Entrenchment in the Russo-Ukrainian War
UKRAINE. Dogma, dogma everywhere, and not to stop and think
Thomas More is always worth citing. He was, after all, a man for all seasons.
“I stand with Ukraine,” somebody told me today.
Of course they do. Don’t we all? The Russian regime’s detractors would have westerners lend credence to the fact that many Russians also stand with Ukraine. Undoubtedly, there are those who do. But few are in Russia; and few of those outside the Federation are likely ever to step foot there again.
A piece in last week’s The New Yorker underlines this: “Going back, in the future, would mean living with people who supported this catastrophe; who think they had taken part in a great project; who are proud of their participation in it” (Keith Gessen quoting Alexander Baunov).
In this week’s The New Yorker, you can read how a couple, Alex and Halyna, even fled to Ukraine, from Moscow, after the break-out of war. Alex hated his once-loved chef’s job: “He felt enraged. He wanted to shout, ‘There’s a war going on! People are getting killed!’ When he returned to the kitchen, he would punch the refrigerator. Eventually, it looked like it had tumbled down a flight of stairs.” Their journey from Russia to Ukraine was no cakewalk. “Do you even know what’s going on there?” the Russian border guard asked them. “Yes,” they replied. But Kharkiv is a hard sojourn: their Russian residence stamp exposes them to detention every time they leave the flat. Their next stop will be Costa Rica.
For 30 years, Ukraine and Russia have been entrenched; at times in war, but, for the full haul, in a vitriolic, acerbic and, above all, violent divorce proceeding, whose moments of rapprochement are now viewed as turncoat treachery. There’s much to be said, by comparison, for the Muslim ritual of simply repeating thrice, “I divorce thee, I divorce thee, I divorce thee.”
These are two nations whose lots have been inextricably caught up, one with the other, for a century and much, much more. And the Donbas, created by Wales and now suffering in wails, is no squabble over a Carly Simon LP. Far more than a tetchy divorce, this is a courtroom in which the judges in Geneva and New York have long since relinquished jurisdiction, and across which, along with invective, the parties launch missiles, their destruction extending spatially over vast territory and temporally over countless decades, if not centuries, or even millennia.
As entrenched as the stances assumed in the case of Heard v. Depp are those now assumed either side of this “non-existent”, very much existent, black line on eastern Europe’s map, even if they are positioned on just the one side of it. In the 400 years since Peter the Great diplomatically wooed the European powers and curried favour by raising the young Louis XIV in his lofty arms, before turning tail to wage war on the very friends whose bonhomie he’d so carefully cultivated in criss-crossing the continent for the 18 months of his mobile embassy, Russia and the Soviet Union have time, and time again proved an, at best, unreliable and, at worst, perfidious dance partner in a waltz whose steps have never truly been in time to the music that is harmony in Europe. From the religious furore that became the Crimean War, the secret race to Warsaw compacted with Germany, Hitler’s subsequent betrayal of an outraged Stalin and the primacy accorded to Russia’s gas by blauäugige, lapdog Germans all mark this four-century period as one of relations with a Eurasian monolith peppered with mistrust, blind gambits and an overarching sense of “if we absolutely must.”
Although Ukrainian nationalism can be traced to the period of Peter the Great’s reign, following the Ukraine’s partition between Russia and Poland and its ultimate absorption into Imperial Russia, for the bulk of the period thereafter, bar a momentary lapse in compliance following the 1917 Revolution, the Ukraine formed, until December 1991, an integral part and pretty large parcel of that “hesitation dance”-partner, never mind the guise.
Without question, 24 February 2022 marked a distinct change in the world’s conception of Ukraine. Even as a major provider of grain to Africa and the rest of the world, Ukraine was hardly a word on everyone’s lips: whilst “wine” conjures images of the Côte d’Or, of Italy or California’s Central Valley, “shipping” scenes of Rotterdam, Hamburg and Marseilles, and “umbrellas” notions of the City of London and Cherbourg, “grain” tended more to evoke scenes of windswept plains in Midwestern USA than windswept steppes in the nation in question. Now, mere mention of the word “war” evokes solely and exclusively thoughts of Ukraine. And that, despite the goings-on in Ethiopia, Yemen and South Sudan.
With whom, then, would my correspondent stand in those countries? With whom do I stand in those countries? How either of us would respond to that question would in large measure depend on our state of knowledge of the conflicts in the field – at least, that would be my earnest hope. There, the coverage is hardly blanket in nature. Of Ukraine, coverage is more present. But how does anyone resolve where they stand on an issue not involving them directly and on which information gets fed along channels that may or may not be reliable, that may or may not be truthful, and may or may not be partisan? Is there some higher ideal that can render detailed assessment of a conflict superfluous, what we might call an overriding principle?
Overriding principles. Can you think of one? A real one, not some spur-of-the-moment “I always …”, like “stick to the speed limit.” They’re scarce, aren’t they? There is a list of such principles prefacing the United Nations Charter of December 1948. Here are some of them:
to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and
to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small, and
to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained, and
to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom.
Neil Diamond sings of a lesson too late for the learning, made of sand, made of sand. These high-sounding principles are sand-like. I sometimes feel that, for the UN, they’re the last thing on my mind. Because, though vaunted, they are so often neglected as to invoke tears at the aspirations to which they give voice. Aspirations that are subscribed by the insouciant if we absolutely must and then flouted; and by the caring, because what other option do we have? The UN: for some, a panacea; for others, their last hope.
To my mind comes one overriding principle overriding all others: Thomas More’s avowal to never betray his oath to God. The difference between speed limits and oaths is conscience. An overriding principle is not grounded in the law; it is grounded in you and me, in our consciences. It’s not something we would go to jail for, it’s something we would die for. And that explains their rarity.
It explains why such overriding principles as do exist can prove malleable in their application. We live in a world that stands on principle but has very few on which to stand. In Carlo Collodi’s Adventures of Pinocchio, Geppetto, the hero’s creator, at one point says to his creation, “I’d like to believe you. But what is the promise of a puppet worth?” Collodi knew what it was he could place faith in. Thomas More only thought he knew.
“You stand with Ukraine?” I replied to my commenter. “As do I.”
But I give to charity. I don’t envy the lot of those who benefit from my donations. I lend support, I give voice to their cause. It’s all words; this blog is words. Just written words.
Words have the potential to be powerful, or to sound like flannel. The crunch is this: does standing with Ukraine mean that we are prepared, should Ukraine fall, to also fall, with Ukraine? To fall to our knees in a realisation of abject failure and weep for a fate we were unable to prevent? For, in truth, that is what we imply when we state that we stand shoulder to shoulder with a cause. It should mean, in fact, that we will take up arms in its behalf.
I have no weapon to take up. Except it be made of words. Some use words to make vainglorious proclamations of Ukrainian glory, before scuttling back to their cosseted office jobs and superannuated pensions. I’ve never once uttered the words Glory to Ukraine. Ukraine may well have its glory but, for the time being, it has to survive. Then, it must win the peace that comes, if it comes. When it’s done that, it will have its glory, not before. So I use words to encourage, rationalise, and I use words to criticise Ukraine, where I feel criticism is just and warranted and may help Ukraine have the ever more putative, and ever less materialised peace for which it yearns.
The Ukraine question is an ultimate challenge for Ukraine. I believe it is an ultimate challenge to all of us, wherever we might be. If we feel the challenge lacks any pressing nature, then that is solely due to our geographical or emotional distance from it. But challenge it is, nonetheless. The largest part of which is to gain an understanding of the reasons for the invasion or, as someone put it once: “the nature of the Misunderstanding between these two neighbours” (their own capital “M” – I happen to like its overstated understatement). For there is, into this aspect of it, little or no inquiry to be found beyond greed or madness. What inquiry I have made has revealed to me material aspects, such as censorship, poverty, subjugation, gas, the primacy of commercial interests, criminal actings as a system of government; and the differences between these aspects in Russia, and in Ukraine, and elsewhere, which all amount to questions of degree. In short, where, as so often, the overriding falls short of stating a superlative standard, we needs must resort to its comparative function.
All the reasons impelling Russia to its invasion of its neighbour are present, to some degree, in relationships that permeate life elsewhere. The US, for instance. The East Palestine disaster is a case in point: what we are not told is not told to us because of some measure of censorship; it is surely the poverty of those residents affected that guides their treatment; the papers are agog at employment policies that sound awfully akin to subjugation; gas plays a role by a quirk of circumstance; the primacy of commercial interests is present in spades, indeed in shovels; and he who would deny any criminal actings in the pursuit of government lives in a bliss for which I envy him. Besides which, thinly veiled accusations of greed do circulate. Madness surely cannot be far off, but to date it’s not an explicit clinical diagnosis.
The war that consumes our interest, and our interests, in far-off Ukraine will, one day, end, and its effects will blow over, just as that cloud of poisonous gas blew over the ground in East Palestine, Ohio. The ground on which I was propelled into embracing the phrase “I stand with Ukraine” is one of biblical, humane simplicity: thou shalt not kill. I’d like to be able to profess that commandment as a principle adhered to by governments the world round; but I cannot (see Stand with Ukraine. Why should I?)
If degree is all that separates proponents of one and the same policy thrust, then the ultimate challenge presented by this war is not Ukraine’s alone. It confronts us all, yet, despite similarities in tone, if not register, to aspects commonly thought of as benign or, at best, unrelated, we make of war a totally separate entity to peace; however, peacetime’s commercial competition is nothing but warfare, conducted this time without the weapons. Exceptional as it might be, warfare is a manifestation of what Man is, yet is observed from outside under an aura of denial, one that would have it that war is precisely what Man is not.
In responding to the Ukraine question, the holder of an opinion cannot, therefore contend that he is unqualifiedly good, and that that which he decries is unqualifiedly bad. That is not degrees; it is self-satisfaction. With due consideration to the overriding principles of application to the universality of Man’s acts, it’s a self-satisfaction that ought to raise sentiments of self-recrimination.
For want of such sentiments, we’re good, and they’re bad is simplistic dogma. Dogma every bit as dangerous as any that, in Russia or elsewhere, circulates as common currency.
These articles form part of my quest: to understand this dogma; if you care.
That story of Alex and Halyna was captivating. Beautifully written and engaging on many levels.