Feb 27, 2022·edited Feb 27, 2022Liked by Daniel Pinchbeck
If Putin really wanted Ukraine back, a much better track would have been to make amends for Holodomor, Stalin's genocide of 5+ million Ukrainians in the 30s. That's mostly what drove the desire for independence in the first place.
Yes, the US has absolutely been provocative. They're using Ukraine as a pawn in their geopolitical agenda.
And yes there is a failure on behalf of most westerners to see both sides too.
Feb 27, 2022·edited Feb 27, 2022Liked by Daniel Pinchbeck
I said it before in a previous post of yours--and I hope this doesn't start to sound trite--but I can't think of any "alternative' voice who appears to be so expertly walking the tightrope of interpreting reality the way you are. Your take has so much nuance and clarity that I am actually moved reading it; realizing just how rare a perspective like yours is right now and how badly it is needed.
Regarding Russel Brand: I have respected and admired his perspective on things for a long time now. However, I have been so disappointed to see the direction he has taken the past several months. It's not so much that I have begun to disagree with him more and more (nothing wrong with disagreement), but there is a sense that what he is doing has become "click-baity" and "grifty", for lack of better words. It's hard not to sense that he is now (either consciously or sub-consciously) presenting alt-right adjacent material because he discovered how much it increases traffic and views. What is really disappointing is knowing how much better he is than the content he is presenting now. Oh well . . . I could easily be wrong about this--just my opinion anyway.
Anyway, I too stand with Ukraine against Putin's tyranny. I mean, this seems like it should be pretty straightforward.
I agree that naked and brutal totalitarianism is a much worse direction for the thrust of global society to turn to than liberal democracy. It’s also hard not to wince in anger and regret at the hypocrisy that liberal governments, led in principles and hegemonic power by the US, are corrupted by — as well as the corrosive influence this corruption has had on the spread of democratic values across the Global South and East. Numerous times, the US has covertly meddled in elections or orchestrated coups of progressive, democratically elected presidents abroad to install fascistic, pro-corporate despots friendly to Western market interests. From Iran to Chile to Brazil and even Ukraine and Russia, these illiberal interventions have fed the soil of autocracies to come, both by destabilizing and terrorizing fledgling democracies and disillusioning the world to the promises of liberalism when its most vaunted proponent, the US, is so often complicit in cutting foreign democracies off at the knees when it enriches the US oligarchic class. The role of the World Bank and IMF in draining the developing world of wealth and progressive prospects is a recipe for future autocratic movements. The US, through the CIAs machinations, often ally with and arm murderous anti-democratic forces (Contras, Taliban, Mujahideen, Isis, etc) that lead to tyrannical regimes. And look no further than our allies in Israel and Saudi Arabia to see the hypocrisy on full display.
Yes, we can and should decry Putin’s tyranny and stand up for liberal values. But we can’t pretend that the past 75 years of US hegemonic power has been a foil or antidote to the frightening rise of authoritarianism abroad. Both critiques feel valid and crucial right now as we stand at an ideological point of reckoning and the likely advent of a new hypernationalism and Cold War. It seems to me, Liberalism that cynically works against it’s own values is illiberal at its core. Authoritarianism follows in its wake.
I think any discussion of war these days has to be preceded by the reinstatement of a draft. We have what amounts to a mercenary army of people who couldn’t afford our outrageous college tuition or attended one of those high schools where you were graduated reading on a third grade level. Virtually none of our loquacious and opinionated politicians, journalists and TV pundits have served in the military, and their kids are safe in Ivy League dorms. Yet most seem to relish tough talk of war. My father, a veteran, was always disgusted by this. All this talk lately about equity...let’s have some equity in who is fighting our wars. Get in uniform yourself or encourage your child to enlist and be ready to deploy, then we can talk. I think this would be promote better, more considered policy decisions going forward.
If Putin is Hitler, then Russia is Germany. Dictators don't rise in thriving societies, but usually those that were impoverished, broken, mocked and/or ignored by the world. The world is not black and white. These things don't happen for no reason and out of nowhere. Only those who closely look at all variables will get a good picture of what is truly going on.
Although I agree with a great deal of what you write, Daniel, and honour you as a great teacher, I was disappointed with this piece. At a time when passions run high, and war drums are resounding, is it not better to seek spiritual guidance and look to new ways that do not lead straight into the old conflicts - where the West is the good guy, Russia the bad guy, and the US et.. al. given exceptionalism yet again to be the 'saviour' despite all the ways we could have tried to broker peace instead of making Russia The Enemy?
War is highly profitable. These narratives of good vs bad are too simplistic. Do we want to inflame enmity in others? Have that on our hearts? No one wins a war, and a war never ends. I agree with Greenwald, Hedges and Brand in this case: respectfully, I think it better to look to own nations' responsibilities (I'm Canadian), our own nation's ideologies of exceptionalism and enemy-making. That is the consciousness that needs to change, in all of us. Thanks for writing.
Precisely. Saying Holodomor happened nearly a century ago so what has nothing to do with how the Ukrainians themselves FEEL about it. Their own people perished by the millions. More recently, they also had to deal with a brutal, corrupt "president" who followed Putin's orders, impoverishing his people while building an obscenely huge palace for himself. They overthrew him in 2014 by going into the streets. Lives were lost. That's front and center in the memoires of Ukrainians. What the Russian people think of America and its politics is beside the point. We Americans know what a corrupt clown show that is. That's OUR challenge. Are we up to overthrowing it? Somehow given our level of distraction and addiction I doubt it.
You cannot always blame everything on the West but you can find the facts and understand that this crisis is a creation of the West, most particularly the US and its Nato allies/lackeys.
Putin has been asking, requesting, pleading for decades that Ukraine remain neutral as originally promised by the US and Nato when the Soviet Union fell. He was ignored and the missile creep kept coming toward the Russian border.
The Ukrainians were mere pawns in the American/Nato game, as is the way and should have known better than to hold the stick with which the Americans/Nato kept poking in the eye of the Russian 'bear.'
This is a tragedy for Ukrainians and Russians but it is not one of Putin's making.
If you swapped the scenario and had Russia trying to do on the Canadian/US border what is being attempted on the Ukrainian/Russian border, it is without doubt that the Americans would invade Canada in an instant.
You only have to look at the history to see how the West has created this situation.
Perhaps explain why it is wrong for Putin to seek to take Ukraine to prevent US/Nato missile launchers on the Russian border and yet it was not wrong for the Americans to get hysterical and threaten nuclear war when the Russians wanted to put a base in Cuba?
Relativism diminishes hypocrisy and there is a lot of that around. For example, what do you think the US would do if Russia or China were looking to set up missile launchers on the Canadian or Mexican borders? That is the equivalent of the Ukraine situation for Russia. We both know the Americans would invade and occupy in a nanosecond and probably never leave, in the name of security.
And why is Russia so wrong when Israel, in the name and claim of 'security' and with US approval continues to occupy all of Palestine, bits of Lebanon and a slab of Syria, the Golan Heights?????
Dr. Laruelle is the author of Russian Nationalism: Imaginaries, Doctrines, and Political Battlefields (2019). She is Research Professor and Director of the Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies (IERES) at the George Washington University. She is also a Co-Director of PONARS (Program on New Approaches to Research and Security in Eurasia.
Snyder and Anne Applebaum keep busy writing book blurbs for each other, while Michel Eltchaninoff stakes out a position in the cottage industry of essayists on the perils of "Putinism".
All the countries to the west of Ukraine are NATO members...If Putin wants a Ukranian shield against NATO nations, taking Ukraine for that purpose seems foolish
https://commons.com.ua/en/letter-western-left-kyiv/?fbclid=IwAR1undm8nMyt5fqXyOGVKXZwm8GIeBGYvVtWelYA83ro79dKlPhsge4mua0
Letter from a young Socialist in Ukraine.
If Putin really wanted Ukraine back, a much better track would have been to make amends for Holodomor, Stalin's genocide of 5+ million Ukrainians in the 30s. That's mostly what drove the desire for independence in the first place.
Yes, the US has absolutely been provocative. They're using Ukraine as a pawn in their geopolitical agenda.
And yes there is a failure on behalf of most westerners to see both sides too.
But Putin is no victim.
https://devaraj2.substack.com/p/holodomor-the-core-wound
I said it before in a previous post of yours--and I hope this doesn't start to sound trite--but I can't think of any "alternative' voice who appears to be so expertly walking the tightrope of interpreting reality the way you are. Your take has so much nuance and clarity that I am actually moved reading it; realizing just how rare a perspective like yours is right now and how badly it is needed.
Regarding Russel Brand: I have respected and admired his perspective on things for a long time now. However, I have been so disappointed to see the direction he has taken the past several months. It's not so much that I have begun to disagree with him more and more (nothing wrong with disagreement), but there is a sense that what he is doing has become "click-baity" and "grifty", for lack of better words. It's hard not to sense that he is now (either consciously or sub-consciously) presenting alt-right adjacent material because he discovered how much it increases traffic and views. What is really disappointing is knowing how much better he is than the content he is presenting now. Oh well . . . I could easily be wrong about this--just my opinion anyway.
Anyway, I too stand with Ukraine against Putin's tyranny. I mean, this seems like it should be pretty straightforward.
I agree that naked and brutal totalitarianism is a much worse direction for the thrust of global society to turn to than liberal democracy. It’s also hard not to wince in anger and regret at the hypocrisy that liberal governments, led in principles and hegemonic power by the US, are corrupted by — as well as the corrosive influence this corruption has had on the spread of democratic values across the Global South and East. Numerous times, the US has covertly meddled in elections or orchestrated coups of progressive, democratically elected presidents abroad to install fascistic, pro-corporate despots friendly to Western market interests. From Iran to Chile to Brazil and even Ukraine and Russia, these illiberal interventions have fed the soil of autocracies to come, both by destabilizing and terrorizing fledgling democracies and disillusioning the world to the promises of liberalism when its most vaunted proponent, the US, is so often complicit in cutting foreign democracies off at the knees when it enriches the US oligarchic class. The role of the World Bank and IMF in draining the developing world of wealth and progressive prospects is a recipe for future autocratic movements. The US, through the CIAs machinations, often ally with and arm murderous anti-democratic forces (Contras, Taliban, Mujahideen, Isis, etc) that lead to tyrannical regimes. And look no further than our allies in Israel and Saudi Arabia to see the hypocrisy on full display.
Yes, we can and should decry Putin’s tyranny and stand up for liberal values. But we can’t pretend that the past 75 years of US hegemonic power has been a foil or antidote to the frightening rise of authoritarianism abroad. Both critiques feel valid and crucial right now as we stand at an ideological point of reckoning and the likely advent of a new hypernationalism and Cold War. It seems to me, Liberalism that cynically works against it’s own values is illiberal at its core. Authoritarianism follows in its wake.
I think any discussion of war these days has to be preceded by the reinstatement of a draft. We have what amounts to a mercenary army of people who couldn’t afford our outrageous college tuition or attended one of those high schools where you were graduated reading on a third grade level. Virtually none of our loquacious and opinionated politicians, journalists and TV pundits have served in the military, and their kids are safe in Ivy League dorms. Yet most seem to relish tough talk of war. My father, a veteran, was always disgusted by this. All this talk lately about equity...let’s have some equity in who is fighting our wars. Get in uniform yourself or encourage your child to enlist and be ready to deploy, then we can talk. I think this would be promote better, more considered policy decisions going forward.
If Putin is Hitler, then Russia is Germany. Dictators don't rise in thriving societies, but usually those that were impoverished, broken, mocked and/or ignored by the world. The world is not black and white. These things don't happen for no reason and out of nowhere. Only those who closely look at all variables will get a good picture of what is truly going on.
Although I agree with a great deal of what you write, Daniel, and honour you as a great teacher, I was disappointed with this piece. At a time when passions run high, and war drums are resounding, is it not better to seek spiritual guidance and look to new ways that do not lead straight into the old conflicts - where the West is the good guy, Russia the bad guy, and the US et.. al. given exceptionalism yet again to be the 'saviour' despite all the ways we could have tried to broker peace instead of making Russia The Enemy?
War is highly profitable. These narratives of good vs bad are too simplistic. Do we want to inflame enmity in others? Have that on our hearts? No one wins a war, and a war never ends. I agree with Greenwald, Hedges and Brand in this case: respectfully, I think it better to look to own nations' responsibilities (I'm Canadian), our own nation's ideologies of exceptionalism and enemy-making. That is the consciousness that needs to change, in all of us. Thanks for writing.
Precisely. Saying Holodomor happened nearly a century ago so what has nothing to do with how the Ukrainians themselves FEEL about it. Their own people perished by the millions. More recently, they also had to deal with a brutal, corrupt "president" who followed Putin's orders, impoverishing his people while building an obscenely huge palace for himself. They overthrew him in 2014 by going into the streets. Lives were lost. That's front and center in the memoires of Ukrainians. What the Russian people think of America and its politics is beside the point. We Americans know what a corrupt clown show that is. That's OUR challenge. Are we up to overthrowing it? Somehow given our level of distraction and addiction I doubt it.
You cannot always blame everything on the West but you can find the facts and understand that this crisis is a creation of the West, most particularly the US and its Nato allies/lackeys.
Putin has been asking, requesting, pleading for decades that Ukraine remain neutral as originally promised by the US and Nato when the Soviet Union fell. He was ignored and the missile creep kept coming toward the Russian border.
The Ukrainians were mere pawns in the American/Nato game, as is the way and should have known better than to hold the stick with which the Americans/Nato kept poking in the eye of the Russian 'bear.'
This is a tragedy for Ukrainians and Russians but it is not one of Putin's making.
If you swapped the scenario and had Russia trying to do on the Canadian/US border what is being attempted on the Ukrainian/Russian border, it is without doubt that the Americans would invade Canada in an instant.
You only have to look at the history to see how the West has created this situation.
Perhaps explain why it is wrong for Putin to seek to take Ukraine to prevent US/Nato missile launchers on the Russian border and yet it was not wrong for the Americans to get hysterical and threaten nuclear war when the Russians wanted to put a base in Cuba?
Relativism diminishes hypocrisy and there is a lot of that around. For example, what do you think the US would do if Russia or China were looking to set up missile launchers on the Canadian or Mexican borders? That is the equivalent of the Ukraine situation for Russia. We both know the Americans would invade and occupy in a nanosecond and probably never leave, in the name of security.
And why is Russia so wrong when Israel, in the name and claim of 'security' and with US approval continues to occupy all of Palestine, bits of Lebanon and a slab of Syria, the Golan Heights?????
The hypocrisy is breathtaking as usual.
Absolute drivel…
Mr. Pinchbeck and his comrades now furiously muttering about the perils of "relativism" lean heavily on the reductionist op-eds of Timothy Snyder.
Historian and political scientist Marlene Laruelle has debunked Snyder's facile "fascist" polemic:
https://www.ponarseurasia.org/wp-content/uploads/attachments/Pepm539_Laruelle_Sept2018_4-3.pdf
Dr. Laruelle is the author of Russian Nationalism: Imaginaries, Doctrines, and Political Battlefields (2019). She is Research Professor and Director of the Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies (IERES) at the George Washington University. She is also a Co-Director of PONARS (Program on New Approaches to Research and Security in Eurasia.
Snyder and Anne Applebaum keep busy writing book blurbs for each other, while Michel Eltchaninoff stakes out a position in the cottage industry of essayists on the perils of "Putinism".
I stand with Yemen.
You got a big shoutout in the Rebel Wisdom newsletter here btw:
https://rebelwisdom.substack.com/p/sensemaking-russia-and-ukraine-rebel
All the countries to the west of Ukraine are NATO members...If Putin wants a Ukranian shield against NATO nations, taking Ukraine for that purpose seems foolish
If Putin seeks defence against NATO, taking/occupying Ukraine puts him right next to all the bordering NATO nations to the west.