Some Observations on the Current War

The world is at war but does not quite understand it yet. This is a very odd war. The actual fighting is currently restricted to just one relatively small zone (roughly the Eastern half of Ukraine) but it is a global economic and ideological war in all other respects. The total control of information and narrative that existed in the mid-twentieth century for combatants does not exist today but a certain pattern is appearing whereby roughly two-thirds of any population falls back into the national given narrative and one third is perhaps more questioning and in danger of becoming defined as the largely unwitting ally of a carefully constructed ‘enemy’. Critical thinking is certainly not encouraged. Dissenters can be arrested in one world, marginalised in another.

Both sides are busy desperately trying to control information flows by banning media, with claims that the other side is engaged in propaganda (in fact, both are), and by putting in place legislation and regulation, direct or indirect, to ensure that the powers are in place to clampdown further as conflict intensifies. Both sides are seeing the emergence of manipulative campaigns based on tribal hysteria (whether Ukrainian national flags on social media or the 'Z' campaign in Russia) and both sides appeal to different versions of the same moral absolute –variants of national self-determination. Both sides are upping the ante on military positioning short of direct conflict, not merely to degrade the other but to position themselves best for direct conflict if it comes. Most people in both ‘empires’ are merely spectators at their own potential funerals and pauperisation.

The Economic War & Corporate Moral Dilemma

The economic war on Russia (from a US-UK perspective) is now brutal and absolute. No American corporation feels safe not complying with state sentiment – some of the last hold-outs (McDonalds, Starbucks, Coke and Pepsi) had to scuttle and run from the Russian market in the last 24 hours, effectively de-Westernising Russia overnight. Some anti-Russian behaviours are becoming ridiculous and raise questions about the insanity of the behaviour – cats, dogs and, no kidding, trees have been targeted. Zelensky is playing Western public opinion like a master fiddler but what is really going on is a massive foreign policy coup by the neo-conservative faction in the West against its realist rival.

Now pressure has moved from iconic brands to the suppliers of necessities (Unilever, Proctor & Gamble, Danone and Nestle) which is a much more brutal game designed to deprive Russians of things that affect their personal lives most dearly – we might call this the economic equivalent of fire-bombing Hamburg, Dresden and Tokyo and, frankly, is slipping into some very dubious moral territory. This could be Bomber Harris talking: "The more comprehensive the pullout, the more you’re advancing the prospects of world peace." [He] added that it was a "mistake" to try to minimize the damage to Russian people by continuing to supply basics.” [Reuters]

The attempt to try to find some moral position for corporations in this utter mess is a tortuous one with twists and turns in thinking that might be worthy of a Jesuit. Many decent moral managers are being put into intolerable situations by the economic warriors. In the last few days, we have even seen some semi-ridiculous (or is it tragic?) thinking about redefining ESG to make defence companies ESG because of their role in supplying weaponry to liberal democratic countries in defence of ‘values’ (which now include depriving ordinary Russians of necessities and causing mass unemployment). The madness continues ...

The Most Dangerous Phase?

We are now entering the most dangerous phase of the war. The economic war is not changing anything quickly. The ‘West’ is running out of nasty things to do to Russia that are not military and which do not risk Russia cutting off its energy supply to Europe completely. There is no immediate regime change likely. It is possible that Russia’s next offensive might be a ‘victory’ in a longer and more brutal Syrian-style conflict where Moscow has a stranglehold over the Ukrainian economy and has ‘liberated’ Ukraine’s Russian speakers. There are some seriously deranged people in the neo-conservative camp who might welcome direct military confrontation, seeking a reversal of the string of failures from Iraq to Afghanistan. To them, this is as existential as it is to the Russians.

There are signs that Europeans are slowly beginning to understand just how risky things are becoming as the Ukrainians, the East Europeans and the Anglo-Saxons combine in a front committed to breaking the spine of Russia and the ‘liberation’ of Ukraine and its integration into the West. The Swedish response of putting off any official discussion of joining NATO while tensions are so high is rational, its moderation shared increasingly by some other European states, notably by France, Italy and Hungary. If only Ukraine had been so rational. Even in the Anglo-Saxon countries, the hysteria may be beginning to fade as populations begin to put two and two together on the threat of stagflation and its relationship to the war, albeit rather more slowly. President Biden may like to term inflation as the 'Putin Price Hike' to pre-empt the Republicans calling it the 'Biden Price Hike' but it might equally be called the 'NATO Price Hike' as anything else. 'The danger here is that the neo-conservatives may believe that they must strike fast or lose the game and so will push for military engagement or at least an aggressive supply of funds and material designed to create a new Afghanistan for Russia whose main victims will be the Ukrainians themselves. There is evil a-foot and it lies not only in the darker reaches of the Russian military-industrial complex.

Nevertheless, the intensity of the economic war is precisely a sign that the West's serious policymakers are fearful of a shooting war. The Poles, currently super-hawks fuelled by support from London, had their offer of the transfer of MiG-29s (which Ukrainian pilots are only trained to fly) to the US to transfer on to Ukraine turned down by the US for the rather obvious reasons that a) (publicised) these could be interpreted as NATO jets by Russia and result in a pre-emptive escalation and b) (unpublicised) such a deal would mean the US transferring some of its stock of jets to Poland. This latter might not be the most sensible tactical move in the event of an actual shooting war. What Poland seems not to realise is that it and the Baltics may have to be temporarily sacrificed in the first battle in order to win a war. These 'hawks' seem not to understand that it will take time to get American resources into the battle zone in sufficient force and that tactical nuclear strikes to turn back Russian troops from Germany will make their land unusable, not Germany's or America's.

The China Problem

One key development here is that the ‘war party’ in the West is not taking Chinese ‘neutrality’ at face value but is increasingly positioning China as a sort of ‘proto-enemy’. There is some reason in this. ‘Abstentionism’ and neutrality in the global system actually covers 52% of humanity (based on the recent UN General Assembly vote) and merely preserves a general principle of peace and sovereignty. It does not cover a further commitment to economic warfare by any means. Although some Western-facing ‘neutral’ entities and banks are appearing to play ball with the ‘West’, in fact the underlying political dynamic remains one of ‘understanding’ why the Russians felt they had to do what they did (a view privately shared by many Western ‘realists’).

A recent US response is to start threatening Chinese companies operating in the West with economic warfare if they supply Russia with equipment. No doubt, the poodle in London will trot along afterwards if this becomes formal policy. But, if economic war is, in fact, war, this seems to us like declaring a form of that war on China as well. This will not go down well with yet another ‘quasi-empire’ that prides itself on its anti-imperialist and anti-colonialist record. Anglo-Saxon sanctions are predicated on a simple belief that other ruling elites are driven entirely by profit and loss but this is blind to the origins and ideology of nations such as India and much of Africa as much as China or Russia whose existence is defined by sets of values that are different to those of Western economic liberals. ?The Chinese are not, in fact, enormously happy with either side in the conflict for different reasons but it seems ever more absurd for the West to alienate both Eurasian giants, especially as it is clear that India has not bought into the Western narrative any more than China or Russia.

Conclusion

What is the common denominator in these observations? The use of the terms hysteria, insanity, madness, deranged may give you a clue. Great power confrontation has brought us into one of those moments in history much like August 1914 where whole populations are losing their ability to reason as they grasp hold of abstract simplicities without thought of the complexities and risks. Senior policy-makers have become trapped into ever more absurd and counter-productive actions in desperation at their own impotence in dealing with what is a surprisingly limited and rational, if brutal, action by Russia. All the talk was of Putin the Madman when what was really meant was Putin-The-Person-Who-Does-Not-Accept-Our-View-Of-Reality.

The 'West' (an invention in itself) suddenly found that, by ignoring the analyses of realists like Mearsheimer, it was faced by a Leader who had said what was at stake, who had sought dialogue, who said what would happen if dialogue was not engaged in and then did what he said he would do. That is not the behaviour of a mad man. That is the behaviour of an extremely frustrated man who has tried every avenue to avoid war and been blocked at every turn until he feels he has no alternative. The delusion lies in those who failed to anticipate a turn of events flagged up well in advance and which could have been dealt with either by a realist 'coup de grace', perhaps a fast-track inclusion of Ukraine in NATO at the risk of a nuclear confrontation (which almost certainly would not have happened), or by negotiation to deal with actually quite reasonable concerns about Russian security and the cultural rights of Russian-Ukrainians. Instead we had a decade of posturing and manipulation, dancing around a powder keg with lighted matches, one of which is held by a 'heroic' former comedian who has been wickedly encouraged to believe that his recklessness will be rewarded with a Western commitment to sacrifice the West's own economy and even its existence for the sake of his country.

But the game is a-foot. What was once existential to Russia but not to the West has become existential first to Ukraine and now to the West itself. 2.3m refugees, stagflation in the West, the hovering risk of a nuclear exchange, serious risks of mass starvation and turmoil in the developing world, the potential but probably theoretical collapse of Eurasia into chaos, mass anxiety, the probability of a permanent and vicious 'Syria' on the edge of Europe ... and all because a relatively small class of posturing incompetents could not engage in dialogue with a rival empire with different values which had already been pushed back and contained to its heartland. So where does the madness actually lie?