by victors. To understand this, we need to go back to the Paris Peace Conference after the end of WW I. It was there where the victorious allies imposed the most exacting war reparations against Germany. Neither the moderate position of Woodrow Wilson nor the reasoned arguments of John Maynard Keynes (one of the British representatives at the conference) were enough to placate the obstinate and revenge-thirsty French and the calculations of George Lloyd of Britain. The humiliation of Germany along with the dire economic conditions that culminated in runaway inflation would eventually kill democracy, bring Hitler to power and lead to the unprecedent human carnage of the WW II.
Why is the Paris Peace Conference relevant to the Ukrainian crisis? Because just like the heavy terms of the Paris Peace Conference fueled sentiments of national humiliation and revanchism among Germans and thus helped to drive them to Nazism, the same argument has been made in relation to the way a triumphant West treated Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Despite the many voices of reason and moderation among Democrats and Republicans, Presidents Bush (the father) and Clinton pushed for NATO expansion into states that had been parts of the Soviet empire. Through-out the presidency of Russia’s first president Boris Yeltsin there was a wide-spread sense that Russia was not treated with the respect its past history and its status as a nuclear superpower deserved. By the time Vladimir Putin took the reins of Russia, liberal democracy had made little genuine progress and communism, though, gone had been replaced by a perverted capitalist economy, dominated by oligarchs.
Very pertinent to this point are the comments of George F. Keenan, the preeminent Russia expert among American diplomats, quoted in Thomas Friedman’s NYT column this week. Looking back, Keenan criticized the West because instead of promoting the rooting of democracy and the end of Cold War antagonism with Russia, the U.S. and NATO grasped the opportunity to strengthen their geopolitical position. Keynes had made a similar point to express his frustration at the outcome of the Paris meetings. The progressive and liberal ideals, the US, Britain, and France were defending and promoting at home, Keynes argued, could not at the end be reconciled with their desire for imperial dominance abroad.
Finally, Ukraine is victim of what I will call “monkey see monkey do.” Putin has lifted a page out of the book the U.S. used to justify the war in Iraq, to falsely accuse Ukraine of harboring Nazis, scheming against the security of Russia, and conducting ethnic cleansing against its Russian-speaking population. If one superpower can get away with pretenses to make war, we can understand why another superpower feels it’s also its right to use similar methods.
Finally, Ukraine is victim to our false and overoptimistic extrapolation of history. We are supposed to live at the end of history (as Fukuyama put it), in a world that goes its merry way blending capitalism with some democracy here and some despotism there, but all working for our material enjoyment. Unlike China, the post-Cold War era has not brought comparable prosperity to Russia. So, its imperial national identity still remains a source of fulfillment. This sentiment may matter only in Putin’s head but he after all is all that matters which way Russia goes.
We can resort to history to help us understand and explain but not necessarily to forgive or cast away responsibility. Regardless of the circumstances that brought him to power, history has not forgiven Hitler for the human hecatombs he caused. Similarly, history will not be kind to Putin for his choice of war regardless of the historical context he wishes to invoke as cover.
War is a tragedy that scars both victors and vanquished. In war, humans display their worst behavior. War is also our greatest failure as a species. Unique among species, humans organize themselves in a grand scale to attack others of our own species. We have invented philosophy and religion, poetry and arts, knowledge and technology and yet we are still unable to check our most visceral emotions that lead us to mass aggression and conflict.
We are also incapable to master sufficient reason to look at our past and try to avoid the pitfalls that bring us to armed conflict. Filled with stirring emotions, bereft of reason, and abandoned by the Gods to our demons we walk into our demise.
Let's Reason 