If Ukraine can up its game, then, UK, up yours
Ukraine: a land of hope and glory. The UK: a land of vainglorious hope and faded glory.
Once western USSR’s security, now western Europe’s security
“The” Ukraine - it translates as the borderlands - was so named as being the last tract of land before the rest of Europe began. When this war is done, it’ll still be borderland, but the perspective will be reversed: Europe’s borderland to the rest of the former Soviet Union.
Once the western bastion of the USSR against Europe, Russia’s aim is now to re-establish the borderland for itself against western Europe. It must be western Europe’s aim to secure Ukraine against the rest of the former Soviet Union - not because western Europe wants that, but because Ukraine herself wants that. Because Ukraine’s people may flee to safety, but Ukraine herself cannot. Ukraine must win; then it must be secured. For, it is now the eastern bastion of Europe’s democracy, and it is worthy of Europe’s security - of that much it has more than proved itself worthy.
If Europe believes in this existential struggle, that is to say, if it ultimately believes in its own existence - it is its duty to further this security by pouring its unstinting efforts into aiding the cause that Ukraine is fighting: that it’s fighting for itself, for all Europe and for a secure future for all.
For eight months, Ukraine has done nothing but constantly up its game. Europe must up its.
Question: how shall we extol thee, who are born of thee? Answer: with an election.
“Some are born great, some acquire greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them.” True or not, it was Shakespeare who said it, through the mouth of Malvolio in Twelfth Night - who likely considered himself in the third category, as he then proceeds to conjure in his mind’s eye (another Shakespeare-ism) how he intends to avail himself of the greatness thus thrust. But none of us is born great. And the greatness thrust upon Malvolio, while documented in the play, was nothing but a trick at his expense, to the audience’s delight.
Nonetheless, it may be argued at one level that what doesn’t apply to greatness, might nevertheless apply to money: some are born with it, some acquire it and some have it thrust upon them, which might be to say they acquire it without either having been born with it or having acquired it as the law intends. But greatness is not a product of anything with which we are born or that we acquire or even that is thrust upon us; greatness is the product of what we do with the position we are in when we are in it. It is not the product of past deeds, but of future deeds. Whatever gets us to the starting blocks of greatness, greatness is what ensues, not what precedes. It’s not even ours for the having: it’s bestowed by others.
The Conservative party in the UK seems not to be very great at choosing great leaders whilst it is in office. It has in recent years internally elected four, three of whom shone with no greatness, thrust though it may have been upon Mrs May, Mr Johnson and Ms Truss, and the fourth of whom, Mr Sunak, is yet to prove himself as great, having already faltered by reinstating some of the discredited old guard.
If the purpose of government is to serve the people, as a people, the British people has of late been badly, not greatly, served. If its purpose is, on the other hand, to serve itself, it too is not being greatly served either. After all, kick-backs are the product of palm-greasing, and you can’t lube a palm in 45 days spent destroying the very economy one is appointed to husband.
I do wonder that it doesn't occur to people, the people, that a general election might be a more amenable route out of this seeming lack of greatness. Meanwhile, some of the audience is still being delighted at the trick: one that’s this time being practised upon it by the man up on stage.
Criminal jurisdiction vs. international war crimes jurisdiction
He cleverly may want to believe that he isn’t. Calling out Mr Putin’s criminality will not see him convicted of that of which he is accused in public opinion - or at least it ought not to: it is his trial in a court of law that will determine his guilt or otherwise, for he who is accused of breaching the rule of law must be tried according to the rule of law, if it is to be called a rule of law at all. The issue here is that, if the outrages practised in Ukraine by Russia’s forces are “internal” in nature (to Russia), there is no international jurisdiction under which he can be tried, for that jurisdiction falls to Russia itself; if they are of the nature of war crimes, then such international jurisdiction may exist.
The Geneva Convention, instituted following the Battle of Solferino (1859), and its subsequent amendments and protocols, apply to acts engaged in in the course of declared war and, in 1949, that wording was expanded with the intention of also covering acts undertaken not by military personnel but by police personnel, to include armed conflict. However, the Geneva Conventions do not, according to their express terms apply sensu stricto to special military operations. It was one reason why the United Kingdom advocated use of the term conflict to describe the military incursion into the Falkland Islands by Argentina in 1982 and the British response thereto. And it is, I fear, the prime reason behind the prohibition in Russia that the BBC’s Basil Fawlty might well have put as “Don’t mention the war.” It is not entirely specious reasoning that has given rise to such a tortuous use of language.
While it is right, I believe, to call out the things that one sees as unjust, the endeavours to put right injustice need to be made with measure in a world whose trajectory around the sun is one of the few truly balanced things in it. Balance is a product of two routes: maintaining in balance that which is balanced; or counterbalancing that which is in imbalance. Countering Russia’s attack on Ukraine is certainly in the latter category. The act of counterbalancing it is delicate: the imbalance must be righted without overbalancing the other way. A righting of imbalance makes a right; two wrongs don’t: one flails at the imbalance but fails to right it, and can even impugn one’s own efforts at righting in the process.
To be clear: I think Putin is guilty of war crimes. I think his choice of words is a thin ploy to evade application of the Geneva Conventions to his acts. I hope that, if he ever adduces that as an argument in his defence, it will fail. Whether it will is unknown; the question will turn on whether a court of law trying him views Ukraine as a rebellious part of Russia or as a sovereign state in its own right - the substance of the clash of paradigms that has led to this sorry situation at all. But wording qualifying Ukraine as the one thing as opposed to the other as a ground for treating it as such is not a matter for whimsical choice by him who adopts it, for then it is but a pretext, and a pretext cannot be validated by simply attaching to it a label of one’s own convenience. If I acted as Putin’s counsel, I would certainly advance the “rebellion” line in argument, because it is an argument he would advance in his own defence. Any counsel would be negligent if he failed properly to challenge the case against his client. And, indeed, from Putin’s viewpoint, the “sovereign state” line is similarly a spurious argument, born likewise of a whimsical choice.
Here is an earlier piece characterising Putin as a war criminal; as a criminal, in fact:
A short tabular indent
When the President of Ukraine has round-table discussions, he uses … a round table. Even if the discussion is with only one partner. See the photo on the left, below, where he meets with the President of Guinea-Bissau.
The décor is opulent and in keeping. It does honour to the guests; it does honour to the host. It is not brash, but dignified.
The President of Guinea-Bissau did not come just himself, however, but with an entourage and, in the photo on the right, the visitors are shown at another table, along with their Ukrainian counterparts. The table is a long table; it is not round any more, but it is nonetheless rounded. The two sets of participants sit on either side of its narrower dimension and not at its ends. This is because the purpose of the visit is viewed by both parties as rapprochement and not distancing. No one sits at the head of the table because, in a round table discussion, there is no head of the table. Nobody presides, even if there are two presidents seated at the table. These are all subliminal messages, but important ones.
Not only on the field of battle but also in the field of political discussion, Ukraine shows the way by doing things the way things ought to be done. They use words as they ought to be used – they call wars wars and seek understanding where there is understanding to be sought. They know how to sit at tables in the halls of discussion and, come the day, they will turn the tables on the field of battle.
There is a rightness in all of this that inspires confidence.
Photos courtesy of the Office of the President of Ukraine.
