But then again, the same can be said of most other Russians. They are not known for doing what they do to make jokes or try to be funny. They are also not known for doing things at random and/or to no purpose. They say what they say because they mean it, and do what they do for definite purposes. They have a history of bumbling about quite a bit when acting towards a purpose, but that doesn't mean that they don't have definite reasons in mind behind their aims and actions.
Now having a reason to do something does not mean it is thereby morally justified; for that to be so it would have to be that there are a whole lot of other factors holding true. It would have to be that it is a good reason, it would have to be that this good reason is founded in some kind of moral grounds, it would have to be that there are no available alternatives that are better, and so on. But having a reason to do something does mean that there is an explanation for it. So when the Russians say what they say and do what they do there surely is an explanation there, and this explanation will usually have nothing to do with either humor or random behavior.
(A) As a case in point, consider a war going on in between the Russian Federation and Ukraine. Active military operations were initiated by Russia. And this is something that happened not as a result of any attempt to be funny or from any random thrashing about, but for particular reasons, which reasons will give us an explanation.
The ghosts of the Great Patriotic War . . .
As you recall from history, there was such a thing as the Soviet Union, which was the closest thing in modern times to a classical empire, a grouping made up of what is now Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and a whole lot of other places. Some of these places were for the most part willing participants in this group; most of them were not that willing. This pseudo-empire was actually a descendent of an actual empire put together by the Russian Czars in a process that took hundreds of years to accomplish; so actually was more like a grandfathered-in empire, with a significant number of its grandchildren arm-twisted in.
The largest, most destructive, most deadly, and most brutal war ever between two peoples was the war between the Soviet Union and Germany; a war that we in the West lump into the greater World War II. The Russians of today will call World War II by the name of "World War II" but by that only refer to the rest of it or the bigger, overall picture, being everything else but their fight with Germany, which they separate out as the Great Patriotic War.
We in the US were at least a little bit surprised by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 which opened our involvement in World War II, though we should not have been. However, earlier on in 1941, the Soviets were absolutely and completely surprised by the German attack on them. They were convinced that they were covered by the signed and sealed non-aggression pact that they had at that time with Germany; and furthermore, they had cooperated, basically as partners with Germany, in the attack on and dismemberment of Poland in 1939. The result of this, their Great Patriotic War, was millions of people dead and decades of lingering destruction to their lands. As a result of their experience with this war, Russians will be quite naturally very leery of anything involving German military capabilities. Their paranoia over this was so extreme that that Soviet plan for Germany after World War II was erasing Germany as a nation and returning it to what it looked like before 1870; a plan that involved a permanent break-up into tiny city-state-like domains.
. . . and a whole lot of other wars for that matter. . .
The typical Russian is not likely to forget entirely their Great Patriotic War, but there were a whole lot of other ones too that, though they may forget, it won't take a whole lot to be reminded of them. There were the French Napoleonic Wars, which famously included the invasion of Russia in 1812. There is the Crimean War, where Turkey, Great Britain, and France lined up against Russia. There have been multiple wars with Poland, multiple wars with the Turks, with Hungarians (among many others) in World War I, fighting against Romanians, who were allies of the Germans in World War II, and so on.
. . .and on top of that some other bad blood with some other countries.
In addition to some bad memories with the typical rivals, it is also easy to see how Russians may feel negative about some other, less obvious nations. For example, in the 1600's through the early 1700's one of the greatest European powers was Sweden; they controlled a whole lot of the Baltic and, as a matter of course, attacked the Russians, who only barely managed to push them back. Then there is Finland, which used to be a territory of Sweden, but then managed with Russian help to gain its independence, the Russians having the idea that it would be a buffer state between it and Sweden. But then Finland became an ally of Germany in 1941, joining in on that action.
With this kind of historical background, there is an explanation for why it is that Russians will react at least somewhat negatively to some things that NATO and its individual countries will do or even plan to do, and, in addition, to other countries that its considering adding. Though its easy for us to gloss over this, the Russians will not do so easily: Germany, though not the strongest, is the biggest European element of NATO. And all of the other countries in this historical review are also in NATO, or considered for addition to it, all of them being at one time or another historical enemies of Russia.
So this is why even the remotest possibility of Ukraine being included in NATO is going to be a serious hair-trigger-like issue. If Ukraine is added in, this means that NATO-member military units could be lined up on the border of Ukraine, the second largest country in Europe, on the border with Russia. And that means that there is the possibility of German, Turkish, Polish, French, and so on and on, military units on a large border where there are few natural obstacles. Add on to this the possibility of military units on other large borders, like that with Finland, and it just looks all the worse. But of course it has been an issue for quite a while that there is the possibility of Ukraine being added into the NATO alliance.
The way to deal with paranoids is not to tell them that they face more threats if they continue in that state. But this is what Russians have been told, and they will be expected to react negatively to that news.
(B) There's always a whole lot more going on in the rest of the world when something happens in one place; big things usually don't happen in isolation. If there are explanations for Russian behaviors in a case like the current war in Ukraine, there have to be explanations for the behavior of other sides and players. In other words, there have to be explanations for what is going on in the West while all this other stuff is happening.
Shades of Budapest. . .
One of the biggest diplomatic coups of all time was pulled off by Josef Stalin, near the end of World War II, which came to be included in what was called the Yalta Accords. He was able to pull a large fast one on Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt, who, apparently exhausted by all their efforts during the war, let him get away with a deal where the Soviet Union was able to take under its wing most of Eastern Europe. That wing of course turned out to be a heavy one. When Stalin died, a lot of people thought that the world changed all over and became a bright and shiny new place. Among these were some Hungarians who got in into their heads that they were ready for a whole new world that did not include the heavy Soviet influence. And the result of this was a rebellion in 1956 against their very much Soviet controlled government. The new sunny days didn't last long though, as the Soviets were jealous of their sphere of influence and quickly marched in and stomped them down.
But there were other things going on in the world around this Hungarian situation, specifically having to do with Western nations. The West saw this rebellion as an opportunity to redress at least some of the mistakes made at Yalta and loosen the Soviet grip in at least one place. This resulted in the West basically egging the whole thing on and supporting it in any way that it could. But then when the whole thing got stomped down, all this Western influence made itself scarce and left it to be so stomped. The inglorious result of all this was that, for all practical purposes, the West was using the Hungarians as pawns in their cold war standoff with the Soviets.
The application of this historical case to today is that there is a similar situation going on with regard to Ukraine in that, for all practical purposes, the West is using the Ukrainians as pawns in its standoff with Russia. Essentially, NATO is holding out in front of Ukraine the possibility of membership in it as a big juicy carrot; but this is being done not from any serious intent on bringing them in but only from the idea of maintaining pressure on Russia. The reason why this is an explanation for what NATO is doing is that it is clearly irrational for the alliance to bring Ukraine into it, so much so that it can't have any real intent to do so, and also that it couldn't have ever had any serious intention to do so. There are two main reasons why this is so:
(1) The first problem is the disputed territories within Ukraine. Ukraine claims control over and inclusion of the Crimea and various other places that they have no control over, and this is entirely separate from any territory occupied by war. Even without any occupied territory counted, anyone entering into an alliance with Ukraine, even a strictly defensive one, would automatically be drawn into war for the Crimea and any breakaway regions. Anyone from any Ukrainian governmental unit who stepped into these disputed territories would be attacked there, and that would count as a trigger for any defensive alliance to have to react to; all that they would have to do is to say that Russians did it, for example, and this would require any defensive allies to act.
(2) The second problem is ethnic inclusions, the fact that a significant number of people in Ukraine are ethnically Russian. In general, nation A is not going to make a military alliance with nation B against C when a significant number of B'ers are C'ers. Doing that is a case where A is just asking to be undermined by the C'ers who are now under their banner in B. There is a similar case in point that illustrates that: No one is going to make a serious military alliance commitment with Iraq to target Iran, as a significant number of people in Iraq are Shia-sect Moslems, and Iran is considered to be the center of and protector of the Shia sect. Anyone who does this is just asking to get undermined by Iraqi Shi'ites. A nation may be willing to help Iraq and to help them defend themselves generally, but would not bring them into any formal alliance against Iran.
. . . .and what the Hungarians thought when it was all over.
The end result of the Hungarian rebellion being stomped down led to some resentment by Hungarians about the actions of the West, to say the least. They figured out that they were being used as pawns, and when someone sees this happening, this is something that will cloud up attitudes for a long time.
A parallel result with the Ukrainians as they are today puts us in a situation where there is a major diplomatic ticking time-bomb. Its just a matter of time until the Ukrainians figure it out that NATO never really had any serious intention about bringing them in, and that it has all been part of a third-party play against the Russians. And once they figure that out, they will also naturally figure out the next step, that since NATO has been playing them all along as pawns against the Russians, they could have bucked the whole play and made a deal with the Russians that would have forestalled the whole war. In other words, they are going to see that they could have avoided the whole war had they only known that NATO was never serious, leaving them to just take the option of strict neutrality. By all means we should do what we can to help the whole Ukrainian situation, but at bottom this means that by far the best thing we can do is to come clean, the sooner the better, over this issue of NATO addition. This would put the Ukrainians into a realistic decision scenario, where they could choose whatever result they think best without any unreasonable expectations about what other people will or will not do.
(published 4/28/22)
Reader comments:
First: It seems that there is an inconsistency here in the argument, specifically relating to the reactions of the different involved parties. On one hand there is the claim that the Russians reacted the way that they did because of the possibility that Ukraine would be added to the NATO alliance and, as a result of this if it happened, there being NATO units stationed right up against their border with Ukraine, a border which they cannot really defend, which then would create a defense crisis situation. On the other hand there is the claim that NATO never really had the intention of adding Ukraine. But that brings out an inconsistency: If Ukraine was not going to be brought into NATO then there was no threat of NATO units being positioned at the large Ukraine/Russia border, and thus the Russians could not have been reacting to any threat. But this then means that the whole affair has just been a matter of Russian aggression plain and simple all along.
Second: No matter what the intentions of NATO are and were, this seems to be beside the point now, and there is reason to say that the current actions of the US seem to be the correct ones now. Even if it is true that NATO had no expansion intention all along as stated, one thing that is clearly going on right now is that the US is helping a country defend itself. And this seems to be a correct thing to do no matter the background circumstances.
Writer response:
On the first: There is an inconsistency in the argument at hand only if all parties involved were aware of all facts that are claimed to hold. There is no inconsistency, however, if the facts that are claimed were not the picture that was presented to everyone. In other words, the argument here is that there was no intention to add Ukraine to NATO, that there never was any such intention, that there is every intention not to do so now, but that few actually realized this, especially the Russians. And of course the Russians, not realizing this background, acted as they did based on the opposite expectation.
Furthermore, there is actually very good reason to say that everyone on both sides was convinced otherwise also. Recall the situation in early to mid-February (2022) before any invasion: At this time the Russians announced what was essentially an ultimatum, stating that they wanted it to be clear that Ukraine was not going to be joining NATO, and they wanted this to go on record somehow. The US and NATO response to that was essentially this: Heck with what you want, we are going to be bringing in anyone we want. Not only that, there was soon after that a NATO conference to review the overall situation, and the Ukrainians were even invited to this conference as observers. These actions clearly cemented everyone's expectations: At this point the Ukrainians were convinced that they were coming into the alliance, whether sooner or later didn't seem to matter much; but also at the same time the Russians were convinced of the same thing, that the Ukrainians were going to be added to the alliance.
These expectations of all parties involved had two significant consequences:
(1) With the Ukrainians convinced that they were going to be brought in to the alliance, they figured that they had no reason whatsoever to make any deal with the Russians of any kind, especially one that would involve agreeing to stay out of an alliance of any sort.
(2) With the Russians convinced that the Ukrainians were being added in, they figured that they had to do what had to be done to keep that from happening. And from that perspective, the only way to stop that from happening was the necessary evil of invading.
The overall net result of all this network of expectations is that NATO for all practical purposes triggered this war. And this is why, to repeat the conclusion of the main article, the best thing to do about the war is for NATO to come clean about the underlying actual intentions about expansion.
On the second:
To aid a country in defending itself in a war is one thing. For us to aid that country in defending itself in a war that we ourselves triggered is something entirely different. In the latter case the best thing to do is either not trigger war in the first place, or if the time for that has past and that is not an available option, to remove the trigger so that the war can be ended as soon as possible.
The alternative to removing the trigger, and by so doing remove the impetus, is escalation. And that is the sort of situation where we can draw parallels to other, similar situations that might best be described as "Guns of August" scenarios. (This refers to a famous work detailing the events and actions leading up to World War I.). This is a scenario where policies and strategies take on a life of their own and drive people into situations that they never wanted, but yet are forced into because of the inevitable consequences of those polices and strategies, which consequences they may not be even aware of, and this all because they were ultimately unwilling to stand up and say "Stop Here".
There is a specific case in point where a "Guns of August" scenario could play out in this current war: Suppose it happens that the US were to go all the way out on a policy limb and commit to helping to defend Ukraine in almost any circumstance. If this were to happen, the US would effectively be operating offensively on its own. But in such a case, it would then not be operating under the NATO umbrella; it would be operating on its own. The NATO alliance is defensive and does not cover people for what they go out and do on their own, else that alliance would have to cover any nation that wanted to go out and take some territory on their own, for example.
But this means that, if the US were to take any action to defend the Ukrainians in any way, this could easily result in a counter-strike by the Russians. But that would be a case where NATO would not be required to step in to help defend the US, as we would be out of the defensive umbrella. A specific case in point of this would involve a nuclear exchange: Suppose, for example, that the Russians use a nuclear strike in order to keep the Crimea, and then the US responds with a nuclear strike against Russia proper, the rationale for doing so being a result of giving the Ukrainians the prior expectation that we would provide them with a nuclear shield. With this kind of scenario, its possible that we could find ourselves in the very bad scenario of being in a nuclear war with Russia without NATO backing. This is an example of how things could get out of hand in a way that no one would want, where it is better to stop early in the first place, even if it means doing what has to be done to remove a trigger situation.
References to:
The Guns of August, Barbara W. Tuchman, 1962, Dell Publishing.
Copyright © 2019 philosopherstree.com - All Rights Reserved. Site and all material.
Powered by GoDaddy