Obviously, the war in Ukraine is bad. Innocents will suffer, people who needn’t have been will die and be crippled, and hurt.
However, I’m seeing a great deal of hysteria or near-hysteria over this, and it mostly isn’t justified. It is unlikely that more people will die in this situation than died due to Iraq — or Libya. Some years back, the Congo had a war in which six million people died, and most Westerners don’t even know it happened. Right now, people are starving to death in Afghanistan and Yemen, and Yemen is constantly being bombed. Etc.
So, on humanitarian grounds, this is no worse than many other wars, and while we don’t know the final butcher bill (and can’t guess very well yet, as we don’t know exactly what Putin intends to do), it’s unlikely to be as many deaths as in the Congo or as resulted from Iraq (as all ISIS deaths must be counted in the tally, etc.).
What makes Ukraine different, emotionally, to Westerners, is that they are white Europeans.
The next question is geopolitical. Ukraine feels more important because it seems like the end of a particular political order. It is not that Russia is recognizing new states and carving up an old state; Israel took the Golan Heights, and Kosovo was created by NATO military intervention and would not exist without it. For that matter, Russia has run this playbook before, in Ossetia (Georgia) and Crimea.
So this is not NEW. It is not something completely verboten or anything, as many claim.
It feels new because Russia defied the US, the EU, and NATO, invading a European state, and did so in the face of huge sanction threats.
But, in geopolitical terms, all that is happening is that Russia is saying, “We are a ‘Great Power’ and we will take the same rights as the US has taken to invade and annex.”
This is not a greater war crime than Iraq, or Libya, or the Israeli invasion and occupation of Lebanon. What it is, is the moment at which the West realizes that the US is no longer the sole “Great Power.”
There is, of course, a small but very real risk here because Russia is a great power, with a real military, and a lot of nuclear weapons. I have seen a fair number of people calling for NATO to intervene militarily, and I don’t think Americans understand what they’re calling for. Since the Civil War, the US hasn’t had a war with an enemy that could hurt them in the continental US. If Russia gets bombed, the continental US will get hit as well. Russia is not Iraq, Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, or Libya. It has a real military and can strike back, even without using nukes.
The rage, the impotent rage and fear, is, I think, because of this. At last, the US has come up against an enemy it can’t just shove around. That hasn’t been the case since the USSR collapsed.
Fortunately, saner heads — including Biden — recognize this, which is why they’re reaching for further sanctions and not intending to bomb, bomb, bomb.
I will point out that I wrote that Russia would go to war if it wasn’t given a guarantee that Ukraine would not join NATO. Put aside, “But they should be able to do whatever they want,” and look at the situation pragmatically. Drop the emotions.
What is the end result of not signing a piece of paper saying Ukraine will not join NATO?
Ukraine won’t join NATO. Even after the war (assuming they aren’t occupied), they won’t because Russia has made it clear that if they even gesture in that direction, they’ll be invaded again. So the end result is dead people, recognition of breakaway regions, and Ukraine not joining NATO anyway.
Russia will be sanctioned, but it is ready for that. They have stated that if they are cut off from SWIFT, they will consider that a declaration of war. They don’t intend to be slowly choked out like Venezuela, Iran, and Iraq in the 90s. Nor will China allow them to be choked out, because if Russia’s choked out, China knows they’re next. The consensus in DC that China must be humbled and forced into a subservient position in the “rules-based international order” is absolutely iron-clad and bipartisan.
So, for a few years now, I’ve been writing about the next cold war. This is the start of it. It doesn’t include China yet, but they won’t cooperate with sanctions on Russia, so it may not be long before it does. I also have an entire section called “The Age of War and Revolution,” and a discussion of this is the start of it — along with the “The Twilight of Revolution,” a sub-category. Neoliberalism no longer rules Russia, in large part because of the sanctions. In time, it won’t rule China either, and in some ways it never has (they are neoliberal for export purposes, but not internally, and their internal market is huge).
The foolish “End of History” nonsense is now obviously dead. It was always the most stupid intellectual movement of the past 50 years, and only poltroons ever believed it.
History is back.
But in the meantime, while war is awful and always will be (and for the record I’m happy to see war crimes tribunals for Putin so long as the last five US presidents are also in the dock, and I’d even volunteer as the executioner), this isn’t likely to be as bad a war as many other recent ones. So except for the remote possibility of nuclear war, there’s no need to be more upset than you were about Iraq or the six million dead Congolese.
Take deep breaths and carry on. Nothing that is happening is unexpected in the broad strokes.