a bonobo humanity?

So, there were only 21 years between the first and second world war, which ended over 80 years ago, and we’re all more civilised now, right? Some more than others of course – there are still plenty of nazis and fascists around. But who are these people?

Don’t get caught up in the nazi anti-Jewish thing, which was terrible of course, but nazism was more about racial elitism and superiority, together with lies about history and some fake previous ‘reich’ or estate or empire that needs to be resurrected. I’m tempted to call today’s efforts in that direction ‘Putinism’, but that might be getting too personal. No doubt an effective name and rallying call will be thought up soon enough – just another repetition of the fascism of old. 

It’s unclear as yet whether this new world war has already started, slowly for the rest of the world, not so for Ukraine, and there are many things that could derail its escalation, most notably Putin’s liquidation. Currently, though, 73-year-old Putin is trying hard to give every impression that he’s not finished yet, that he’s just getting started. Russia has the world’s largest nuclear arsenal, though not by a large margin. It’s arguable that their military doesn’t have the discipline and training of their opposites, the USA, but that’s hardly a comforting thought. Putin clearly has no conscience with regard to the slaughter of innocents, and has encouraged his minions, and the Russian people in general, to think likewise.

So Russia is currently the epicentre of fascism and totalitarianism, and with the USA currently completely rudderless, western Europe has to shoulder the responsibility of effectively deterring Putin from using the nuclear option, which he’s undoubtedly considering. The problem, of course, is that Russia and the USA together possess 90% of the world’s nukes, leaving NATO (sans the USA) without much bargaining power. Anna Reid’s Borderland, updated from the 90s to cover the Putin era and his full-scale war on Ukraine, gives an indication of just how popular Putin is, and how catching his contempt for ‘the west’ has been, in Russia. It’s a bit similar to the popularity of Trump among the USA’s vast ‘left behind’. It’s hard, though, for anyone with the most basic humanist principles, to understand how such events as the Bucha massacre can be casually dismissed, or more likely, denied. It’s particularly difficult, I suppose, for someone of my own background, so far from such brutality, so cushioned against anything like this horror.

I would highly recommend Reid’s book, which has sometime brought tears to my eyes, sometimes enraged me, and often made me feel a strange mixture of good luck and a kind of ridiculous envy that I’ve never been remotely tested by the kinds of experiences that so many Ukrainians have gone through over the past twenty years or so, whatever their first language might have been. In Australia we struggle to find differences between east and west in this incredibly massive continent, with an area about 12 times that of Ukraine and only two-thirds or so of its population (which has declined since the war due to slaughter and emigration), and we would also struggle to find crises within our borders – though there are the occasional piddling anti-immigration protests, and a few days ago I encountered a few people protesting on the steps of our state parliament (in South Australia) – Cambodians protesting against Thai aggression – a border dispute that I know very little about, but it makes me wonder…

Border disputes are all about what part of some disputed land is ‘yours’ or ‘mine’. Having read Anna Reid’s book about the ‘disputed’ territory that is Ukraine, with its predominantly Russian-speaking east and Ukrainian-speaking west (to put it very simplistically), I’ve now embarked on another book, Shattered Lands, by Sam Dalrymple, which deals with the old British Raj and its partitioning, no doubt involving border disputes aplenty – not, though, including the Thai-Cambodian dispute, but likely the Thai-Burmese border to the west. 

But all wars, including world wars, are border disputes, are they not? The second world war was about expanding the German ‘reich’ – to the east, the west, the north, the south and all points between. The first world war was about all sorts of border tensions, with British and French expansionism, the holding struggles of the Germans and Austro-Hungarians, and the decline of the Ottoman Empire. And of course there have been many others – North and South Korea, North and South Vietnam, the Mexican-American war of the 19th century. And think of China – to quote AINL:

China has historically expanded and currently asserts its borders through a mixture of war, military pressure, and diplomatic agreements, often stemming from long-standing historical claims.

References

Anna Reid, Borderland: a journey through the history of Ukraine, 2022

Sam Dalrymple, Shattered lands: five partitions and the making of modern Asia, 2025

https://online.norwich.edu/online/about/resource-library/six-causes-world-war-i