Unraveling the War Tapestry: Amid Putin’s Blitz, Echoes of the Past and Shattered Hopes for Peace

The Puzzling Landscape

Day 20 of Putin’s war, headlines mix attacks on Ukrainian civilians with sanctions on Russia, and we can watch it unfold almost real-time on smartphone videos shot by civilians and journalists. Peace and cease-fire talks drag along, but so far get nowhere. Putin claims this isn’t a war and Ukraine isn’t a country. He calls the world uniting to pull the economic plug on Russia an act of war. Whatever possessed this man, previously viewed as a crafty strategist, accommodated by Western political classes and media, even admired as a strong leader in some quarters?

Lessons from History

As citizens who have to share this world, we just want to live our lives and ease out of the pandemic toward something resembling normal. But how can we, when an oppressive dictator imposes his self-aggrandizing agendas? No qualms about dragging in his own people and the rest of the world, without forethought about what might happen if he doesn’t succeed. Hitler, at the end, blamed not himself, but the German people for failing in the world-domination task he’d set them and thought they deserved to self-destruct in a Wagnerian Gotterdammerung.

White and Eurocentric Privilege in Conflict

George Santayana famously said those who fail to learn from the past will be condemned to repeat it. And so much of this seems to be like a trope/cliché quoting past bloody, catastrophic, haunted history and very déjà vu all over again, a’ la Yogi Berra. Combat’s happening on the same ground fought over in WWII. That includes Babi Yar near Kyiv, where thousands of Jews were murdered. And now, Russian troops are reportedly looting and shooting civilians. Putin threatens to deploy nuclear weapons while Chernobyl, site of the world’s worst nuclear disaster, lies a little north of the city and its safeguard system is at risk. Bombing of cities, with civilians sheltering in subway tunnels dug extra deep during the Cold War, resonates with the London blitz and retaliatory bombing of German cities during WWII. Nuclear saber-rattling reverberates with the Cuban missile crisis (1962), an earlier time we almost went over that unthinkable edge. And, though I’ve seen no other mentions, and with no disrespect to the Ukrainians, but do I detect a certain white and Eurocentric privilege a la the Bosnia ethnic conflicts of the 1990s? That has been this country’s preferred, though not all that accurate origin story. Would we see such a groundswell of global support if the conflict was happening in Africa and targeting non-white populations, like say the Rwandan genocide? Kenya’s ambassador to the UN gave a speech comparing Russia’s actions to past colonial aggression on his continent. All justified by “the white man’s burden.”

Putin’s Calculations and Unintended Consequences

Putin’s scenario anticipated a quick walkover to jumpstart restoring the “Russian Imperium” and himself, of course, as a major player on the world stage. But the Ukrainians and now the world haven’t cooperated. Even so, he has kind of gotten his wish. We are paying attention, if not in the way he wanted. And he is right about economic warfare. Dry up all his sources of cash, the reasoning goes, and he’ll run out of funds to keep financing this war he doesn’t want anybody calling one. An NPR commentator described him as using 19th century land-grab tactics in a 21st century world where everyone’s connected. But a friend suggests he’s probably 21st century enough to resort of crypto currencies and he has armies of internet trolls no longer busy messing with our elections to facilitate. And he probably provided for such eventualities by dispatching oligarch cronies to set up super-secret piggy banks hidden too deep in the dark web for sanctions to reach.

Truth as the First Casualty

It’s said that truth is war’s first casualty. And that’s especially applicable on the home front, where what Putin and his minions probably fear most is a popular uprising. So, their fake news blames the Ukrainians and they cut off social media outlets that might offer contradictory platforms. “Bye, Bye, Instagram!” one Russian user posted in a final message. But it’s reported western friends and colleagues are finding ways to text more accurate information. Tech flows like water, not that easy to control; cell phone texts, photos, videos fueled Arab Spring demonstrations. Meanwhile, Russian soldiers at the front are prohibited from having smart phones, lest they call or text home to let their mothers know they’re ok an escribe what’s happening. Many weren’t even told they were invading. And anxious, desperate, mothers wait, fear, hope, in a repeat from Chechen conflicts and the Afghanistan invasion that contributed to toppling the USSR. Mothers in Argentina walked, silently, carrying photos of sons and daughters “disappeared” by the repressive regime, and eventually catalyzed a national reckoning. But anything like that seems highly unlikely, especially with laws threatening any Russian who even dares use the word “war” with a 15-year prison term.

Nostalgia, Assassination Calls, and Cold War Fantasies

Senator Lindsey Graham’s call for Putin’s assassination is not just imprudent. It also reflects counter nostalgia for seemingly simpler Cold War days and covert CIA actions. And it perpetuates Putin’s strong man myth, that removing him could make all this disappear. Another version of the “great man” theory of history, that leaves out regular citizens of the country and world who have to live with the consequences and can take action, as so many Ukrainians have.

In fact, this all reflects nostalgia for the supposed tense certainties of the Cold War, as well as serious uncoupling from reality. Peter Pomerantsev of the London School of Economics, studies “21st century information manipulation and how to fix it.” In This Is Not Propaganda: Adventures in the War Against Reality (c2019), he quoted the late Russian-American scholar Svetlana Boym. “The 20th century began with Utopia and ended with nostalgia. The 21st century is not characterized by the search for new-ness, but by the proliferation of nostalgia.” And now, Pomerantsev himself noted, “…both the old Cold War superpowers [take] a sort of adolescent joy in throwing off the weight of grim reality, with facts viewed as increasingly irrelevant.” Yet now, now the very real, grim, ugly, deadly, war keeps grinding on. Will it provide a cold-water bath of to wake the world up, as we confront an even more uncertain future? Pomerantsev again: “…though facts can be unpleasant, they are useful. You need them, especially if you are constructing something in the real world. There are no post-truth moments if you are building a bridge, for example.” Ukrainians have shown the way, putting their bodies, lives, stories on the line and online. Ukraine’s President Zelensky will give a virtual address to the US Congress.