As with so many others around the world, and as with the Patty Hearst kidnapping or 9/11, the Ukraine invasion has riveted my attention. While on the one hand I reprehend Putin in particular and his high-profile supporters in general, my interest in cultural history has prompted me to think about broader implications in how this “story” is being approached.[1] Here’s an outline of initial thoughts, on which I’d welcome feedback, especially where they can be amplified or even just seem wrong.
After several days of rooting for effective Ukrainian resistance with minimal[2] loss of life and limb, I’m realizing that at some level such a feeling may be little different from the let’s-go-to-get-‘em! war emotions that political leaders easily stir up in a population. Think, for example, about the huge US enthusiasm among Americans for attacking Afghanistan after 9-11 (I wasn’t one of them) or enthusiastic German support for World War I as depicted in _All_Quiet_on_the_Western_ Front_.[3]
Not unlike government leaders when they infuse a population with war lust, most of the rest of us are personally far removed from the reality of what is happening in Ukraine, and so our vehement cheering can be viewed as convenient and easy. We become like the cheering crowds who pack sidewalks as Our Boys (and now Girls) march gallantly off to defend home and hearth.
This is not to say we shouldn’t condemn the Russian war effort, nor that we should expect the Ukrainian people to roll over in the face of the threat to their cultural and biological lives. But for me, it does mean we should be cautious about racing to find heroes, a tendency that media play up or, as in the cited article, may actually use to stir war fervor and, in promoting unity of purpose within our population, normalize some of the worst aspects of our own culture. So far as I can tell from history, one overwhelmingly common effect of war is to encourage rationalizations that encourage the worst in many people, civilian and military. One such effect is to prompt us to ignore any behavior that doesn’t fit our polarization of events into angelic or demonic.[4] While it no way redeems what they are wreaking, I have no doubt that some Russian soldiers are torn about what they’re asked to do and may even at times do generous things for those they defeat. There could even be a 21st-century version of refuseniks among them, though I doubt we’ll ever hear of any, or that Ukraine supporters outside the country care. (I can understand why Ukrainian citizens themselves wouldn’t care or even believe such reports.)
Then there are the ostensibly supportive and unambiguous cultural mantras we bandy about. I think especially of preserving “democracy,”[5] a thorny term that has always been compromised—among other ways in who is allowed to vote, who is able (or allowed) to run for office, and the level of critical thinking skills an electorate applies to political or war campaign slogans and behavior. Guess which severely compromised country of which I’m a citizen is high on my list here?
No nation in war (or peace) is pure, as we know if via no other source from the history of war attitudes and atrocities among American troops during our own history.[6] Consider reports that Ukraine border guards discriminate against dark-skinned people trying to leave the country, whether their own citizens or foreign students. If this prejudicial behavior is accurate, I can’t know if it’s narrowly limited to the guards’ culture[7] or, more likely, reflects a larger Ukraine attitude towards non-white-skinned people. In any event, it’s discouraging and a reminder that we at a distance who are white probably take for granted that the Ukrainian population we see looks incredibly white.
Starting from the fairy tales we encounter in early childhood, and continuing into adult delight in the morality tales of the Iliad or Arthurian legend or (good) police TV series or superheroes or westerns or spies saving the world from destruction, we are infused with a quest for heroes in our lives to give us some hope in the face of an often-hostile universe. From the likes of Donald Trump and his fellow white supremacists to Stacey Abrams and farther left, we seek heroes (a word I intend as ungendered) to save us from rampant untruth, injustice, and the unAmerican way that keep cropping up.[8] And while many of us may condemn war in principle, we can quickly support it when leaders use an atrocity to demonize those who (allegedly) perpetrated it. Because we have learned that wars can indeed be terrible, we yearn for no war at all or, if we have to have one, a Good War, but I suspect there are only Less Bad Wars.
It will be interesting to see the long-term effects of the (sort-of) non-violent economic and isolating techniques being used against Russia,[9] though as Putin claims, they are indeed a form of war.[10] I can hope that regardless of their current effect, they turn out to be a constructive way of diminishing loss of life and even destruction of infrastructure in future conflicts.
It will also be interesting to see, when this war ends (whatever that means, exactly), how long it will take before a return to business as usual with Russia by the tsk-tsking international Western businesses currently joining the stampede to condemn and punish Russia. I suspect much of that behavior will turn out to be for public relations. And I expect that like the days in this country after 9/11, the unusual unity within our culture will quickly dissipate into long-familiar variations of oppressors, oppressed, and the lucky people like me in the middle who can afford to take a wide variety of hedging positions towards our cultural problems.
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[1] Here’s a recent commentary that echoes some of my concern: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/media-hawkish-iraq-ukraine_n_622125c4e4b042f866eaf43c?utm_source=pocket_mylist.
[2] Note how this very qualification compromises a moral discussion about war in particular and violence in general.
[3] And apparently common in any population for any war. This might be a good time to watch a powerful anti-war film.
[4] See, for example, https://news.yahoo.com/fact-mythmaking-blend-ukraines-information-190837967.html?utm_source=pocket_mylist.
[5] While in our own country I have been extremely troubled by right-wing efforts to repress voting that would go against them, I am also unhappy that we in opposition pretend that we’re defending a “democratic” tradition that hasn’t yet existed, though we have gradually seen an expansion of those technically entitled to vote (and I am well aware that many people will admonish me to be thankful for what we’ve got instead of railing against what we don’t).
[6] I had a Lower East Side Jewish communist uncle, desperate to fight Hitler but classified 4F, who managed to get himself into a Red Cross unit in the European theater. He told me that he discovered extensive anti-semitism among many of our own troops, who, he opined, should have been fighting for the other side.
Demonizing an enemy with, for instance, demeaning labels, seems universal; presumably this doesn’t help matters when the winners have to reconcile with those they defeated.
In the mustering of foreigners to fight in Ukraine, I see echoes of the Spanish Civil War—a seemingly (lost) Good War, a characterization which Hemingway reminded us was not entirely valid.
[7] While, especially in having elected a Jewish leader, Ukraine as a whole may have distanced itself from its history of anti-semitism, a core of such attitudes remains and seems to have some influence within the country: https://getpocket.com/read/3567406974
[8] Need I observe that we will never agree on the meaning of those terms? Or that the third one is narcissistic (if that can apply to a country—maybe I should say “jingoistic,” though perhaps that term isn’t well known any more)?
[9] I doubt I’m the only one who has wondered why so much of the world can be so thoroughly united against Russia and in support of the single nation of Ukraine but can’t do the same in relation to the impending climate catastrophe that affects every nation.
[10] Compare, for example, the use of war blockades and sieges in recorded history, and presumably earlier.