Posts Tagged ‘Putin’
On a couple of repulsive dictators, mostly
So in my old age I’m finding that the world is going to pot. Under the circumstances I’m lucky to be living in Australia.
Of course the world is much more than China, or the USA, or Russia (in population order), but these are the potty countries I’m referring to – or to be fairer and more accurate, the countries with the pottiest leaders – that I know of.
China has Xi Jingping, the first of the scumbags – not necessarily in order of scumbuggery. He’s in a battle of sorts with his military leaders, apparently because they’re not being warmongering enough. The USA has Trump – need I say more? And Putin – it’s now more or less official – has failed in his brief military operation against Ukraine, with a loss of men, or drone fodder, coming up to 2 million. Not that psychopaths care about such numbers.
Of these three horrific scenarios, the one I’m probably least willing to look at is the Trump shite. So… well let’s, look at Putinland. I’ve been watching The military show on Youtube, which can get quite technical at times, but they generally present a scenario of Russian failure. This is of course what I want to hear, but I’m also quite skeptical. The Russians surely aren’t this stupid. I’m surprised that Putin has miscalculated so badly, but I just can’t see him giving up after having invested so much in this invasion. And yet… if he had something more substantial to throw at the Ukrainians, leaving aside the nuclear option, he surely would have used it by now. And surely, even Putin’s position must be less secure after such devastating losses.
So… I’ve been watching more of The military show, which presents the devastation being wrought upon Kiev – so maybe they’re not being so one-sided, though it’s clear this is no Russian propaganda show, to put it mildly. I just hope their stuff is accurate. Recently they’ve presented ‘the most dramatic naval upset in modern history’, no less – that being the destruction of Russia’s naval blockade in the Black Sea. Ukraine, as even I knew, has long been a massive wheat and corn exporter to many NATO states, as well as China and other rather powerful countries. When the war started, those exports were reduced by almost 50%, and things were looking very grim for the country’s ability to fund its defences. However Ukraine and its allies appear to have outsmarted and out-manoeuvred the Russians, using mines, artillery and missiles – a ‘defensive triangle’ (watch The military show for details), and then developing its unmanned drone defence/attack systems with a rapidity that has apparently astonished the military world. They seem to be underwater drones, or not, pardon my ignorance, and they were designed to attack en masse. A second iteration of these drones, far more powerful than the first, has been launched successfully, and Ukraine’s exports have more or less completely recovered. And much of this response happened within the first year or so of the war! They’ve described it as ‘one of the most successful blockade-breaking operations in modern history’. Of course, I’m not sure if there’s been much competition – I’m such a spoiler.
So, hats off to Ukraine, in a situation in which the US ‘superpower’ under Frump has been mostly less than helpful, and NATO seemingly bound up by a less than helpful bureaucratic structure. Meanwhile, how is Mr Pudding faring after all these years of anti-Ukraine warfare – arguably starting in February 2014? Well, it seems that, though he’s nowhere near winning, he’s also nowhere near giving up. In fact, it seems he can’t give up after all his rhetoric and all his losses. This just can’t be all for nothing. And that of course is a dangerous situation indeed, because there is only the nuclear option. He can’t win otherwise, he can’t go on forever, but then, how can the nuclear option be a win? It won’t of course, so the whole thing becomes a monument to stubborn stupidity which can only end with the end of Putin. It’s truly tragic for the Ukrainian people, and the Russian people too.
So let’s look at China, which I’ve not really been focussing on (nor Russia really, for why focus on god-awful governments that are far away and you can’t do anything about? Hmmm). One website called China Update has the headline ‘Total Annihilation’, just in case people aren’t paying attention.
So apparently a couple of the top military figures of the country have been arrested by China’s dictator, Xi, and what with other brutalist changes, the military leadership ‘group’ has now been reduced from seven to two – but effectively one. Meanwhile a long-term anti-corruption drive, aka Bullshit Incorporated, has been fuelled by Xi’s paranoia and hubris, and has left ‘command chains fractured and experienced leaders sidelined’, which has supposedly degraded the country’s capacity to ‘conduct complex operations, particularly against Taiwan’. That sounds promising for Taiwan, but my impression over the years has been that Xi really really really wants to attack Taiwan and kill people there, and to do it yesterday. The reports I’m hearing about the situation, though, are confusing and conflicting. He likes ‘anti-corruption’ purges apparently, and he has, over time, trimmed down the political and the military leadership, the latter to just two. All of which can only make one laugh, or cry, at the Orwellian newspeak. We mock the North Korean title for its country – the Korean Democratic Republic – but surely the Chinese government, or leadership, calling its country ‘communist’, is even more risible, considering that communism is meant to be about collective control and sharing of government, labour, resources, etc. On that definition, China must surely be about the least communist nation on the planet, and more than 1.3 billion more Chinese people are being hoodwinked than North Korean people. And surely a large proportion of them know they’re being hoodwinked, but – what can they do? If you’ve lived such a lie all your life, that lie just becomes the reality.
So the number of party members who have been removed or disciplined for corruption during Xi’s rule has increased year on year, and it would be impossible to tell whether this purge has been fair given the lack of oversight of of what is essentially a dictatorship. And according to the video referenced below, Xi has managed to concentrate more power in his own hands, at least militarily, than any previous Chinese dictator of the ‘communist’ era (or at least since Mao, the greatest mass-murderer the world has ever known). He has also presided over a massive increase in military expenditure, with obviously ominous connotations. I mean, what could this ballooning expenditure be for?
I worry for Taiwan, which was experimenting with participatory democracy, according to Jess Scully’s hopeful Glimpses of Utopia.
References
world war three – or what?
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
Ethnic and national complexities, tragedies and so on
Who would want to be born Jewish in Europe in the 1920s or 1930s, given what we know now? It’s a stupid question, as nobody could have such fore-knowledge, but my recent reading and viewing has brought home to me the terrible luck so many people have suffered from, by being born into particular ethnicities at particular times in particular places. And of course the terrible cruelty humans have inflicted upon each other due simply to conceptions of otherness – as savages, infidels, ragheads, kikes, coons and so on.
I’ve been reading Anna Reid’s fascinating but complex (and painful) book Borderland, which again highlights for me the evanescent and often questionable nature of nationhood, especially in relation to culture. Who are or were the Tartars, the Cossacks, the Swabians, the Galicians, the Assyrians, to name a few? But I should name more – the Romany, the Rohingya, the Kurds, the Uyghurs, the Hazaras, the Basques, the Acadians, the Ainu, truly the list goes on, and on. And they were/are all humans and you and I could’ve been one of them.
Nations seem to me much less real than ethnicities, which give us our language, our rituals, even our expectations. For me it has been easy, born into arguably (or unarguably?) the world’s most dominant language group, at the far western end of Europe, at a time of relative peace and prosperity, in the 1950s. And in fact that peace and prosperity has extended well into the 2020s, both in Britain and Australia, to which I was taken as a child. A prolonged peace and stability that’s been unparalleled throughout human history. We’ve been extraordinarily lucky.
So to Ukraine, and my reading so far has taken me ‘only’ to the horrors of Stalin’s famine of the late 20s and early 30s. It’s hard to read this stuff. A few years ago I was reading a biography of Mao Zedong, but I had to give up on getting to the ‘Great Leap Forward’ and its insane man-made horrors. Have we learned effectively? Will we ever do this, or allow this to be done, again? Is it possible that our much more effective surveillance techniques and our greater international communications have spelt the end of such deliberate inhumanity?
All very grand questions, but my principal purpose in reading this book was to understand more about modern Ukraine, its various ethnicities, its levels of Russification and/or Europeanisation, from the starting perspective of a more or less complete ignoramus. I have of course views on the repulsive Russian dictator and the uselessness of the USA’s ‘position’, if it can be called that, and of the determination of the majority of Ukrainians to be fully independent, but these are simply the general views of a very distant observer.
Ukrainians were more than between a rock and a hard place, in the mid-20th century. The brutalities of the Soviets and the Nazis, really not so long ago, were totalising, and involved millions, young and old, slaughtered for nothing but their supposed otherness. Ukraine and Poland were essentially at the epicentre of this manufactured zealotry and hatred. Babi Yar, or Babyn Yar, in Ukrainian, was a massacre I’d heard tell of, but I’d never thought to locate it in space. It took place in a ravine in Kiev, in late September 1941, a machine-gun slaughter of over 33,000 Jews, told to assemble nearby for resettlement. In the aftermath up to 150,000 Jews, Soviets, Roma people and other ‘undesirables’ were murdered.
There are so many other stories. Crimea has long been a contested, messed-up region. My first knowledge of it was likely typical for those of my background – Florence Nightingale, the Lady with the Lamp, doing her best to save the lives of the victims of – what war, or battle exactly?
The Crimean war of the 1850s was fought between Russia under Tzar Nicholas I, and later his son, Alexander II, and the Ottoman Empire and its allies, including Britain. And what was the point of this war? Well, there were the usual broad issues re the East-West balance of power, with the Ottomans in decline, and Russians’ seemingly interminable desire to extend their borders and influence westwards. But what of the inhabitants of Crimea? This odd-shaped peninsula hangs down from the south of Ukraine into the Black Sea, and was once a Tatar stronghold. Its biggest town is Sevastopol in the south. When Ukraine gained independence in 1991, rather unexpectedly, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Crimean population, overwhelmingly Russian, were somewhat nonplussed, it seems. Much has happened since then, of course, including the supposed annexation of the region by Russia under Putin in 2014. Its current position is undecided, pending the outcome of the war.
But let me return to the Tatars – for it seems to me that, for most people, their ethnicity is more important than their nationality – though sometimes these are the same. Who were they? That’s a very long story. Wikipedia begins with this:
Crimean Tatars (Crimean Tatar: qırımtatarlar, къырымтатарлар), or simply Crimeans (qırımlılar, къырымлылар), are an Eastern European Turkic ethnic group and nation indigenous to Crimea.[9] Their ethnogenesis lasted thousands of years in Crimea and the northern regions along the coast of the Black Sea, uniting Mediterranean populations with those of the Eurasian Steppe.
I’ve removed the many links for ease of reading. So clearly they’re ancient inhabitants of the region, predating any notion of Ukraine or even Russia. They were the predominant culture, in fact, for millennia, along the northern coast of the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov, and beyond, until the 20th century.
All of this makes me think of ‘real countries’ versus ‘real ethnicities’. It seems evident enough, at least to me, that countries are a human invention – they’re not real in the sense that cultures are real. We could say, of course, that cultures are human inventions, but nobody ever set out to invent a culture. They are a shared set of practices that people grow up within, just like bonobo culture. Nations, though, are political entities, and the best of them accept that many cultures reside within their borders – borders often born of warfare, colonisation, imperialism and the like. This is important, as cultures are more ‘real’ than nations, and more ancient. Think of Australian Aboriginal culture, or cultures. So, to me, nations – these new-fangled phenomena – need to be aware of and respectful of their history, and the cultures that form them. In Australia’s case it’s not just the ancient Aboriginal culture but the much later ones – British, of course, and then western European, and then south-east Asian, and now, African, Asian, Middle Eastern and so on.
But Australia is unique (as of course are all nations) – we’ve never been a conquering nation – at least not since we took the best land from the earlier inhabitants. And for all sorts of reasons we’re a lucky country – reading about the sad history and the present sufferings of Ukrainians really brings this home to me. Since we became this invented entity called a nation (a very short time ago) we’ve never been invaded, though Japanese air-raids on Darwin in 1942 killed over 200 people. Nowadays I have the occasional Japanese student, and we certainly don’t have to worry about avoiding ‘the war’.
Not sure where I’m going with all this except to note that we didn’t get to choose our culture, heavy or light, ancient or recent, dominant or persecuted. Ukraine is faction-ridden, as are most nations, and there has long been something of an east-west divide, but it’s clearly moving towards the west, for obvious reasons. Putin can’t last much longer, which doesn’t of course mean that things will improve (in Russia) with his absence, and with Trump the USA has sunk further, surely, than it could ever sink again. But the embattled Ukrainians have become global heroes through the course of this invasion, and may need to tough it out until the demise of these dodderers, and then some. I can only wish them well.
References
Anna Reid, Borderland: a journey through the history of Ukraine
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimean_War
some thoughts on the Ukrainian tragedy
M Carney and V Zelenskyy with their Action Plan for the Implementation of the Agreement on Security Cooperation between Ukraine and Canada.
I’m by no means an expert on international affairs, though of course I’m interested in humanist, peaceful, equitable solutions to what’s happening in troublespots such as Ukraine, Palestine and the USA, to name the only three that I know a little bit about at present, but I have to admit that the very sight of Putin, Trump or Netenyahu or their minions on my screen has negative impacts on my health, as I’ve always been a bit overly emotional. So I’ve been both chillaxing and better informing myself recently by listening to articulate, intelligent, calm (above all calm, even humorous!) members of the commentariat (mostly female,) discussing these troublespots and troubling characters (mostly male).
So, with that, let me return to the Putin-Ukraine horror-show. Russian troops began their full-scale invasion of Ukraine in late February 2022, though you might say the 2014 annexation of Crimea was Putin’s prelude, and the pre-2022 aggression in the Donbas region helped to clarify his entirely hostile intentions, not to mention the build-up of troops and materiel on Russia’s border with Ukraine in the preceding months.
It could be argued, and Putin would certainly argue, that Kievan Rus was central to the ‘development’, mostly through warfare, of the pan-Russian nation. These irredentist views of a Greater Russia that needed to be revived and presided over by Vladimir the Great have been central to Putin’s grand vision. To strengthen his claim, as least to his compatriots, he concocted a Ukrainian government infested with neo-nazis intent on wiping out the Russian minority in the eastern Donbas.
So when the ‘denazification’ invasion came, from the Belarusian border in the north, threatening Kiev, with accompanying attacks into the Donbas and threatening Kharkiv, and in Crimea, it looked, at least for a moment, that the claim by Belarusian president and Putin puppet Aleksandr Lukashenko (among others) that Ukraine would belong to Putin within three days would be proven.
But the march on Kiev was stalled and soon abandoned, to the whole world’s surprise it seems, and the reasons remain murky, and were probably multi-faceted. They include – bad weather and poor reconnaissance regarding terrain; Ukrainian attacks; fuel shortages and maintenance problems; poor planning, organisation and communications. The long delay before the initial march southwards allowed Ukrainian forces and individuals to prepare sniper and other attacks. Russian forces began a retreat from Kiev only three months after launching their northern invasion.
Currently, some three and a half years after the war began, Russia has control of some 20% of Ukrainian territory. The death toll, especially on the Russian side, is extremely hard to pin down, given Putin’s obsession with disinformation, but at least 8 million Ukrainians have fled the country, with another 8 million or so being internally displaced. Of course their have been multiple human rights abuses, and ICC arrest warrants have been issued for Putin and other Russian officials.
Putin has been in power in Russia for well over 20 years now, having eliminated all opposition and bolstered and clarified his dictatorship. However, this invasion and war has clearly endangered his position and indeed his life. One might fancifully compare it to Hitler’s decision to invade Russia in the 1940s. If the advent of Trump, a product of the world’s worst democratic political system, had not supervened, and a more NATO-supportive and decisive US President had been elected in 2020 and/or 2024, Putin’s fate would have been sealed. Instead we’re forced to witness what we’re witnessing.
The USA’s floundering, destructive horrorshow is essentially a reprieve for Putin, though it’s always possible that Trump will flounder in the direction of liberation for Ukraine. Of course that can’t be counted on. Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney has just visited Kiev and given a rousing speech with promises of financial and military support, and even the possibility of ‘boots on the ground’. We need much more of this.
Ukraine isn’t a member of NATO, and it should be. It seems that some NATO countries are reluctant to accept Ukraine’s membership at this time of war, which seems to me cruelly crazy. It’s also worth noting that Ukraine came very close to NATO membership in the pre-Yanukovych era, though popular support for the move was low. Today, unsurprisingly, it’s at an all-time high, and NATO membership was been a priority for successive governments since 2014. So why the delay?
Apparently there’s this thing called a Membership Action Plan (MAP), which is the Royal Road to NATO membership, and this has been touted for years for Ukraine, but fear of Putinland seems to have been central to the delay. Here’s what the Latvian foreign minister had to say on the issue, in April 2021:
We are watching closely as Russia draws troops to Ukraine’s borders. It is not clear at this time what this is: a show of force or real aggression. But there is every reason to worry … Ukraine has been trying to join NATO for 15 years by obtaining a Membership Action Plan. Apparently, it is time to provide this Plan to Ukraine [!]. This will be at least a signal from us [NATO] that Ukrainians will not be left without support. I will definitely support this decision…
You would think that Putin’s aggression would’ve stiffened the resolve of all NATO nations to include and support Ukraine. Pusillanimous is the word that comes to mind. And this has clearly cost lives.
Putin has to be defeated, kicked out of Ukraine completely. He, for one, will never compromise, and is completely incapable of negotiating in good faith. As various pundits have pointed out, withdrawing now, giving up, will likely be the end for him, with all the suffering this has caused to so many Russians. We – the west, NATO, the democratic world, whatever, need to go full bore at finishing this war and offering Putin nothing. He’s a criminal of the worst kind and always has been, throughout his adult life. The Canadian PM has shown the way, and we must all offer what we can, for humanity’s sake.
References
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_invasion_of_Ukraine
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Kyiv_convoy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine–NATO_relations#Popular_opinion_in_Ukraine
the USA and Ukraine: disasters and tragedies
This was a children’s hospital in Mariupol, Donetsk
I’ve become more or less convinced that listening to United Staters commenting on their own political situation is pretty much a waste of time. Outsiders have a much more objective perspective…
Oh, that’s right – I’m an outsider! Lucky me!
Seriously, how many US pundits complain about their presidential system, the massive power it wields, the massive immunity granted to it, the massive amounts of money thrown about in their circus campaigns, the ridiculous ‘individuality’ of it all? How many compare their massive rich-poor gap with that of other WEIRD countries, the massive, and surely related, incarceration rates, the lack of per capita expenditure on public education, health and welfare? What they do go on about is how the ‘greatest nation in the known (or unknown) multiverse’ has somehow come to this. The ‘world’s richest [and therefore most successful] nation on the planet’, ‘the world’s greatest (and first modern) democracy’ (that one’s a real staple, spoken with a kind of glazed expression, like a mantra they’ve been chanting since kindergarten – and it’s bullshit, they were a country economically based on slavery at the time of their first election, and they didn’t allow half their population to vote in federal elections until 1920).
The fact is, the US politico-social system is SHIT. And that’s an understatement. Nations that have been persuaded, or well-nigh forced to emulate it (South Korea is a tragic example) are suffering the consequences.
What we need – all the WEIRD and developing countries – is to get completely away from ‘I alone can fix it’ wankers (pretty well all of them being men) and towards collaborative, preferably female-dominated piloting of the ship of state, with always a concern, more than anything, for the ‘left-behind’, those disadvantaged through no fault of their own. The tedious shifts from so-called ‘left-wing’ and ‘right-wing’ governments, each intent on demolishing what went before and leaving their own egotistical mark on things, should be replaced by gradualism, consensus and collaboration, with, always, fingers on the pulse of the populace, their needs and reasonable aspirations. That might require eliminating men from government, at least until they learn the error of their ways….
Anyway, I began this post wanting to say that the best commentaries on US politics are definitely coming from outside the country (and this might be the case for analyses of any country – if only those inside the country were prepared to listen!). I recall reading that people always exaggerate their skills and abilities, and downplay their failings, as in some respects a ‘healthy’, or evolutionarily successful, approach to making their way in the world, and that if you really want a more accurate view of them, ask their frenemies. I suspect the same goes for nations…
The tragedy of the advent of Trump, is that he’s an outcome of a massively flawed politico-social system that won’t be reformed ‘any time soon’, as they’re fond of saying. And it coincides tragically with the reign of a far worse individual, Vladimir Putin, a psychopathic thug with vast volumes of blood on his hands already. The current ‘negotiations’ with Putin are of course a very sick joke. Putin isn’t negotiating, his aim – to destroy Ukraine as an independent nation, whatever the cost – will never change, and Trump and his minions’ flailings signify nothing. What Ukraine needs from the USA, in concert with Europe, is armaments, fighters and 100% support. Ukraine has to win this war, so Trump’s second term, with his pusillanimity and love of dictators, has been disastrous for that nation. It’s all very unedifying and hard to watch, even from afar…
a year after Pudding’s invasion
Canto: So more than a year has passed since Mr Pudding sent Russian forces into Ukraine, giving no good reason, to the world or to those he believes to be his subjects…
Jacinta: Well, for domestic consumption he insisted that it was a special operation – though whether it was to denazify the place or to simply incorporate it into the Fatherland, I’m not Russian enough to know. I suspect he doesn’t feel it overly necessary to explain exactly why he’s sending a proportion of the Russian population into harm’s way. He loves his country and he’ll never do it no wrong.
Canto: We’ve been listening, or half listening, to a number of well-reputed pundits on the situation, including Julia Ioffe, Fiona Hill, Timothy Snyder, Vlad Vexler, Marie Yovanovich and Bill Taylor – most of them United Staters, but with independent minds and humanist principles….
Jacinta: Haha, careful what you’re saying. We also watched recently a series of interviews with a cross-section of ‘ordinary Russians’ both for and against the war and their everlasting leader. And really it’s the same everywhere, no matter the country or type of government. So many just say ‘I’m not a political person,’ and make vague but dogmatic remarks about patriotism and fully backing the smarts at the top.
Canto: The impression I got from those interviews was that the war wasn’t much affecting them personally, and I suppose that as long as that’s the case, complacency will rule.
Jacinta: Well it’s not easy to ascertain the death toll, for Russians, of this operation. The New York Times, in an article from early February, claimed around 200,000 Russian deaths, but it was pretty vague as to sources. To be fair, they’re dealing with a country notorious for disinformation:
… officials caution that casualties are notoriously difficult to estimate, particularly because Moscow is believed to routinely undercount its war dead and injured…
Canto: Both sides would be keen to keep a lid on numbers for reasons of morale, but this has surely been the worst conflict we’ve seen in our lifetimes, in terms of loss of life…
Jacinta: Ahem..
In 1995 Vietnam released its official estimate of the number of people killed during the Vietnam War: as many as 2,000,000 civilians on both sides and some 1,100,000 North Vietnamese and Viet Cong fighters.
That’s according to Encyclopaedia Britannica. But of course we have no idea when this current war will end or what the actual death toll numbers are today.
Canto: So what will bring it to an end? Most commentators on the NATO side are saying we need to do everything in our power to help Ukraine win as quickly and decisively as possible. That doing only enough to prevent Ukraine from losing would be a disastrous approach, with more lives lost. That would seem to mean the most sophisticated and destructive weapons, sent by NATO countries, since no NATO countries are prepared to supply soldiers, and in terms of manpower, Mr Pudding has the edge, since he’s at present prepared to sacrifice everyone he can muster to the cause, and that’s a lot more cannon-fodder than Ukraine has.
Jacinta: Yes, and I’m hearing mixed views, and noting some foot-dragging on the sending of materiel…
Canto: Well with the winter just ending, they’re talking of spring offensives, so these next months might be decisive. I’ve heard that the Chinese Testosterone Party, in the form of Chairman Xi, has let it be known that the nuclear option must definitely be ruled out. That’s important – according to one expert who strikes me as reliable, China is very much the senior partner in its relation with Russia, obviously for economic reasons, though that would stick in the Pudding’s craw…
Jacinta: Yuk. Yes, I’ve long considered that going nuclear would be the Pudding’s only real chance for victory, only it wouldn’t… There’d be retaliation, and no winners… It just has to be a non-option.
Canto: But I can’t see him giving up at this stage. There has just been a decision, on the first anniversary of this war, to send Leopard tanks to msUkraine, something Zelensky has long been asking for. They’re also hoping for fighter jets, but none are currently forthcoming. It seems to have been a bit like pulling teeth, though according to a BBC article I’m reading, one reason for the delay is the need to train Ukrainian forces in the operation of this sophisticated weaponry. The BBC also has an interesting graphic on the amount of money spent per nation (including the EU) on military aid to Ukraine. The USA has spent almost three times more than all the European nations put together.
Jacinta: Which is a bit surprising, but then the USA has long been obsessed with being a military behemoth, and the toughest kid in town.
Canto: Well, if you can’t be the smartest… Germany is now sending Leopard 2 tanks as well. The BBC article is long on detail of the materiel being supplied, about which of course we’re far from expert, but here’s a list: as to tanks, there’s the Leopard 2, the Challenger 2, the T-72M1, and the M1 Abrams. As to combat vehicles, the Stryker armoured fighting vehicle and the Bradley fighting vehicle. For air defence, the Patriot missile system, the S-300 air defence system and Starstreak missiles. Other nasties include the Himars rocket launcher system, M777 howitzers, anti-tank weapons and drones.
Jacinta: Yes it all sounds impressive – but as to jets, it’s not just the lack of training – many are worried that this might take the war inside Putinland, though I don’t personally see a big problem with that.
Canto: True, Mr Pudding would hardly be in a position to complain, but the general argument might be that innocent people would be being killed on both sides. It’s difficult, as Pudding seems unfazed by the numbers he’s committing to this operation…. But I don’t think any restrictions should be placed on how they use the materiel supplied to them. They’re fighting for their existence, and hitting at the heart of Russia might be the best way to get Pudding to stop.
Jacinta: But mightn’t it widen the conflict? China could get involved, say…
Canto: I don’t think so. We – those of us supporting Ukraine – would need to keep dialogue going with China and other countries with ties to Russia. Not that they don’t know who’s to blame for this war.
Jacinta: Okay so let’s look at the current situation. More weapons are being sent to Ukraine, but currently there’s a big battle around Bakhmut, in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine. Russian forces are trying to encircle the city, which has been the site of some of the most intense fighting in the war. It has probably suffered more damage than any other Ukrainian city, and has changed hands a couple of times. Ukrainians are just holding onto it for the time being, and it’s likely to change hands a few times more before the end.
Canto: Yes, it’s the city centre they’re currently trying to capture, so that they can cut off supply lines from the west, so it seems. They already have control of the eastern suburbs. And I should say thank you to the various sources reporting on the action, whose accents I’m trying to get used to!
Jacinta: Yes, it’s like trying to be part of the action, like watching your favourite sports team trying to win, though the stakes are a million times higher, and the moral dimensions incalculably more significant.
Canto: Times Radio, from Britain, has been a good source of news and analysis on the war, and I’ve just watched one of their YouTube videos in which reporter Jerome Starkey talks about ‘Russia’s Wagner Group mercenaries’ being used as cannon fodder in the assault on Bakhmut, threatened with being shot if they retreat – which is both horrific and confusing. I thought mercenaries were volunteers by definition…
Jacinta: Well I think they’re more like professional soldiers for hire. But I can’t imagine anyone signing up for a paid job under those conditions. You could say they’ve been trapped by their own mercenary motives, though that hardly exonerates Pudding and his cronies….
Canto: There’s a Wikipedia article on the Wagner Group, for which the TLDR acronym might’ve been invented, but basically it’s a force of amoral military thugs under the pay of Pudding, and operating outside of any legal jurisdiction. As you can imagine, many of them are driven by far-right ideologies as well as macho ideation.
Jacinta: And to compensate for their teeny-weeny penises.
Canto: They’ve been around for about a decade, and of course have been associated with multiple war crimes and atrocities wherever Pudding’s whims have sent them. So getting back to Bakhmut, many of the Russians fighting there, whether part of the Wagner group or not, have been ‘recruited’ from prisons and press-ganged into service. They may have the numbers to take Bakhmut for the time being, but my uneducated guess is that NATO-Ukrainian weaponry and the ability to deploy that weaponry effectively will win out in the end.
Jacinta: Experts, if there are any for this scenario, are saying that there’s no sign of an end in sight. That it’ll drag on at least for the rest of this year.
Canto: Well it looks like Bakhmut will be retaken by the Russians for the time being, and hopefully the remaining residents can be evacuated before then, but it may be a Pyrrhic victory because sadly the place has already been reduced to near-rubble. Meanwhile money, arms and ammunition continue to be funnelled to the Ukrainians, China has been warned by the EU not to support Pudding with weapons, threatening ‘sanctions’, and the Cold War world continues to freeze over….
References
https://www.britannica.com/question/How-many-people-died-in-the-Vietnam-War
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wagner_Group
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/3/4/russia-ukraine-war-list-of-key-events-day-374
more on macho thuggery and a world turned upside-down
WPL – female political leaders past and present
Jacinta: So here’s the thing – after the horrible cannon-fodder event of 1914-18 that became known as the Great War, and subsequently WW1, the League of Nations came into being, to try to ensure that no futher war of such magnitude, such destruction, would occur. It would be a forum for the negotiation of grievances, a move towards a more civilised behaviour between nations.
Canto: Yes there must’ve been a sense of urgency as the death toll and the suffering came to light. But then it all happened again – so it failed?
Jacinta: Well of course I’m talking about this as the world watches a piece of obvious butchery in Ukraine, over a hundred years after that ‘war to end all wars’. The League of Nations, the United Nations, the International Criminal Court, these institutions have been, IMHO, vitally important 20th century developments, but they haven’t effectively prevented wars and invasions in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and so on. And war is hell, especially for those who’ve made the mistake of being born in those fought-over lands.
Canto: Yes, the ICC is massively hamstrung by the fact that the most militarily powerful countries, the USA, Russia and China, won’t join it, for the obvious reason that they don’t want to be held accountable. What’s the point of being massively powerful if you don’t get to throw your weight around with impunity?
Jacinta: Yes, and to be bonoboesque about it, none of those countries have come close to having female leadership in recent times. Okay, the USA has at last celebrated it first Vice-President, but it’s not really an elected position. There have been 45 male US Presidents, and zero female Presidents so far. Not bad for a group that represents just under half the population. China hasn’t had a woman on top since the much under-rated Empress Dowager Cixi died in 1908. The CCP’s Politburo Standing Committee, a kind of divinely elected inner Cabinet, which has been operational, more or less, since the 1950s, has had fifty-four members, of which zero have been women.
Canto: Wow – not even a female impersonator? But then, during the one child policy, something miraculous happened. Almost all the kids born turned out to be male. You can hardly blame the CCP for that.
Jacinta: And as for Putinland’s mighty ruler, he’s an unabashed misogynist and he plans to rule his namesake for the next 200 years or so, so the chances of any of those countries allowing themselves to be accountable to the rest of humanity are close to zero for the foreseeable.
Canto: Yes, and it’s funny how the nations most likely to be naughty to the tunes of their national anthems are the ones least willing to defend themselves in open court. I’ve found that there are some other interesting countries that aren’t interested in the ICC – Israel, Libya, Iraq – nations with a very spotty recent history.
Jacinta: And nothing much in the way of female leadership. Israel did have Golda Meir, described in Encyclopedia Brittanica as the country’s first female Prime Minister, as if there were others.
Canto: And then there are nations where women are barely allowed to hold down a job never mind boss others around. So what is to be done?
Jacinta: Well, all we can do is try to lay down foundations. And there’s a groundswell of interest in women’s empowerment, it’s been happening for decades. When we compare women’s wages with those of men, and grumble about a gap that never seems to narrow, we need to remember that it wasn’t so long ago, in the long arc of human history, that women weren’t considered a part of the paid work-force at all. Now they own businesses, run science labs and occasionally help to govern nations. And I should mention that here in little old South Australia – where we’ve never had a female Premier, our newly elected Labor Premier Peter Malinauskas celebrated his victory with a press chit-chat flanked by five new female MPs as well as Deputy Premier Susan Close. A sixth new female Labor candidate looks set to win her seat.
Canto: So how do we promote the empowerment of women in Australia, before taking over the world?
Jacinta: Well the government occasionally brings out policy documents, such as the ‘Gender equality and women’s empowerment strategy’, published by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) in early 2016. It recognises that ‘nowhere in the world have women and men achieved equality’, and points out, in its global analysis, that GDPs would rise everywhere if such equality could be realised, or approached. It points out the obvious benefits of female education, for women, their children and the community, and the greater stability and peace that comes with female empowerment (no mention of bonobos however). As was pointed out in the military document I read some months ago, a greater female presence in the military leads to better peace-keeping. This DFAT document repeats the point:
Greater gender equality contributes to stability and peace. Women are often instrumental in brokering ceasefires in conflict situations, and peacekeeping operations involving women as soldiers, police and civilian personnel are more effective. Greater equality can prevent disputes escalating to armed conflict.
Canto: That must be why Putin and his Patriarch aren’t into gender equality so much. And just to change the subject, I’ve heard that, since their invasion isn’t going so well – possibly because the billions spent on the military have been largely siphoned off by the luxury yacht-loving kleptocrats in his inner circle – they’re now trying to pretend that they’ve been largely successful in their main aim, which is to gain complete control of the Donbas and Crimean regions, and this is really all they wanted in the first place, etc etc.
Jacinta: Well, I’ll believe that when I hear something from Putin himself, but that’s highly unlikely. They’re basically fucked, though Putin will never admit it. Hoist by his own macho petard, I’d say. Anyway, this document from six years ago talks the talk convincingly enough, and with a likely change of Federal government in the next few months, the talk will continue. It promotes a three-pronged approach to its aid, trade and foreign relations programs – 1) Enhancing women’s voice in decision-making, leadership and peace-building. 2) Promoting women’s economic empowerment. 3) Ending violence against women and girls. Which all sounds great, though all this needs to start at home. Also the document argues that ‘at least 80 per cent of investments [presumably by DFAT], regardless of their objectives, should effectively address gender equality issues in their implementation’. What about the other 20 per cent? Where did the 80 per cent come from?
Canto: Well, 80%, 90%, 60%, it’s all just talk, who’s going to be doing the measurements? Surely the important thing is that they’re pushing for a much better situation than pertains at the moment. And meanwhile on the world stage there’s an organisation, probably quite informal, called Women Political Leaders (WPL), consisting of former and some current national Prime Ministers and such, as well as heads of the European Commission, high-ups at the UN and so forth, all promoting the benefits of female leadership, benefits we’ve outlined so many times. They held a major forum last July, which seems to have garnered little attention.
Jacinta: I’m hoping that the machismo antics of Putin, Xi Jinping and others, which of course are garnering plenty of attention, might have more effect on our appreciation of female leadership than these forums, which of course are a pointer to the future. Unfortunately, our attention will always be more drawn to the thuggery of these types than to the speeches and achievements of intelligent women. Violence, destruction and suffering are riveting because they bring to mind our own vulnerability, and often our own sheer good luck at not finding ourselves in the thick of it. And I sometimes wonder whether, if we ever achieve something like a bonobo world, many lifetimes into the future, our victory over the male hellholes of the world will render us complacent and soft…
Canto: Haha, little likelihood of that – after all, even the bonobos males have to be kept in check by what Bjork calls ‘an army of me’. So I suspect bonobos aren’t as complacent as they might look.
Jacinta: Yes, happy loving relations often need a lot of work. Hostile relations tend to come naturally – at least so it seems from within our patriarchal culture. So, nothing for it but to keep working for a world turned upside-down.
On current thugocrazies and the slow hard road to a bonobo world
Canto: So how will this Ukraine horror end?
Jacinta: How does any thugocracy end? I recently heard one pundit saying that most – I can’t remember if he said dictators, autocrats or some other euphemism for thugs – die violently, but this is bullshit. Stalin, Mao, Leo Victor (aka Leopold I, ‘Emperor’ of Belgium) and Suharto are just a few such thugs who died peacefully without ever having to account for their crimes. Some are still worshipped today by many.
Canto: Good point, and I was amused to hear that Putin was much exercised by Gadaffi’s ignominious death, watching several times the video of him being roughed up.
Jacinta: He could’ve added the video of the Ceausescus’ shooting, but that was before his time I suppose.
Canto: His time in power, yes, but a cautionary tale all the same. But getting back to my original question, with Putin not backing down and no nation apart from Ukraine willing to fight against his troops, he can’t realistically lose, while at the same time, he can’t realistically create a puppet state there that has any chance of surviving.
Jacinta: Yes, he’s in a bind and he surely knows it. I’m tempted to say ‘it’s clear that he miscalculated’, but that would make me sound smarter than I am. So I’ll just say it looks as if he has miscalculated badly, and surely he must be wondering what to do next, since continued bombing, shelling and slaughter will only lead to a pyrrhic victory at best, but more likely an exhausting and costly campaign for his invading force, and disastrously long-standing sanctions which will cripple the Putinland economy and looks like accelerating the European move from Putinland gas to renewables.
Canto: There are arguments that some of the attempts to isolate Putinland (for example blocking Facebook and other social media) are playing into Putin’s hands, because he doesn’t want his people to have any contact with the WEIRD world – they might get ideas above their station. But look at the companies blocking or getting out of Putinland – Ikea, Adidas, Starbucks, McDonalds, Coca-Cola, Disney, Netflix, Apple, Toyota and many more apparently. This will change middle-class life drastically.
Jacinta: But others, including many Russian dissidents and exiles, believe this is playing into Putin’s hands, as it’s reducing the WEIRD presence in the country, a source of opposition. I suppose this means that Putin and his thugocracy will have to produce effective enough local alternatives – as the CCP thugocracy has largely managed to do. But China has a much healthier economy than Putinland, and with all the economic difficulties Putin’s fellow thugs are facing, I’m not sure they’re going to be able to pump much energy into local brands.
Canto: Which raises the question of just how much all this sanctioning is affecting the Putinland economy. Many who know about the situation are trying to leave the country. Sadly, these are the relatively wealthy who have contacts overseas and know how to get their money out of the country. Those who rely on cash must surely be most affected, but I must admit that economics isn’t my strong suit. By the way, can you lend me fifty bucks?
Jacinta: What’s also interesting is that it’s bringing more attention at last to Putin’s behaviour in Syria, Georgia, Chechnya and other places. And to Putin’s putrescence in general. For example, I wasn’t entirely aware of his fear and loathing of powerful women – though of course it doesn’t surprise me. I’d vaguely heard a story of his attempt to intimidate Angela Merkel by means of a dog, because he’d heard of her having a phobia about dogs, but I didn’t connect it at the time to misogyny, and then of his loathing of Hilary Clinton, apparently for no other reason than her womanhood. He was obsessed with ensuring that she wouldn’t become US President – it seems his sabotaging campaign might’ve been more anti-Clinton than pro-Trump. Of course we’re unlikely to ever know whether his animus or his destructive activity with respect to the 2016 Presidential election was the key to her ‘loss’. In fact she won the popular vote, and I’ll never understand why that doesn’t win a democratic election. How can it be democratic otherwise?
Canto: Good question. So Al Gore won the 2000 US election. Democracy seems less democratic than it seems. Anyway, instituting the bonobo world would ensure little Vlady’s emasculation. Why’s it taking so long?
Jacinta: We’re obviously not getting the message across. And since Merkel’s retirement, there aren’t any women, unfortunately, that are bestriding the world like a colossus. New Zealand, Taiwan, Estonia, Lithuania, Moldova, Kosovo, Greece, Denmark, Finland, Slovakia, Georgia, Ethiopia and Gabon, where women hold Presidential/Prime Ministerial positions (though some of them merely honorary) are all no doubt admirable nations, but in the horrible Realpolitik world we inhabit they’re minnows, easily ignorable by the thugocracies of China, India, Russia and the macho Middle Eastern oil-o-crazies. Why wasn’t I born a bonobo?
Canto: Well, as we speak, Putin’s forces are surrounding Kiev, and the most sickening things are happening. Ukrainians are clearly putting up stiffer resistance than expected, but with little outside support other than money and best wishes, they can’t be expected to hold out against a Svengalian thug with massive cannon-fodder reinforcements at his disposal, not to mention the nuclear option.
Jacinta: So, if he manages to strangulate Kiev, and to kill Zelensky, what then? That’s his aim, presumably, but given Zelensky’s profile, what good will it do him? He doesn’t want to believe that macho thugs are out of fashion (sort of) in the WEIRD world, but his economy is quite dependent on that world.
Canto; Well, worse things are happening elsewhere in Ukraine. The people of Mariupol, in the south, are trapped and under heavy fire from Putin’s forces. It’s been the most bombarded city in Ukraine, apparently. In the east, Kharkiv is holding out pretty well, even though war crime-type activities have been carried out there by Putin.
Jacinta: Yes Mr Pudding has a lot to answer for, and if we could bring him to justice, what a shock it would be to the Xi Jinpings, the Ramzan Kadyrovs, the Lukashenkos, the Orbáns, the Mohammed bin Scumbags and so on, in a world that will become, I fervently believe, increasingly bonoboesque. And when it does, we will look back on Putinland, the CCP, the Middle Eastern thugocrazies and so on and so forth, and think, ‘how could we have sunk so low? How could we have reached such a level of stupidity as to let these male apes run roughshod over our children and our future, when it’s screamingly obvious that we, women, should be the leaders?’ And history will be written from a bonobo-influenced female prospective, inevitably, a future perspective, pointing out the pointless male thuggeries of the past, remembering the victims, female, male and children yet to decide, yet to have much of a life. I’m sorry, I’m imagining a future almost beyond nations, beyond nationalist brutalism, and beyond maleness. Women are our future – we have to grasp the nettle.
Canto: I think you’re right, but perhaps you’re just before your time. We have to play out the last gasp of male ascendancy – and I’m not suggesting that Putin’s last breath, which hopefully happens soon, will be that last gasp – far from it unfortunately. But we have a long, hard battle to fight against misogyny. Look at the Taliban. Look at Iran. Look at the CCP – their politburo has never had a female member in the seventy years of its existence. Even the USA has never had a female President, and women have a horribly hard road to hoe in the male province of politics even in democratic countries. Australia has had one female Prime Minister, and she was subjected to more vitriol than any male PM in Australian history – I would have no hesitation in claiming that to be a fact.
Jacinta: Slowly but surely wins the race. Sadly for me, it’ll more likely take centuries rather than decades, but think of the progress made in a relatively short time. We couldn’t become university professors a century ago, never mind major political or business identities. Obviously our fantastical leadership qualities are likely to shine within democracies rather than the thugocratic alternatives – which are the only real alternatives to the WEIRD world, and they’re always male. The Chinese people – and I’ve met so many of them – deserve far better than this horrific CCP thugocrazy. Clearly the dictator Xi can’t last forever, and the Chinese people will hopefully not tolerate the country bumbling from thug to thug, and if we keep moving in a bonoboeque direction elsewhere, Chinese women will make themselves heard more and more within the country, before it’s too late for the already-decimated Uyghurs and other proud minorities.
Canto: Yes it amuses me that their oligarchy is called the Chinese Communist Party, an exquisitely meaningless name. They may as well be called the Soggy Bottom Boys Party, but humour has never been their strong suit. That’s thugs for you.
Jacinta: Yes, talking of humour, I’ve not yet heard from Mr Pudding about Elon Musk’s demand for Mano-a-mano combat. He’s such a coward, when it comes down to it….
References
17th century perspectives, 21st century slaughter
Vlady the Thug – returning us all to the glories of centuries-old slaughter
Canto: So much is happening, so much is being learned, so much of my ignorance is being brought home to me, and so much of my good luck is also being brought home, in that I’ve never had to live in or be brought down by a thugocracy. Then again, if you’ve come to this ‘lucky country’ be means of a leaky boat, trying to escape a foreign thugocracy by any means possible, you’ll likely have a very different perspective.
Jacinta: Haha yes it’s Writer’s Week here in Adelaide, and we’ve been sampling, generally by sometimes dodgy internet links, the thoughts of former refugees writers, investigative journalists on even more dodgy pharmaceutical companies, and words of wisdom from our intellectual elders. And of course many of these conversations have been clouded by the invasion of Ukraine by Vlady the Thug, and the consequent carnage.
Canto: Yes, it seems he’s trying to channel Peter the Great, but he’s 300 years behind the times, and hasn’t been told that warlordism just doesn’t fit with 21st century fashion. But Vlady the Thug, that’s good, it would definitely be helpful if all world leaders, including and especially Zelensky, started addressing him as such. Vlady is extremely small-minded, with a narrow understanding of nationalism and glory, and with a huge sense of his own grandeur. The WEIRD world may not be able to unite to destroy him, given the protection racket around him and the vast nuclear arsenal he and his predecessors have been allowed to assemble, but I think that worldwide mockery, difficult though it might seem at this awful time, might unhinge him just enough for a rethink, or alternatively, might be enough to turn his thug underlings against him.
Jacinta: True, but I don’t think Vlady the Thug is punchy enough…
Canto: It’s a good start, certainly a far cry from Peter the Great (who was a bit of a thug himself of course). And don’t forget, world leaders have never been too good at comedy, they’re generally too full of their Serious Destiny. I doubt if they would come at Vlady the Thug, never mind Vlad the Tame Impala or Mr Pudding.
Jacinta: True, but Zelensky is apparently a former comedian, and he’s absolutely Mister Popularity on the world stage at the moment. If he went with this mockery, and encouraged his new-found fans to follow his example, it might be the best, and certainly the cheapest form of attack available at present. Though it’s true that I can’t imagine Sco-Mo or Scummo, our PM, managing to deliver any comedy line with the requisite aplomb.
Canto: Well, it’s an interesting idea, if only we could get Zelensky’s minders to take it up. Unfortunately he seems to have caught the Man with a Serious Destiny disease recently – for which I don’t blame him at all. And anyway, I have to check the internet on a regular basis currently to see if he’s still alive.
Jacinta: Yes, I thought the imitation of Churchill in his address to the British Parliament was a bit cringeworthy, but I agree that it’s hardly a time to criticise Zelensky when Vlady the Thug is on the loose. Anyway, the WEIRD world is stuck in dealing with little Vlady. I listened to a long-form interview with Julia Ioffe on PBS today – she’s a Russian-born US journalist who has reported from that country for some years, and her depiction of Vlady was spot-on – that’s to say, it chimed exactly with mine. She feels that he will never withdraw or change his mind about Ukraine. He has stated often in communication with other leaders that Ukraine is not a ‘real country’.
Canto: Yes, unlike Afghanistan, Israel, Pakistan and all those African countries. Russia on the other hand is a real country thanks to the wars of Ivan , Peter, Catherine and the rest. Thanks to all the slaughter, rape and suppression of alternative languages and cultures. Just like Australia and the USA are real countries thanks to the removal of previous cultures from their land – with associated slaughter, rape, and ‘white man’s disease’.
Jacinta: Yes, few countries – or maybe there are no countries whose national ‘development’ hasn’t involved a fair amount of bloody repression. Ukrainians, as Ioffe pointed out, have made it abundantly clear in recent times that they reject Vlady’s thugocracy, and their resolve has hardened as a result of the 2014 events. But Ioffe’s view is also quite bleak – due to Vlady’s complete inability to back down, in her view. And I’m pretty sure she’s right about that. And, according to her, his ‘inner circle’ has contracted considerably in recent times, and they’re all as crazy as himself, maybe even crazier. So this may mean the invasion will continue, until he becomes master of an almost uninhabited wasteland. Nobody wants to provoke him to take the nuclear option, which he’s quite capable of.
Canto: So the only real option would be to kill him. And he’s no doubt been guarding himself against that option for years.
Jacinta: It would most likely have to be an inside job. I’m sure there are negotiations under way, but Putin is very much a survivor. At the moment he’s cracking down on dissent like never before. But the world is seeing it, and this will ultimately be a victory for democracy. In the short term though, it’s a terrible tragedy.
Canto: If there is a silver lining, it’s the winning of the propaganda war, the worldwide condemnation will give the CCP thugocracy something to think about vis-a-vis Taiwan. At the moment they’re trying to blame NATO for the invasion, and of course they have blanket control over the media there, but people have ways of getting reliable information, for example from the massive Chinese diaspora.
Jacinta: So I’ve been listening to Julia Ioffe, Masha Gessen, Fiona Hill and others, but of course no amount of analysis is going to improve the situation, and even our concern seems more debilitating than anything. I imagine holding Vlady prisoner and then pointing out some home truths…
Canto: Very useful. But here’s a few arguments. As you say, he’s been fond of claimng over the years that Ukraine isn’t a real country. But what makes Russia a real country? What make Australia a real country? What make the USA a real country? Presumably Vlady thinks that Russia’s a real country because the slaughter, rape and suppression of ‘minority’ languages and cultures occurred earlier.
Jacinta: Well, we don’t know what he would say. What if we didn’t tell him why he’s wrong, but allowed him to explain why he’s right? What would he say?
Canto: Well, we know that he’s a very ardent nationalist, so to suggest to him that all nations are artificial in an important sense would just incense him. But once he calms down (and we’ve got him all tied up and hanging upside-down so he can’t escape, and we’ve promised him that if he provides really cogent arguments according to a panel of independent experts, he’ll be given his freedom, with his thugocracy completely returned to him), what will be his arguments?
Jacinta: Well, we don’t have his views on the legitimacy of Russia as a nation, and I suspect he would scoff at the very idea of having to justify Russian nationhood, because I’m sure he believes that if Russia didn’t exist his life would have no meaning – which is about as far from our understanding of our humanity as one could possibly get – but we do have his essay from last year about why Ukraine isn’t and can never be a legitimate nation.
Canto: Yes, he harps on about Ukrainians and Russians being ‘a single people’, who shouldn’t have a border between them, but the very idea of any nations being a ‘single people’ is a fantasy. It’s of course where the terms ‘unAustralian’ and ‘unAmerican’ get their supposed bite from – the fantasy of individuals being united by their ‘nationhood’.
Jacinta: More importantly, he seems completely unaware, or prefers to be unaware, of the extremely repressive state he’s created, and that few people in their right minds, whether Ukrainian, Russian or Icelandic, would want to live under a jackboot when they have the opportunity to choose and criticise their own government.
Canto: Yes, he talks in the vaguest, most soporific terms of Ukrainians and Russians occupying ‘the same historical and spiritual space’, and being ‘a single people’, and with ‘affinities’ created by Vladimir the Great, the ruler of Kievan Rus over a thousand years ago. As if.
Jacinta: Yes, the fact is that Ukrainian pro-European and anti-Russian sentiment has obviously grown since Vlady’s bloody adventurism in 2014. Ukrainians are wanting to survive and thrive in the here and now. I mean, it’s good, sort of, that Vlady takes an interest in history, as we do, but from a vastly different perspective. His potted history, like many, is about rulers – earthly or spiritual, and territories won and lost between the Poles, the Lithuanians, the Russians and so on. But these battles for territories from centuries ago bear little relation to the lives and thoughts of individual people today, people whom Vlady is completely disconnected from, just as Xi Jinping and his fellow thugs are completely disconnected from the everyday freedoms of Hong Kongers.
Canto: The point to make here is that no amount of tendentious historical description will conceal the fact that Ukrainians, like Hong-Kongers, see that their best future lies in the arms of the WEIRD world, with all its messiness. Here’s a banner epigram – fuck our history, what abut our future?
Jacinta: Good one. Yes, Vlady doesn’t like that not-so top-down messiness. He prefers stasis and control, especially by himself. And if it means wholesale slaughter to obtain it, so be it. Mind you, I strongly suspect he was misguided in his perception of Ukrainian sentiment, for whatever reason. And the people who are paying for this misguidedness, by and large, (and horrifically) are the Ukrainians.
References
http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/66181
not Russia, Putin
The world’s fledgling democracies, or non-democracies, are prone to instability, just as monarchies were in the past, because they were so subject to the vagaries of fate, and of particular individuals and their circumstances. When England’s Henry V died of dysentery near Paris just shy of his 36th birthday he had, in less than a decade, stabilised his English estate and inflicted mortal blows on the old enemy across the channel. Had Henry survived his illness, he would almost certainly have been crowned King of France, and the ‘Hundred Years’ War’ between the two kingdoms would have been reduced to just under seventy. As it was, England was in its most powerful position, arguably, since William of Normandy dispossessed or killed off the Saxon nobility and established his vast fiefdom.
But with Henry’s death it all fell apart. His successor was a nine-month old child, who grew up to be extremely timid and completely ineffectual as a ruler. Though he was briefly crowned King of France (at age 10), England was plunged into the chaos of the Wars of the Roses, and soon lost all its French territories apart from Calais.
Democracy, for all its flaws – due largely to the crooked timber of humanity – is the only form of government that allows for, indeed guarantees, at least in theory, the peaceful transfer of power between successive ‘regimes’. Post-Soviet Russia has of course, no succession system in place. North Korea is essentially a monarchy. As to China, the succession will be up for grabs, fought out within a tiny, absurdly corrupt clique. Other tyrannies face their own unique uncertainties. And the people will be forced to suffer the outcome in virtual silence.
As a member of ‘the people’, the canaille, the peasantry, the great unwashed, the proles, the rabble, the riffraff, the parasitic masses, I feel fortunate to live in a democracy, because there’s just no realistic alternative for people who don’t want to be unexpectedly interfered with for no apparent reason. Democratic governments don’t generally go to war, and certainly don’t start wars, if they think it’ll lose them the next election, and since it’s obvious that most people want a peaceful, unchanging life, that tends to settle the matter.
Which brings me to Russia and its suffering people. For centuries they were subject to a succession of dynastic emperors or Tzars, much like those in the rest of the vast Eurasian continent. Interestingly, the best of them was the Empress Catherine, a ring-in from Germany, who had to get rid of her nogoodnik husband (by an arranged marriage), a dissolute sadist, before she could establish her right to the throne – to which she had no ‘right’ – since rights were essentially based on primogeniture after initial warlordy slaughter.
But allow me to digress again to Western Europe et al. The principles of government began to change over time in the proto-WEIRD world, with its beginnings going back, arguably, as far as Magna Carta and the first English parliament in 1215, and boosted by the English Civil War in the mid-seventeenth century, with its indecisive victory for the parliamentarian faction. A half-century later King James II was forced into exile, and the first ever constitutional monarchy came into being. Over time, British governments gained ascendency as the power of the monarch waned, the concept of Prime Ministership evolved, and the voting franchise widened. Across the Atlantic, a new experiment in democratic government was undertaken, and of course in France a revolution went haywire, resulting in a new despotism under Napoleon, followed by a stumbling and backsliding course that eventually led to democracy by the end of the 19th century. Other European countries also experienced traumatic periods following the end of traditional monarchical or quasi-monarchical systems. Spain’s long monarchical period was often turbulent, but it looked like it had come to an abrupt end when Napoleon forced King Ferdinand VII to abdicate in 1808. After this the Bourbon monarchy-in-exile became a focus of resistance, but it soon lost support after the fall of Napoleon, due its extreme conservatism. Spain became a constitutional monarchy in the 1830s, but there were ongoing battles between political factions until the ‘Glorious Revolution’ of 1868 led to the ousting of Queen Isabella, the first truly reformist government in the country, and the creation of a Constitution promoting citizens’ rights. However, there was still plenty of political strife, and a coup d’état in 1874 restored the Bourbon monarchy. However, the new Constitution created an alternating system of conservative and liberal prime ministerships, which was innovative, though not exactly democratic. The relatively liberal constitutional monarchy limped on until Spain erupted in civil war, followed by the long, lost years of the Franco dictatorship. ‘Permanent’ democracy wasn’t established until the early 1980s.
I could go on with a fulsome account of the slow emergence of something like full democracy in Germany, Italy, the Baltic States and so on, but the overall point is clear – the old absolute power systems were not easily killed off and democracy struggled to get a foothold and should by no means be taken for granted as an established feature of the political landscape.
Now to return to Russia. Their absolute monarchy began, always arguably, with the murderous warlord now known, aptly enough, as Ivan the Terrible. Of course, warfare was a way of life in those days, but some took this way of life to ridiculous extremes. Ivan won some of his wars and lost others, as is the way, and the expansion and contraction of territories generally continued under his successors. So are nations arbitrarily founded (and losted) under absolute rulers. One of the features of Ivan’s rule was a 24-year Livonian War – Livonia being the territory now covered by the Baltic States, Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania. Successful at first, Ivan failed as various surrounding forces rallied against him and the war severely depleted his military forces. Still, these and and other adventures no doubt have convinced Russia’s latest Tsar that these territories are an eternal part of Sweet Mother Russia, soon to be renamed Putinland.
Which brings me to Ukraine – but it would require a half-dozen books to do justice to the messy history of that country and region, even if only going back to the ancient Scythian kingdom, which covered not only modern Ukraine but much of south-western Russia. I’ll briefly mention the kingdoms, duchies, khanates, empires, republics and assorted noms de guerre associated with the region. After Scythia, there were the Slavic hordes, the Kievan Rus, the Golden Horde (mainly Mongols, at least at first), the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the kingdom of Poland, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Crimean Khanate, the Ottoman Empire, the Cossacks, the Tsardom of Muscovy, the Hetmanate, the Russian Empire, the Austrian Empire, the Free Territory of Ukraine, the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, the Soviet Union, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (fighting both the Nazis and the Soviets), and, in 1991, independence from (then semi-Soviet) Russia.
So from 1991 on, Ukraine has been what might be called a proto- or wannabe-democracy (but aren’t they all?), rife with corruption – no doubt a hangover from the long Soviet years (imagine how long Putinland would last under a free press tightly protected by law). It reached its nadir under the grotesquely corrupt Pupin puppet, Viktor Yanukovych, who was chased out of the country in the heroic Maidan Revolution, aka the Revolution of Dignity, in 2014, no doubt to the nappy-wetting fury of our Vlad. It was this humiliation dealt out to Putin’s pal in Ukraine that led to the attack on the country later that year, and continued aggression leading to the current invasion.
So why has Putin gone so ‘overboard’ as to invade a country that has become increasingly uninterested in its ties with Russia and increasingly hopeful of joining the European Union and even, possibly, NATO, an organisation whose raison d’être is arguably the containment of Putin’s imperialist ambitions?
Well, to me, the NATO issue is a red herring. More important for Putin is the horror of Ukraine’s increasing democratisation, and its increasing indifference to Russia. There may be economic motives that I don’t know about (economics isn’t my strong suit, which is why I don’t own any suits), but the fact is that Putin is fanatically anti-democratic, and loves to surround himself with puppet thugocracies, as can be found in Belarus, Kazakhstan, Chechnya, North Korea and even China – obviously not a puppet regime, but just as thuggish.
And of course, Ukraine has a special importance to this wannabe Tsar, as a nation or region that has been in Russia’s sphere of influence for some centuries. But Putin has miscalculated majorly with this old-fashioned offensive. Ukrainians are a proud and fighting people, as the Maidan Revolution proved, and the vast majority have zero interest in kowtowing to the new Putinland. It’s already clear that the Ukrainians will not be cowed by this attack, and will not negotiate in any way with the aggressors. Most international observers are at a loss as to how Putin could have made such a monumental miscalculation, as he is generally a smarter thug than most. If Putin has a victory here at all, it will be a Pyrrhic victory. He will not be able to install a Yanakovich-style leader, as nobody of any credibility, inside or outside of the country, will support him. And many men, women and children will die because of this folly. Basically, Putin has already lost this one. And, due to all the sanctions, which I don’t particularly support, he will face plenty of unrest on the home front.
How this will now play out is anyone’s guess. Putin seems to me like a usually astute gambler who has suffered a brainsnap and gambled much of his political reputation away. He can’t now back out, and he can’t win. No reputable nation is backing him, sanctions will make him increasingly unpopular domestically, and he actually now looks foolish. The worry of course is that he’ll play his hand to the bitter end, and lash out with maximum force at everyone who opposes him. It would be nice to think that we’re seeing the tragi-comic end of the era of naked despotism, but of course there’s nothing comic about Putin’s antics and their horrific consequences, and let’s face it, the timber of humanity is extremely crooked in some instances, and that has its appeal to an alarming number of people. But at least with democracy, the consequences of such crookedness aren’t quite so devastating. In Putinland, that’s another story. We’re all hoping this will be Putin’s last stand, but on the domestic front, he’s far more familiar with the terrain. We, the international community, must make every effort to keep him in his box, and to support those in the former and hopefully future nation of Russia, whose hope and ambition is to deliver the fatal blow.