Reasons Not To Be Cheerful - A War Out of Control

It is interesting that the first draft of this article unaccountably disappeared on the attempt to publish it. I make no further comment.

The crisis over Ukraine may be become more dangerous in the coming weeks as frustration builds on both sides. Our ‘Russian side’ informants advise us that attitudes on ‘their’ side are hardening, that sanctions are having no material effect on the bulk of the population, that there is growing resentment of propaganda from the West and that the mood is one of frustration that Russia is not striking at NATO but NATO (or rather certain members of NATO) are (apparently) striking at Russia – which is the interpretation given to the sinking of the Moskva (incidentally not quite as significant a ship as implied in the West).

The Moskva case is interesting because it is assumed that the anti-ship missile was NATO in origin (British) and so fired by competent British personnel. There is no evidence for this one way or the other (in fact, it was most likely to have been an indigenous Ukrainian Neptune cruise missile) but Russian silence on the sinking is taken to mean (on public TV) that it was a deliberate British ‘provocation’ which has moved the war onto another plane. This is one where (in Russian popular perception) NATO is now ‘de facto’ if?not ‘de jure’ at war with Russia to all intents and purposes. The issue, for many Russians, is becoming one of pride and truly existential. ?The pressure to strike at a British naval asset in response is considerable and may be hard to resist politically – even if the loss is arranged to be mysterious in origin. The British media seem blissfully unaware of these perceptions.

Russian public discourse seems to be that the British have acted in this way apparently secure that they will be backed by the US but that the US is ‘using’ Britain to test the water at Britain’s expense and will not respond militarily if Russia attacks a British asset (including an asset on British soil or in British waters) in response to the attack on the Moskva (which, remember, is a perception and not necessarily a reality). A response like this will be regarded, of course, as unprovoked in the West and trigger NATO obligations. The Russian Government undoubtedly understands this but this does not reduce the danger which lies in both the political pressure underneath the Russian popular talk of permissible responses and the British having a Prime Minister under political pressure with significant local elections on May 5th and quite capable of undertaking anything to stay in office.

There seems to be a similar preparedness to talk about nuclear options on the Western side albeit in ‘defensive terms’, claiming that the threat is entirely Russian (which may be technically true) but ‘forgetting’ to tell populations that the reason may be related to ‘provocations’, that is, that it is undoubtedly true that the West is not merely supplying seriously dangerous equipment but is now so committed to Ukraine’s victory over Russia that it is supplying special operations personnel and weapons operators for missile equipment for the simple reason that Ukrainian troops cannot be trained in this sophisticated and expensive hardware in the short time necessary to win the war.

Thus we have a very dangerous situation where NATO is not involved in Ukraine formally but NATO members are and have perhaps taken out a ship (although we have noted that this is unlikely in this case though not impossible) and threaten to supply serious offensive weaponry to Ukraine on terms that also require member nations to supply operators, trainers and tacticians as well as playing an informal role in strategy. To all intents and purposes, regardless of NATO’s own position, some of its members are 'de facto' at war with Russia (as if the information, economic and diplomatic warfare was not enough) and a line has been crossed in Russian eyes. To Western publics, this is not at all clear but to Russians it is now very clear. Since Russians are absolutely convinced that they cannot be defeated but are ‘survivors’ and back their Government, they seem to be up for a fight.

This means that, while Russians, think they are in existential war with the West already and so any means are reasonable to survive (sanctions are of no consequence – indeed, there seems to many to be a certain comfort in the drift back to a Soviet war economy that provides for everyone), Westerners are sitting blissfully unaware that they are being sucked towards a war in which nuclear weaponry is eventually likely to be used against their side if ever their weapons supply actually did result in the potential for victory for Ukraine. This is very stark stuff where a humanitarian impulse has shifted into the provision of lethal aid for a regime that looks a lot less attractive on closer scrutiny (see below) than it did some weeks ago.

On the surface, it is business as usual in the West (as it is in Russia) but, just as in Russia, there are mood changes. Whereas Russia is unifying around the ‘liberation of the Donbass’, the Western position is fragmenting somewhat because reaction to the war and to war risk is very variable depending on each nation’s political position and the class and political affiliations within each nation. In essence one broadly unified nation with an ideology of existential threat and survival is facing a network of nations whose risk assessments are constantly always a little out of kilter with reality on ground and subject to serious democratic conflicts at home.

Dissent at Western official narratives is barely present at the mainstream media level but it is considerable in social media, creating yet another example (as we saw in 2016) of a natural breach between elite narratives and popular narratives. We would guess that populations are divided into the pro-Ukrainian (a mixture of sentimental liberals and Cold Warriors), the indifferent (far more concerned with the cost of living and economic survival) and the ‘dissident’ (suspicious of elite narratives or, like many populists and Leftists, inherently oppositionist to local regimes). To sustain a war, elites require the first group to be more than a simple majority and the means of social control to ensure this are limited.

The following (without any appreciable Russian input because of the growing amount of censorship of Russian sources) are emerging: increased criticism of Ukrainian political repression of opponents to the current regime; acceptance of some of the Nazi claims from Russia; increased understanding of the Donbass separatist position; doubts about Ukrainian human rights claims; and, finally, suspicion of attempts to censor and manipulate information and perception. To ensure war unity, Western nations have somehow to crush opinion on these four ‘problems’ which means that an incipient illiberalism would need to be enforced at the expense of a free blogosphere and social media since a lot of the evidence is fact not ‘disinformation’.

In other words, the Western narrative was secure when it was a simple story of an unprovoked Russian invasion of a sovereign country causing terrible suffering and destruction but, as the weeks have gone by, social media and multiple sources (despite attempts to censor information, notably on YouTube) have created a growing body of people who are asking difficult questions about the narrative without necessarily taking the Russian side. Two months on and interested people are a little more educated on the complex history of Ukraine, the ambitions of some of the more 'hawkish' players in the game on the Western side, perhaps on the actual rather than invented nature of Russia and of the consequences of 'Western' strategy in terms of inflation and loss of access to resources. In other words, they are not so much pro-Russian as anti-‘Western’ insofar as the idea of the ‘West’ is not something they feel happy endorsing especially if it risks direct nuclear war or military intervention and brings with it inflation and possible recession.

A formal declaration of war by Russia or a strike at a national asset in any country would probably put an end to these doubts in most people but only by reproducing the national existential feelings of 1914 or 1941 in the case of the US. Tribalism would take over, simple species instincts for conformity under threat and the game would be over for anyone with a free thought in their heads. The danger now is that Russian failure to understand how Western minds work might trigger the ability of Western ‘hawks’ to rally their people around an actual direct conflict which, logically, must eventually result in some form of nuclear exchange at some stage. The West’s danger and problem is that it would be losing its own people month by month in the event of an extended war, at least until an actual war could be declared, while Russia is unifying its population month by month but perhaps only around the prospect of taking the war to its enemy.

It should be in Russia’s interest to allow Western fragmentation quietly to increase until an anti-war movement turned Ukraine into a 21st century Vietnam or populist pressures started to unravel the liberal consensus but Russia is no more in control of its own internal political situation than the West. The danger is that popular fervour in Russia reacts to Western ‘provocations’ short of war to undertake an act which Western elites can point to as an attack on themselves and not just Ukraine … at which point, all hell lets loose. There are Russian 'hawks' and there are Western 'hawks' and one suspects they both have more in common with each other than either do with their prey.