War and history are intertwined. Entire conceptions of history are defined by what status one accords to war in one’s theory of change. War is certainly not the only way to punctuate history, but it is clearly one of the pacemakers. Battles and campaigns are not the only events that define winners and losers, but they do matter. In its heyday war was the great engine of history.
"the war in Ukraine was originally conceived.. a “Bunga war” - frivolous, gratuitous, neither a serious act of great power politics, nor a dramatic effort to restart history."
Dr. Putin explained, clearly and in depth, why he launched the punitive expedition into Ukraine. Unlike the dozen wars the West have launched lately, his reasoning and and justification are impeccable: it is a matter of Russia's life or death. Here are some memory-jogs:
In the summer of 1997, Joe Biden put out a statement explicitly saying that NATO expansion in the Baltic regions would rightly provoke Russia to take military actions. Biden even suggested that NATO would be responsible for creating a “vigorous and hostile” Russian response. Biden said: “I think the one place where the greatest consternation would be caused in the short-term for admission [to NATO], having nothing to do with the merit and preparedness of the country to come in, would be to admit Baltic states now in terms of NATO-Russian, US-Russian relations. If there was ever anything that was going to tip the balance, were it to be tipped, in terms of a vigorous and hostile reaction in Russia, I don’t mean military, it would be that.” https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/video-of-joe-biden-warning-of-russian-hostility-if-nato-expands-resurfaces/ar-AAUMVjI
In 2007, in Munich, Dr. Putin told a Western audience, “It turns out that NATO has put its frontline forces on our borders, and we continue to strictly fulfil the treaty obligations and do not react to these actions at all. I think it is obvious that NATO expansion does not have any relation with the modernization of the Alliance itself, or with ensuring security in Europe. On the contrary, it represents a serious provocation that reduces the level of mutual trust. And we have the right to ask: against whom is this expansion intended? And what happened to the assurances our western partners made after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact? Where are those declarations today? No one even remembers them.”
Putin added, “But I will allow myself to remind this audience what was said. I would like to quote the speech of NATO General Secretary Mr Woerner in Brussels on 17 May 1990. He said at the time that: “the fact that we are ready not to place a NATO army outside of German territory gives the Soviet Union a firm security guarantee”. Where are these guarantees?” That was 15 years ago.
The referendums conducted by the two self-proclaimed Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk in May 2014, were not referendums of “independence” (независимость), as some unscrupulous journalists have claimed, but referendums of “self-determination” or “autonomy” (самостоятельность). The qualifier “pro-Russian” suggests that Russia was a party to the conflict, which was not the case, and the term “Russian speakers” would have been more honest. Moreover, these referendums were conducted against the advice of Vladimir Putin.
After the election of the post-coup new model Ukrainian government in 2014, opposition parties were declared illegal and some leaders were arrested for “treason,” the media was censored and the parliament outlawed Russian, the language of a third of the population, as an official language. Then the government declared war on the predominantly Russian Eastern provinces and, for past eight years, has killed 14,000 people.
Ukraine is not a human catastrophe like Vietnam, where the US burned children to death and poisoned those that survived, eventually killing 3,000,000 civilians. It's not a war. It's a police action, like the Korean War in '51 (that also killed 3 million civilians). And it's not a criminal act, because UN Article 15 applies to Russia as it did when the US invoked it against Iran.
Against Iran, for God's sake.
The Ukrainian population normally speaks both Russian and Ukrainian, but often also Hungarian (or Magyar), since 1st September 2020 the use of any language other than Ukrainin has been strictly forbidden in public administrations and schools. Russian- and Magyar-language schools have been closed, prompting official protests from Russia and Hungary. On 21 July 2021, President Volodymyr Zelensky signed the law on the “Indigenous Peoples of Ukraine.” It stipulates that only Ukrainians of Scandinavian origin, as well as Tatars and Karaites have “the right to fully enjoy all human rights and all fundamental freedoms” (sic), thereby depriving Ukrainians of Slavic origin of the same rights.
"The choice that we faced in Ukraine — and I'm using the past tense there intentionally — was whether Russia exercised a veto over NATO involvement in Ukraine on the negotiating table or on the battlefield," said George Beebe, a former director of Russia analysis at the CIA and special adviser on Russia to former Vice President Dick Cheney. And we elected to make sure that the veto was exercised on the battlefield, hoping that either Putin would stay his hand or that the military operation would fail."
There was no Ukraine war under the previous more-populist US President. Populism = history restarting = war -- that's not what's going on here. The populist take is that Americans by-and-large support isolationism, which would have prevented this Ukraine war because the US would have (a) not encouraged Ukraine to fight and (b) not pushed NATO up to Russia's border.
Predictions of larger future European conflicts that an isolationist USA would be dragged into echo the discredited Domino Theory of the Vietnam War.
But America caused this war. There is no question about that from any perspective. Perhaps that is the biggest piece of history that stays intact. From the notes of the Imperial Cruise to the trade partnership to the pushing of NATO borders to pay for play meddling to weaponizing the dollar over and over and over. All triggered such events. Same for angle drilling oil kitchens from Kuwait under Iraq. Same for soft resets to be exploited, same for staying in Europe for zero justifiable reason.
You argue that the "original invasion plan" (seizure of Kiev) failed; then plan B (encirclement etc) also failed. Where do these notions come from? ". . .as far as our media allow us to glimpse it." Is this the same media which "allowed us to glimpse" Trump colluding with the Russians daily for four years? But did not allow us to glimpse Hunter's laptop? Scott Ritter, a military man who does not rely on "our" media, but reads maps, on the ground tactical maneuvers, etc argues (I think quite convincingly) that the war is over; the Russians won. He also points out that unfortunately he did not have access to Putin's Plan; nor, I might add, did "our" media.
Along with other commentators here I find AT's approach to the causes, military progress, and likely outcome to the war to be implausible. But he is very well placed to view the outcomes in terms of changes to political economy locally and globally. Especially given his knowledge of, and access to, the key European polity, Germany. While the US has chosen to involve the world in what could be regarded as a 'local war', the consequences for Europe are likely to be seismic. Both economically, given the blow-back of sanctions, and politically, perhaps starting today (the French election).
You are asking some extremely profound and important questions.
What is it that will restart history--class analysis/populism or war or as you say, human freedom, not as a philosophical abstraction but as a concrete political proposition that remains a key part of being human?
Is this sense of being able to make history through an act of will our salvation or are downfall or maybe somehow both?
Please consider writing more about such a sense of voluntarism.
Caveats: I have not read Hegel; I read something or other about/by Marx as assigned reading in a poli sci class a half-century ago and remember almost nothing except the photo of Marx on the cover. So I'm just an ordinary citizen trying to make sense of the world.
These two paragraphs from your essay most affected me:
"So if the Ukraine war marks a a break, to put the emphasis on Putin may be misguided. If the honor of rekindling history, of “returning us to the 19th century” belongs to anyone, it is not to Bunga-Putin. That honor belongs to the Ukrainians.
It is the Ukrainians, to the amazement and not inconsiderable embarrassment of the West, who are enacting a drama of national resistance unto death. ....There are many other peoples who are struggling for their existence and recognition today. The difference is that the Ukrainians do so in the classic form of a nation in arms rallying around a nation state. And the Ukrainians do so efficaciously. They have turned back a Russian army. They have saved their capital city. Those are not merely symbolic achievements."
So, no, there is nothing "Bunga" about this war (other than the comparison you make to January 6), although some of the discourse and news coverage of it seems bent on making it so. But that is what much of our public discourse does, totalizing and simplificating - both words that I have coined to describe our inability to deal with complexity - being their primary tools.
Your premise - as I understand it - that this war may be "restarting history" explains the combination of dread and hope that I feel as I devote hours each day to learning about it. It feels like that term I learned recently, 'the hinge of history.' I feel dread at the prospect of Putin winning, in whatever form that might take, because I fear that such an outcome will shut the already-closing door on our imperfect liberal world order. I feel hope at the prospect of Ukraine winning - successfully defending and reclaiming their entire sovereign nation and asserting their right to determine their own path forward and their place in the world - because this outcome might help to keep that door open, perhaps in some ideal world flinging it fully open.
I'm reminded of a William Carlos Williams poem:
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens
I know nothing, but, to me, it seems that so much depends on the Ukrainian people, their government, and their military - and on our fortitude and steadfastness in supporting them. Putin will do what he will do. He may have dealt the cards, but Ukrainians willing to sacrifice all to preserve their nation and their freedom may be demonstrating to the world how to win with what seemed a weak hand.
"the war in Ukraine was originally conceived.. a “Bunga war” - frivolous, gratuitous, neither a serious act of great power politics, nor a dramatic effort to restart history."
Dr. Putin explained, clearly and in depth, why he launched the punitive expedition into Ukraine. Unlike the dozen wars the West have launched lately, his reasoning and and justification are impeccable: it is a matter of Russia's life or death. Here are some memory-jogs:
In the summer of 1997, Joe Biden put out a statement explicitly saying that NATO expansion in the Baltic regions would rightly provoke Russia to take military actions. Biden even suggested that NATO would be responsible for creating a “vigorous and hostile” Russian response. Biden said: “I think the one place where the greatest consternation would be caused in the short-term for admission [to NATO], having nothing to do with the merit and preparedness of the country to come in, would be to admit Baltic states now in terms of NATO-Russian, US-Russian relations. If there was ever anything that was going to tip the balance, were it to be tipped, in terms of a vigorous and hostile reaction in Russia, I don’t mean military, it would be that.” https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/video-of-joe-biden-warning-of-russian-hostility-if-nato-expands-resurfaces/ar-AAUMVjI
In 2007, in Munich, Dr. Putin told a Western audience, “It turns out that NATO has put its frontline forces on our borders, and we continue to strictly fulfil the treaty obligations and do not react to these actions at all. I think it is obvious that NATO expansion does not have any relation with the modernization of the Alliance itself, or with ensuring security in Europe. On the contrary, it represents a serious provocation that reduces the level of mutual trust. And we have the right to ask: against whom is this expansion intended? And what happened to the assurances our western partners made after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact? Where are those declarations today? No one even remembers them.”
Putin added, “But I will allow myself to remind this audience what was said. I would like to quote the speech of NATO General Secretary Mr Woerner in Brussels on 17 May 1990. He said at the time that: “the fact that we are ready not to place a NATO army outside of German territory gives the Soviet Union a firm security guarantee”. Where are these guarantees?” That was 15 years ago.
The referendums conducted by the two self-proclaimed Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk in May 2014, were not referendums of “independence” (независимость), as some unscrupulous journalists have claimed, but referendums of “self-determination” or “autonomy” (самостоятельность). The qualifier “pro-Russian” suggests that Russia was a party to the conflict, which was not the case, and the term “Russian speakers” would have been more honest. Moreover, these referendums were conducted against the advice of Vladimir Putin.
After the election of the post-coup new model Ukrainian government in 2014, opposition parties were declared illegal and some leaders were arrested for “treason,” the media was censored and the parliament outlawed Russian, the language of a third of the population, as an official language. Then the government declared war on the predominantly Russian Eastern provinces and, for past eight years, has killed 14,000 people.
Ukraine is not a human catastrophe like Vietnam, where the US burned children to death and poisoned those that survived, eventually killing 3,000,000 civilians. It's not a war. It's a police action, like the Korean War in '51 (that also killed 3 million civilians). And it's not a criminal act, because UN Article 15 applies to Russia as it did when the US invoked it against Iran.
Against Iran, for God's sake.
The Ukrainian population normally speaks both Russian and Ukrainian, but often also Hungarian (or Magyar), since 1st September 2020 the use of any language other than Ukrainin has been strictly forbidden in public administrations and schools. Russian- and Magyar-language schools have been closed, prompting official protests from Russia and Hungary. On 21 July 2021, President Volodymyr Zelensky signed the law on the “Indigenous Peoples of Ukraine.” It stipulates that only Ukrainians of Scandinavian origin, as well as Tatars and Karaites have “the right to fully enjoy all human rights and all fundamental freedoms” (sic), thereby depriving Ukrainians of Slavic origin of the same rights.
"The choice that we faced in Ukraine — and I'm using the past tense there intentionally — was whether Russia exercised a veto over NATO involvement in Ukraine on the negotiating table or on the battlefield," said George Beebe, a former director of Russia analysis at the CIA and special adviser on Russia to former Vice President Dick Cheney. And we elected to make sure that the veto was exercised on the battlefield, hoping that either Putin would stay his hand or that the military operation would fail."
There was no Ukraine war under the previous more-populist US President. Populism = history restarting = war -- that's not what's going on here. The populist take is that Americans by-and-large support isolationism, which would have prevented this Ukraine war because the US would have (a) not encouraged Ukraine to fight and (b) not pushed NATO up to Russia's border.
Predictions of larger future European conflicts that an isolationist USA would be dragged into echo the discredited Domino Theory of the Vietnam War.
But America caused this war. There is no question about that from any perspective. Perhaps that is the biggest piece of history that stays intact. From the notes of the Imperial Cruise to the trade partnership to the pushing of NATO borders to pay for play meddling to weaponizing the dollar over and over and over. All triggered such events. Same for angle drilling oil kitchens from Kuwait under Iraq. Same for soft resets to be exploited, same for staying in Europe for zero justifiable reason.
You argue that the "original invasion plan" (seizure of Kiev) failed; then plan B (encirclement etc) also failed. Where do these notions come from? ". . .as far as our media allow us to glimpse it." Is this the same media which "allowed us to glimpse" Trump colluding with the Russians daily for four years? But did not allow us to glimpse Hunter's laptop? Scott Ritter, a military man who does not rely on "our" media, but reads maps, on the ground tactical maneuvers, etc argues (I think quite convincingly) that the war is over; the Russians won. He also points out that unfortunately he did not have access to Putin's Plan; nor, I might add, did "our" media.
Along with other commentators here I find AT's approach to the causes, military progress, and likely outcome to the war to be implausible. But he is very well placed to view the outcomes in terms of changes to political economy locally and globally. Especially given his knowledge of, and access to, the key European polity, Germany. While the US has chosen to involve the world in what could be regarded as a 'local war', the consequences for Europe are likely to be seismic. Both economically, given the blow-back of sanctions, and politically, perhaps starting today (the French election).
You are asking some extremely profound and important questions.
What is it that will restart history--class analysis/populism or war or as you say, human freedom, not as a philosophical abstraction but as a concrete political proposition that remains a key part of being human?
Is this sense of being able to make history through an act of will our salvation or are downfall or maybe somehow both?
Please consider writing more about such a sense of voluntarism.
S. Ritter today:https://youtu.be/WPdCLzfUKyk
Caveats: I have not read Hegel; I read something or other about/by Marx as assigned reading in a poli sci class a half-century ago and remember almost nothing except the photo of Marx on the cover. So I'm just an ordinary citizen trying to make sense of the world.
These two paragraphs from your essay most affected me:
"So if the Ukraine war marks a a break, to put the emphasis on Putin may be misguided. If the honor of rekindling history, of “returning us to the 19th century” belongs to anyone, it is not to Bunga-Putin. That honor belongs to the Ukrainians.
It is the Ukrainians, to the amazement and not inconsiderable embarrassment of the West, who are enacting a drama of national resistance unto death. ....There are many other peoples who are struggling for their existence and recognition today. The difference is that the Ukrainians do so in the classic form of a nation in arms rallying around a nation state. And the Ukrainians do so efficaciously. They have turned back a Russian army. They have saved their capital city. Those are not merely symbolic achievements."
So, no, there is nothing "Bunga" about this war (other than the comparison you make to January 6), although some of the discourse and news coverage of it seems bent on making it so. But that is what much of our public discourse does, totalizing and simplificating - both words that I have coined to describe our inability to deal with complexity - being their primary tools.
Your premise - as I understand it - that this war may be "restarting history" explains the combination of dread and hope that I feel as I devote hours each day to learning about it. It feels like that term I learned recently, 'the hinge of history.' I feel dread at the prospect of Putin winning, in whatever form that might take, because I fear that such an outcome will shut the already-closing door on our imperfect liberal world order. I feel hope at the prospect of Ukraine winning - successfully defending and reclaiming their entire sovereign nation and asserting their right to determine their own path forward and their place in the world - because this outcome might help to keep that door open, perhaps in some ideal world flinging it fully open.
I'm reminded of a William Carlos Williams poem:
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens
I know nothing, but, to me, it seems that so much depends on the Ukrainian people, their government, and their military - and on our fortitude and steadfastness in supporting them. Putin will do what he will do. He may have dealt the cards, but Ukrainians willing to sacrifice all to preserve their nation and their freedom may be demonstrating to the world how to win with what seemed a weak hand.