Source: https://thrandur.com/
Author: pelshvalen (Page 14 of 42)
The title of this post is long, but I shall make up for that with a body text that is commensurately brief.
I put to you that almost all human beings
want:
- enough to eat three times a day
- a bed to sleep in (without bedbugs)
do not want:
- to fear for their children
- to fear being assaulted when they sleep
I could make both lists very much longer, but I am sticking to the most basic of basics, because even at this most basic of basic levels, we – that is, almost all human beings – are heading in the wrong direction. Those who never had enough to eat, will be eating even less. Those whose only fear for their children was that they might get hooked on drugs or that the girls might get raped will now have far greater worries.
War games may be fun on computers, but they are not fun in real life. Climate change is not even fun on computers, and it is devastating for farmers, for the victims of hurricanes, floods and fires, for domestic and wild animals, even for whales and surfers. Climate change is or will be – in the shorter rather than the long run – hell on earth. You may or may not believe me – or rather, you might as well, because … Climate change is not linear, it is ex-po-nen-tial.
The global Earth Overshoot Day fell on 28 July this year.
What are we doing about it? What are the people to whom we entrusted the responsibility of leading our countries doing about it? They are militarising. Against each other (i.e. not against climate change).
I promised to make this brief, and I intend to keep my promise, because there are people who know far more about militarisation than I do.
I urge you to take a look at this site: https://nocoldwar.org
If the West has presented a narrative that gives a clear, recognisable picture of reality, why should it so adamantly suppress the Russian narrative, which is that USA is waging, and has long been preparing a proxy war against Russia?
Likewise, had Zelensky’s narrative given a clear recognisable picture of reality, why should he have closed down TV channels, nationalising the remaining TV channels to create a single “united news”, and why should he have banned 11 political parties, including the largest opposition party – whose former leader has, incidentally, been arrested and is being held in custody without a trial. Why is Zelensky prosecuting hundreds of people for treason, including Bakanov, chief of the security service.
Interestingly, Bakanov was head of Kvartal 95, the company founded by Zelensky, whose partners were implicated with him – i.e. Zelensky – in the Pandora Papers. You didn’t know that Zelensky was one of the heads of state that was exposed in the Pandora Papers?
Ukraine was and is a fabulously corrupt country. One of the main fixtures of Ukrainian corruption has been the oligarch Mr Kolomoisky, accused of all sorts of financial crimes, who has been Zelensky’s main backer, so much so that the IMF refused at length to grant Ukraine a loan because of ties between the two men.
I am linking to an article in the New York Times about Mr. Kolomoisky, which you may not be able to read (unless you are a NY Times subscriber). In 2014, he financed a pro-government militia against the East Ukrainian separatists. I quote the N.Y. Times:
But Mr. Kolomoisky, widely seen as Ukraine’s most powerful figure outside government, given his role as the patron of the recently elected President Volodymyr Zelensky, has experienced a remarkable change of heart: It is time, he said, for Ukraine to give up on the West and turn back toward Russia.
“They’re stronger anyway. We have to improve our relations,” he said, comparing Russia’s power to that of Ukraine. “People want peace, a good life, they don’t want to be at war. And you” — America — “are forcing us to be at war…
… the United States is simply using Ukraine to try to weaken its geopolitical rival. “War against Russia,” he said, “to the last Ukrainian.” Rebuilding ties with Russia has become necessary for Ukraine’s economic survival, Mr. Kolomoisky argued.
I should tress that the article is dated November 13, 2019, long before the war even started.
Speaking of fraud and Zelensky’s attitude to corruption in Ukraine, you should also take a look at a Washington Post Article dated March 17, 2020. Obviously, the article would not have been published today, nor the one I linked to in N.Y. Times. My point being: Whatever else Zelensky might be, he certainly is not the shining prince of democracy he is made out to be by the western press today.
Fraud, money laundering, tax evasion, etc – financial crimes – are all very complicated businesses, so complicated that reading the details about Zelensky’s network is terribly strenuous. We are tempted to jump to the next section, which is a pity, because financial crimes are real, they are serious and they undermine everything some of us still believe in.
They say that Russia underestimated Ukrainian nationalism and hence Ukrainian resistance. That may very well be true. I have no doubt that Ukrainians resented the political suppression of the Soviet era, and that they longed to get out of the USSR. Nevertheless, I know that a very large segment of the Ukrainian population spoke Russian, felt Russian and thought Russian until fairly recently. Hard to tell, exactly, just how large a segment, and for just how long. There has been a concerted effort on the part of the Ukrainian authorities, to “Ukrainianise” the country, i.e. to suppress all that is Russian, including the language. This process is referred to on the Russian side as “genocide” – to my mind, a ludicrous misnomer. Nevertheless, the pressure on Russian speakers will no doubt have been considered repressive.
My experience is that if you whip a recalcitrant child, it will hate you – silently, perhaps, but implacably. Suppression of an ethnic group is usually not a good idea. Military violence against a country that considers itself a country is usually not a good idea either.
On the other hand, how will a country react to being forced to sacrifice its male population in an absolutely pointless, hopeless and interminable war that could have been avoided?
Of course, every attempt is made in the West, to conceal the fact that the war could have been avoided, but in the long run, maybe Ukrainians will understand they’ve been had, not only by Russia but by USA/NATO/EU as well. We shall perhaps see a very angry army of widows.
For years, international analysts, and even advisers to the White House, not to mention historians, have warned USA/NATO: stay away from Ukraine. Anybody who knows anything about Russian history must know that Ukraine is not a coveted object of Russian imperialism, it is and has always been felt, by the Russians, to be at the very heart of Russia. I leave it there for you: Go study the history of Russia.
That USA/NATO chose to disregard those warnings must be considered a slap in the face by the Russians (and certainly not just by Putin); or should I say “another” slap in the face, because there have been many since the disintegration of the Soviet Union. Have you not heard of them? I suspect you might not, because that is something the Western press chooses to not write about, just as it doesn’t write about Zelensky and the Pandora papers.
You may argue that Russia is, politically, a nasty piece of work – with too many political prisoners – and I whole-heartedly agree with you!
But in USA with its soft-talking lying, cheating, slippery, vile and cynical financial elite, there are too many too-poor people and too many people in prison. Most of the prisoners are where they are, not because of their views, but because of their colour and/or their poverty. In fact USA has the largest number of prisoners in the world, larger even than China, and not just per capita. Far larger than Russia. That is neither “narrative” nor fairytale: that is a fact.
The other day, I tried to explain to my sister-in-law that USA/NATO had effectively been provoking the Russians over a long period of time . The person I was talking to was non other than my sister-in-law. She smiled and said, “well, you would say that, wouldn’t you – you like Putin.”
“I what?!!!”
“Well, at least you don’t like USA.”
It is true that I don’t like plutocracies; nor do I like oligarchies. Both control the dominant narrative within their respective hegemonic spheres.
In a recent interview, John Pilger – still alive and going strong, bless him – complained about the rapidly shrinking narrative space for journalists. He contemptuously referred to western coverage of the Ukraine war as an unprecedented “tsunami of jingoism” with which the media was “utterly consumed”.
Just so: “utterly consumed”. Mainstream media, which is what “respectable people” heed, and social media – from which also less “respectable” people take their cues – are all “utterly consumed” with this single monolithic story: Putin is a monster that pounced on the innocent little Democracy Ukraine which we are honour-bound to defend to the last Ukrainian.
How on earth has this story become so entrenched against all odds – in spite of so very many incontrovertible facts that belie it?
The late 1980s saw the publication of “Manufacturing Consent. The Political Economy of the Mass Media”. For young people advocating change and progress, this book has for decades been an eye-opener all over the world, while the establishment reacted once and for all with a lot of slamming of doors.
Three decades down the road, the advertising industry has developed the manufacture of consent – i.e. an understanding of how to control what we think, what we believe, what we fear, what we want – to a level so sophisticated as to make us faint-hearted. Yet, I want to honour the authors Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman (not the least faint-hearted) for demonstrating that propaganda is, here, there and everywhere, a tool used to serve geopolitical, ideological and corporate needs; not least in the so-called free world.
I would urge you to study an enlightening analysis in the Huffington Post called “Don’t Believe Everything You Think: Marketing, Manipulation & The American Mind” by Samuel C. Spitale.
It starts with a safe outline of the obvious, but as he gets into the finer print, I think you will find it interesting regardless of your geopolitical views. The fact that the article dates back to 2017 and seems totally oblivious to the existence of countries outside USA makes it no less relevant as a study of 2022 jingoism and manufacture of consent.
For non-US examples, I add a semi-humorous list compiled by Caitlin Johnstone of some of the “false narratives ” with which “the political/media class pummels our consciousness day in and day out”.
- We live in a free and democratic society
- Your government is your friend
- Capitalism is totally working just fine
- Putin is trying to take over the world
- Maduro must go
- Assad must go
- The governments of Iran, North Korea, and every other nation which doesn’t bow to imperialist interests must go
- Assange is a rapist Nazi Russian agent who mistreated his cat so it’s good he’s locked up
- The TV would never lie to you
I must say I’d never heard the one about TV, but the others are all too familiar.
Meanwhile, in Chile, people have opened the gates for an entirely different kind of narrative. Whether or not the new draft Constitution will be approved by the national plebiscite scheduled for 4 September remains to be seen. You may be sure, there are very powerful forces dead set against it, as the richest percentile stands to lose a great deal. For instance, Article 25 stipulates:
Es deber del Estado asegurar la igualdad de trato y oportunidades. En Chile no hay persona ni grupo privilegiado.
I’ve read a lot of legalese in my time, but I’ve never seen anything quite like that: beautiful and simple. Every man, woman and child – presuming they can read – will understand those two sentences. It will take years to implement them, but people will know their rights.
During the seventies, feminists maintained that if women had power, there would be no wars. Women, feminists claimed, know that food on the table is more important than guns. After all, we can’t eat corpses. Back then, of course, many women spent most of their lives cooking, cleaning and looking after children. But now, with so many women in power – women who never even have to boil a potato and who delegate the care of their children to underpaid strangers – it would seem that women are no better.
Mind you, I’m all for women’s equal rights. Unequivocally so! It’s just that – well, women are no better, that’s all. Look at von der Leyen and Nancy Pelosi, hawks of the first order. Nancy Pelosi, for one, should know that the greatest threats to USA are not the Chinese nor the Russians, but domestic problems. Serious domestic problems. She knows! But she is bluffing, hoping to keep the Democratic Party morale up against all odds.
Domestic problems, yes, and the global climate crisis, which is still just nibbling away at the edges of human existence, not least in the continent we all initially came from, Africa; but it will come roaring over us, all of us, including the Chinese and the Russians unless we get our acts together. We’ve had foretastes in the shape of forest fires, floods, droughts, hurricanes, cyclones, mass migrations, power outages… – but in the end, we’ll know all of the above and more, at once and everywhere. You don’t believe me? Not my problem, really, because I’ll be gone soon, and I’m not religious, so if the human species doesn’t survive, that won’t bother me much. I will point out, however, in case you have forgotten, that even today, long after Freud, denialism is still considered a serious obstacle to rational problem solving.
To be frank, it is my problem, too, because I really hate seeing people suffer. Also in the US, people are suffering and have been suffering for decades. Decades! And your politicians haven’t done a thing about it, too busy defending the neoliberal economic order and, more recently, too obsessed with the idea of recovering the country’s irreversibly lost hegemony. The Biden administration’s proposed fiscal budget for 2023 includes spending USD 813 BILLION on “defence and national security”, but apparently both houses of Congress will demand to spend more (yes, more not less!). USD 813 billion is more than was spent on “defence and national security” during any year of the Korean and Vietnam wars, and more than what is spent by China and Russia and the 7 next top military spenders combined.
More than half of what US Americans paid to the military last year, about $2,000 per taxpayer, according to an analysis by the National Priorities Project at the Institute for Policy Studies…..will have gone to giant weapons contractors like Raytheon and Lockheed Martin, along with thousands of smaller arms-making firms.
People in Europe are also suffering now, and will suffer more because of this stupid war of attrition against Russia. And of course Ukraine is suffering terribly, having been tricked into waging a war it cannot win. Mind you, Russia is not – repeat NOT – suffering. The sanctions on Russian gas and fertilisers and wheat, etc. are bringing Europe (but not Russia) to its knees. That will not – repeat NOT – benefit USA, because who will buy products from the US when Europe’s purchasing power has been reduced to pennies? There will still be Australians, of course.
USA has its holier than the Bible+Talmud+Koran so-called constitutional amendments. The defence of these “amendments” is reminiscent of religious fundamentalists’ vindication of “laws” imposed many centuries ago, laws that might have made sense at the time when they were adopted, but that are completely out-of-time and out-of-place today, in short downright nefarious.
Guns! Good heavens, how ludicrous! How pathetic! Above all, how sick! Frankly I prefer an honest hurricane, which at least reminds survivors that we – women and men – are not omnipotent.
The Norwegian foreign ministry has decided to block transport of supplies to the Russian settlement Barentsburg on Svalbard, or Spitzbergen, as the island is also called. The Russian foreign ministry has threatened retaliatory action. This is in essence very much the same situation as the one in Kaliningrad. The 400 people living in Polar conditions in Barentsburg are completely cut off from the world and depend on regular food and medical supplies from Russia, supplies that have now been blocked.
This move on the part of Norway will not harm Russia financially or militarily. It will merely – unless Russia retaliates – harm 400 innocent people in Barentsburg. Only Norway’s former Prime Minister, Secretary General Rocky, could possibly consider this move useful from a strategic point of view: If Russia does retaliate, if Russia sends warships to Svalbard to supply its community there, would that not constitute belligerent action against a NATO member and would that not constitute an excuse to attack Russia?
When I wrote my previous post, I was not aware of this situation. I did not know that Norway had replaced a long tradition of cordial relations with Russia with one of reckless provocation.
Hardly no mention of this matter has been made in the Norwegian press, which is starting to remind me of the Russian press in reverse, as it were. Likewise, the New York Times – always loyal to the currently Neocon Democratic Party – has made no mention of the matter. In other countries’ news outlets, however, it is at least considered worth mentioning. See discussion in Le Monde, Al Jazeera, Huffington Post (true, only in Spanish) and the French state-owned France24.
For those of you who read Norwegian, I eventually found a link from the northernmost local department of the Norwegian Broadcasting Company (NRK). People not living in that area, i.e. the county neighbouring Russia – a county in which attitudes to Russia have been not only cordial but warm ever since Russia liberated Finmark from the Germans in 1945 – will not normally have seen that link.
I repeat: NATO is not protecting us, not defending us. Over the past decade, and under the leadership of USA, NATO has played a very insolent game, presumably in the hope that Russia would crawl under the table. There has been little real diplomacy and, in the face of growing Islamist terrorism, surprisingly little cooperation with regard to issues which threaten us all. Instead there have been provocations, the aim of which appears to have been to enter into a duel to the death, as it were, between powers. Europe has everything to lose by heading Stoltenberg’s summons.
I’ve learnt a new word this week. Actually, the difference between an enclave and an exclave still isn’t clear to me, nor do I think it is all that important. (See definitions and examples in Wikipedia as at 27 June 2022). Oddly, the Wikipedia article doesn’t mention the exclave Gibraltar. I wonder why.
Kaliningrad is a Russian exclave bordered on the South by Poland and on the North by Lithuania. A railroad connects Kaliningrad with the rest of Russia and ensures supplies to the city.
On the other hand, a 100 km long so-called Suwalki Corridor lies between Kaliningrad and Belarus. The Suwalki corridor is subject to much NATO hand-wringing, since the three Baltic states would be pretty helpless if Russia/Belarus takes control of it.
Nonetheless, Lithuania proudly announced the other day that they would hereafter block rail transport of goods between Russia and Kaliningrad (see a discussion on the matter in Foreign Policy) effectively creating a blockade.
This step on the part of Lithuania, which is merely implementing sanctions imposed by the EU, is pretty reckless, I’d say. Obviously, if Russia feels pressured into taking belligerent action against a NATO country to supply its city, all hell will be lose (i.e. WWIII).
Of course, when the day comes, nobody will remember that we, the NATO countries, almost forced Russia to attack in order to supply the roughly half million people living in Kaliningrad. We will have forgotten, for the simple reason that most of us never knew; our press barely murmured something about the exclave in a subordinate clause.
I find myself asking what the heck is the matter with Warmonger Stoltenberg. (His name, by the way, means proud rock, so why not call him Rocky?) Had I asked him personally, he would of course have replied that fear of death should not prevent us from defending Democracy, or something to that effect. I would have retaliated with dramatic gestures that Russia has never threatened my country’s democracy (or non-aligned Sweden’s or Finland’s), that Ukraine never was a democracy and that every country the US and/or NATO has touched since 1950 has been reduced to rubble. I never argue well with people I passionately despise.
For Mr Stoltenberg, who grew up in the lap of luxury, “death” is just a word. More importantly, though, he has never ever had to be anything but Norwegian. For Norwegians a number of modern values are self-evident. Anybody or any country that does not share and understand those values is “wrong” and subject to kind but firm conversion efforts or, at worst, defamation. That is, of course, unless the person or country in question is an ally, like apartheid Israel. And now, at last, Norway is proudly and ridiculously carrying the banner together with the big guys — UK and France and Germany — determined to fight for global Democracy. We are going to “save” China, Afghanistan, Iran… etc. First, though, we must crush Russia. Of course, we are not alone. At the head of this crusade is USA.
USA’s national assembly has just, we are jubilantly told here in Norway, managed to agree on some gun control. The infinitesimal gun control agreed upon has, however, been offset by a gargantuan gun liberation ruling passed by the Supreme Court. See the New York Times for details. You might not have noticed this decision, at least if you live in Norway, where negative references to USA tend to be shied away from these days. Is the press grooming us to rally around our dear leader, President Biden and his lieutenant NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg?
The UK Government is capitalising on the conflict between Russia and the US-led alliance, to try to push a National Security Bill through Parliament. If enacted, the legislation in question will make it a criminal offence for anybody to report “restricted” information if that person – say a journalist or his/her organisation – has received funding from abroad. Investigative journalists and whistle blowers will risk ending up in jail for life.
In my country, the press is pusillanimous these days, now that our former folksy prime minister is the warmongering Secretary General of NATO. So on Monday, the UK Government’s decision to sign Julian Assange’s extradition order was only mentioned on pages 14 and 18 respectively in two of the country’s leading dailies [Dagsavisen and Aftenposten]. Admittedly the heading in both papers was “A dark day for press freedom”. When questioned about the extradition order, the Norwegian Foreign Minister was quoted as blithely “confident that the British authorities adhered fully to their international human rights obligations in this matter.” [Aftenposten, 18/02.22, p. 14]
Not in any Norwegian paper do I find a word about the United Kingdom’s proposed National Security Bill. Russia is ahead of us, of course, as far as persecution of journalists is concerned, but we’re learning, and we’re learning fast:
Allow me to Introduce Section I of the bill:
- Obtaining or disclosing protected information
- A person commits an offence if—
- (a) the person—
- (i) obtains, copies, records or retains protected information, or
- (ii) discloses or provides access to protected information,
- (b) the person’s conduct is for a purpose that they know, or ought reasonably to know, is prejudicial to the safety or interests of the United Kingdom, and
- (c) the foreign power condition is met in relation to the person’s conduct (see section 24).
- (a) the person—
- In this section “protected information” means any information, document or other article where, for the purpose of protecting the safety or interests of the United Kingdom—
- (a) access to the information, document or other article is restricted in any way, or
- (b) it is reasonable to expect that access to the information, document or other article would be restricted in any way.
- Subsection (1) applies whether the person’s conduct takes place in the United Kingdom or elsewhere.
- A person who commits an offence under this section is liable on conviction on indictment to imprisonment for life or a fine (or both).
- For the purposes of this section—
- (a) a person retains protected information if the person retains it in their possession or under their control;
- (b) disclosure includes parting with possession.
- A person commits an offence if—
Notice the expression in subsection 2: ” safety or interests of the United Kingdom”. The “interests” of UK could be defined as anything, at the discretion of the powers that be. Obviously.
Notice too, the “foreign power condition”. Just like Russia. Putin must be beaming with pride.
A bill is considered drab reading and rarely makes much headlines. Legalese is a near incomprehensible jargon, and there tends to be introductory assuaging references to “public interest … safety… security” and “protection of the general public”. By the time you get to the crux of the matter, you’ve fallen asleep. But this is a matter of freedom of the press! Have mainstream news outlets ceased to care (unless, of course, the press in question is Russian)? Have they simply given up already?
Please note that many, or maybe even most, humanitarian NGOs apply for and receive aid from numerous countries other than their own. Most worthwhile news publications, including the Guardian, depend on donors from all over the world. Many investigative journalists – those that still dare to operate as such – devote their efforts to exposing corruption. (One of the key characteristics of corruption is that it involves national or local government officials.) The bill in question would threaten them all.
I’m not British. But the British courts have so blatantly disregarded due process on a number of counts in the Assange case, and the frivolous British head of state is so quite obviously not to be trusted and, moreover, not accountable , either to the public or to the prosecuting authority, that I find myself doubting that the British Parliament is any better. If the UK enacts the National Security bill, I fear the rest of Europe will sooner or later follow suit. After all, in all of Europe, a lot of very powerful people have plenty to hide.
A number of prominent foreign affairs experts, historians and diplomats have suggested that Biden and most of his immediate predecessors have orchestrated the Ukraine war. Their articles and warnings are not being printed in the mainstream press, which is why some of them are turning to non-mainstream outlets, such as https://consortiumnews.com, while others just shut up. You’re welcome to believe that what they are saying is “Putin propaganda”, but I put to you that we are all, on both sides of the divide, bombarded with propaganda. Meanwhile, the fate of Assange does not invite out-spoken critique of the Western narrative.
If https://consortiumnews.com were based in Russia, its editor in chief would no doubt be prosecuted. What I fear is that in the not too distant future, his freedom might be threatened, also in the West. At any rate, the fate of Assange demonstrates that “freedom of the press” is already very limited.
Now that the costs of this war are starting to stand out from all the dust and smoke, we are hearing a lot of semantic exercising. I quote N.Y. Times today: “Mr. Scholz, who has been criticized for not supplying more arms, faster, to Ukraine, says that Russia must not win — but has never said that Ukraine must achieve victory.” A growing number of people are belatedly finding it opportune to remind us of Neville Chamberlain’s adage: “In war, whichever side may call itself the victor, there are no winners, but all are losers.”
Russia will most certainly have lost the battle against Ukrainian fascism. Opposing fascism with fascism rarely ends fascism. (War is, after all, fascism, seen from the perspective of the attacked party.) Russia will have won the eternal hatred of most Ukrainians, the fierce loathing of an enormous swathe of Europe’s previously neutral population – if you consider such an achievement a victory – and the addition of two countries into the enemy alliance NATO.
Most analysts finally agree, however, that the greatest loser will be Ukraine, both in terms of casualties and material damage and in terms of trauma. It will take years to rebuild the country economically and to heal emotional wounds. Fascism and Neo-Nazism will be alive and thriving, there will be political discord, and entry into the EU will be totally unrealistic for years to come.
Russia will probably have won some territory. It will not have been weakened economically. It will have consolidated its nationalism and Putin’s grip. It will have seen demonstrated even further how economically and politically feeble the US is, and it will have strengthened the case for geopolitical multi-polarity.
Ever since Navalnyj started looming too large for his personal comfort, Putin has become very much more of a hard-liner, more willing to brazenly demonstrate his fear of losing personal power. Nevertheless, having virtually lifted Russia out of the rubble when he took over, he still enjoys the unequivocal support of his compatriots. Moreover, the West has completely failed to understand Russians’ historic ties to Ukraine, and has disclosed appalling hubris, if you ask me. Russians won’t readily pardon western hubris.
Yet, much as Russians are used to keeping their mouths shut in public – they are not willing to shut down their brains. Disaffection about Putin’s refusal to accept opposition will probably grow, but only in the long term. After all, we’re increasingly seeing insidious restrictions of and even outright attacks on free speech/press also in the Western world. The Russians recognize hypocrites a mile off. (They’ve been breast-fed by their own 19th century novelists, for whom hypocrisy was a primary topic.)
The sad part is that those who clamoured loudest for military support to Ukraine have for once been not so much neocons as those who normally vociferously oppose neocons. In the name of “justice”, “fairness”, and all things good, they have been bamboozled. This is the case not least in my own country. Very sad. And here we are: Bear Market in the US, severe inflation everywhere, growing shortages of food, energy and spare parts … all inevitably to be followed by rising despair among mortgage holders and low-income households everywhere. (Despair, remember, equals havoc.)
My point being, once again: Yes, we must strive for “justice for all”, for fairness; we must oppose injustice, fascism, apartheid, BUT we must also bring our heads down from the clouds. Putin is arguably a dictator, but he is far, far from the worst of the lot. The Arabian prince, for instance, a long-term buddy of the US, is infinitely much worse.
As for winners and bamboozlers, I mean losers, Neville Chamberlain was not entirely right: Not all are losers. There will always be some people who know how to make astronomic profits from war.
The expression “international relations” can be the name of a field of study or research. It can also refer – unsurprisingly – to “international relations”.
I see that experts of “international relations” tend to be qualified as either “realist” or “liberal”. You will have to do your own research, but I have done mine and have reached the conclusion that the “liberal” school is at best pitifully naive. “At best,” I insist, and I mean “at best”.
Most nation states will prefer diplomacy (polite coercion) and cooperation to armed conflict, if for no other reason because the latter is costly. Just as most people don’t take each other to court, even if they have “a good case”, because no matter how sure they are of the legal basis for their claims, they can never be sure that “justice will prevail”.
Some “nation states” call the shots more than others in international organisations. Take even the Security Council with its “permanent members”, who have veto powers: China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States; three Western countries against two non-western. Almost like the sharply bipartisan US Supreme Court. Except that the veto power means that the Security Council is pretty well paralysed. Were it not for the veto, the West would have its way in every case. You might think that would be a good thing, but if you are not a reasonably wealthy person in a reasonably wealthy state, you might not.
We are human, after all. Our species has many lovely traits, but also some that are less loveable. Take for instance our tendency to abominate those who are different (colour, religion, outlook, sex, whatever.) When I went to upper secondary school, the school’s very best student was kicked out because he refused to cut his hair. “Quite a few years ago”, you may say, and you may think we have changed since then. Changed, yes, but at all times, and in every place, there will always be abomination. India, a country I learned to revere as the home of Ghandi, as the cradle, as it were, of non-violence, has turned into an extremely violent place. Even Sri Lanka …
When people are desperately hungry, they don’t always act nobly. When people are desperate, period, goodness knows what they will do.
I’m sure you are familiar with “group dynamics”, in workplaces, for instance. Maybe you are a student. Maybe you have a child at school. Whoever you are, I’m sure that you know, in your heart of hearts, of people who were not included, not invited, not welcome. Maybe you yourself were excluded, treated overbearingly or even hectored. Or maybe you yourself were a bully. In the US, they are so ahead of us that they even have school shootings, more often than not perpetrated by people who have not been included, invited or welcomed.
That’s us, you see. Homo sapiens. We can be very kind. We can also be anything but.
“But,” you say, “cooperating nation states will not stoop to the level of vile individuals!”
No?
- What did the West do with its Covid vaccines? Did we or did we not share them with, say Africa?
- There is a terrible famine in Africa now. Far worse than ever before. And it’s due to climate change! What are we doing about that? Huh?
And by the way, a resolution to combat “glorification of Nazism, neo-Nazism and other practices that contribute to fuelling contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance” was adopted by the UN in 2021 against two votes. Guess whose votes they were. See for yourself, finding the N preceding the names of only two countries.
https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/3951466?ln=en
Now all this was just an introduction. My real agenda is to suggest a lecture held in 2015 by John Mearsheimer. John Mearsheimer is currently a favourite hate object for the press. He was and is still however, a prominent expert on international relations, a so-called “realist”. I think that we should have paid more attention to what he said back then.
Seven years after he held that lecture, we have a war on our hands and it’s too late to prevent it and probably also too late to stop it (because wars follow their own perverse dynamic. Remember, we’re humans, i.e. not entirely rational.)
- A lot of people on both sides have died and will continue to die. Died! Like lost their lives (sometimes slowly and painfully) – leaving broken hearts, widows and orphans…
- Innumerable homes and livelihoods in Ukraine will be gone.
- Innumerable people in the US and Europe will sink into poverty or deeper poverty.
- A handful of people will grow fantastically much richer, and I bet that you and I won’t be among them.
- We are told that the war will lead to food shortages over the entire planet.
- Meanwhile, the entire planet is facing a monumental existential challenge: Climate change.
Mind you, this war is not going to end any time soon. Will it have been worth it? If so, why?
- Because we hate Putin?
- Because we believe in “freedom”?
What is freedom? For whom? From whom? How and at what cost?
Now that I think about it, though, ultimate freedom is death, so I guess, yes, this war is a step in the direction of ultimate freedom for all.