Glad you're digging into this, Daniel. I've spent the past two weeks going down the Ukraine-Russia-US-NATO rabbit hole as well. While I've also been lax in tracking the history of geopolitical conflicts in this region, what I'm learning accords with my views on the postwar (problematic term!) world writ large. Studying books like Gregg Grandin's "Empire's Workshop" and overloading on anti-imperialist media/podcasts (e.g., Blowback, Moderate Rebels, TrueAnon, Chris Hedges 'On Contact') over the past 8 or so years has made me deeply cynical about the US/Western liberal democratic project. Whatever estimable values and tangible improvements to life and liberty the US-led world order can profess are so rife with grotesque hypocrisy and terror masquerading as nobility, it is difficult to take the moral temperature in the end.
Like Greenwald, Hedges, and other critics of western hegemony speaking out right now, I am struggling to square my disgust at the hypocrisy/culpability of liberal governments with my horror and condemnation of Putin (and other autocratic regimes). They both feel equally vile and depressing, in different ways. What bothers me most as an American is the sense that the promise of liberalism was horribly squandered and corrupted, straight out of the gates, following WW2 and the rise of US hegemony. With the formation of the CIA and the military-intelligence complex, liberalism and democracy became a flimsy rhetorical veil for warmongers and transnational corporations to hide behind while ruthlessly consolidating power. I tried watching some John Mearshmier lectures to understand the "realism vs liberalism" political science debate and found it seriously lacking in this context. Liberalism has now been fully taken over by corporate interests (Sheldon Wolin called this "inverted totalitarianism"), subverting democracy and eroding liberal values at every step. I find this duplicity particularly insidious and revolting. It's unsurprising to me that it has resulted in an existential showdown against more naked forms of authoritarianism. Feels like an inevitable conclusion in a long cycle of violence.
I agree with you about the toxic masculinity at the source of this mess. It really feels like a spiritual crisis reaching its apex in our time. The Algonquin "wetiko" archetype and the Demiurge concept feels very apt. I'm still hoping for a deus ex machina of some sort... 100th Monkey enlightenment, or maybe the aliens will finally make their appearance?...
Without finding a way to transcend/get rid of/abandon patriarchy, capitalism will stay with us until the world collapses of its own insane obesity. The embarrassing half-measures from a profit motive culture meant to address the climate crisis are a case in point. So how do we get rid of patriarchy? Putin and Trump (and millions of other men in all realms) will not simply roll over and play soft, they will not play nice and make room for women at the helm. There has to be no helm. We must learn from our deep shamanic past, our indigenous ancestors, where endless egoic competition hardly existed. Otherwise all the books and thoughts about Ukraine or anywhere else will -- to use a masculine metaphor -- amount to no more than pissing in the wind.
This war, like so many, was made in the USA. This is not to justify war but to understand how the Russians were pushed to do what they have done. Who is most to blame, the person poking someone else in the eye with a stick, or the person being poked who finally hits back?
Would Russia have invaded Ukraine if the Americans had not been pushing for Ukraine to join Nato?
Would Russia have invaded Ukraine if the CIA-concocted coup in 2004 which threw out the pro-Russian, democratically elected President and eventually put in a Nato, local oligarch supported, US friendly puppet had not taken place?
Would Russia have invaded Ukraine if Putin had not been subjected to decades of mockery, dismissal and ignoring if not ridicule of his valid concerns?
Would Russia have invaded Ukraine if the Ukrainians had been smart enough to remain neutral?
Would Russia have invaded Ukraine if the Americans had not kept playing their Cold War games instead of taking Russia into Europe?
As always it is not a simple case of goodies and baddies. The Americans got hysterical about the Russians looking to have a base in Cuba. Remember Bay of Pigs? That was 100km from any US border but they threatened nuclear war and the Russians backed down.
The US has fomented numerous coups in South America, ousting democratically elected leaders, to ensure their puppets remain in place - ask the Chileans.
The Americans support, arm, aid and abet Zionist Israel in occupying all of Palestine, a slab of Syria - the Golan Heights and bits of Lebanon, in the name of their claimed 'security' which is invalid by comparison with Russian security issues, since the only Israel which could legally exist, although never tested in a court of law, is the 1947 UN Mandate anyway.
And the US supports and encourages Israel as an apartheid State which denies 6 million Palestinian Christians and Muslims, justice, freedom and human and civil rights because non-Jews are deemed by Israel to be a security threat.
The hypocrisy and double standards are breathtaking.
“If the West has often engaged in geopolitics based upon greed and self interest, Putin is fueled by a yearning for vengeance — against America, NATO, the former Soviet bloc, dissidents, and so on. As a basis for geopolitics, greed may be bad, but vengeance is far worse.” Y’know, Daniel, as a fan, I find way too many statements like this, here and elsewhere, since the advent of the Ukrainian war. First of all, they’re factually untrue. We all lived an entire decade after 9/11 when nothing but a combination of open rage and greed drove our behavior, including a war that actually destroyed the Middle East as we know it. Obviously no one can know at this point, but I would put money that this war will kill far fewer than died in Iraq, and Syria (whose disintegration was a direct knock-on of that war). Secondly, they’re statements whose rhetorical power is drawn from your apparent ability to somehow divine the distinction between Putin’s motivations and ours. I suggest you actually do not know. I would suggest that Putin, who I do not doubt is a bad dude, is also someone who is very driven by geo-political and yes, greedy motivations, just like us. How about we just stick to what both countries actually do in the world, and not get lost in feats of deep psychological insight into the ‘other’.
Your statement “if the West has often engaged in geopolitics based upon greed and self interest....” implies the space in which our geopolitics is not based on those goals. Pray tell, where in the last few years is the evidence for that? Surely not even during the global pandemic when we could not bring ourselves to provide vaccinations for the world if that shaved a few points off the profits of big pharma and threatened their sacred regime of intellectual property rights (even if created with public money). Surely anyone can cite things we should have done sometime in some moment, but really, let’s be honest, the last two years were an existential struggle, very much a truncated version of the climate change battle, a moment that shined an unforgiving light on our ability to step outside our privatized, marketized economy to address a crisis where we ourselves were dying in large numbers, and simply: we could not do it. No, sorry, I feel more than ever a sense of the autocracy of the world we have created in our empire. Our choices may not be great, but I think our biggest need at this historical moment is to keep our eyes clear and open precisely when the forces of propaganda and bloodlust are everywhere, telling us that we in an epic struggle with an evil force we have not seen before. Sorry, Daniel, you have better places to put your beautiful mind and ideas.
My mother's side of the family is Ukrainian. Albeit, I was confused about the origins of their nationality once I saw the immigration paperwork. Grandma and her husband, a grandfather I never met due to his early death, were listed as "Austro-Hungarian citizens." When they left the old country in 1930, my mother, a one-week-old baby, was "Polish," born in Zelena, Buczacz. Yet, they claimed Ukraine as the homeland. Grandma barely spoke English, but it was clear that she hated Russians and communists. She repeatedly warned us that communism would come to the west, and shoes would be over a hundred dollars a pair someday. I didn't believe her.
It would be nearly impossible to catch up on the entire history of this region and the causes of uprisings and wars. The intense tragedies that have disrupted our idealistic future scenarios are exhausting, at least the ones that are on my mind of late. So much for utopia. Unless the mothership lands and the benevolent ETs take over.
I like the idea that the Hundredth Monkey Effect could be practical, though. Local actions can spark global change if enough people catch on. The speed at which everything is moving seems to be overtaking the average person. So many are still reeling from the pandemic, no matter what their experience with it and the choices they made. Nobody is getting out of this one untouched. Delving into what may be considered WW3 only adds to the anxiety. What has humanity done to deserve this?
I find myself not wanting to hear about this war, at least not the big stories. My half-Ukrainian boyfriend listens to podcasts daily about insider knowledge, opinions, and the bigger picture. I'm gravitating to the small stories; two young, volunteer dog shelter workers gunned down after delivering dog food to a shelter that had been out of supplies for three days. One of my Facebook friends shared the story of panic-stricken horse owners waiting at the border, hoping to cross into Poland with their valuable show jumpers. These scenarios make it more personal for me. I recall the beautiful dance costumes I had as a child. Every time I see the cross-stitched sugar-sack blouses and colourful, flower-laden headdresses streaming with iridescent ribbons and hear the extraordinary voices of Ukrainian choirs, I imagine the presence of my ancestors.
I can't help but think of the kind of men behind all this destruction. As some of my friends have suggested, are they off-planet, reptilian entities? Sometimes that's the only explanation that makes sense. The U.S. has a history of meddling in the politics of a region that has desirable resources, but it is exhausting to dive down these rabbit holes, at least for me.
Most of the Ukrainians in my family have gone to their graves. I think of Grandma's concern for her relatives, who are likely still living in Kyiv. I've never met them. What else do we have but our present moment? What else can I do, right now, besides send them my best thoughts and prayers? I hope we make it out of this one.
I was not prepared for this bitter and uncalled-for rant against Trump (no wars under Trump) and your overt rank liberalism. Clearly you never looked at what people are really saying in alt media. Those are the actual people's stories you'll never see on MSM. You simply read a lot of books by liberal pontificators with an axe to grind. Like you.
I'm sorry now I donated to you a couple of weeks ago. Quite generously too. Won't happen again. You're not the thought-leader I expected.
Enjoy your $8 gallon liberal climate-change gas ... you asked for it. We had $1 gal oil under Trump's solid management.
Glad you're digging into this, Daniel. I've spent the past two weeks going down the Ukraine-Russia-US-NATO rabbit hole as well. While I've also been lax in tracking the history of geopolitical conflicts in this region, what I'm learning accords with my views on the postwar (problematic term!) world writ large. Studying books like Gregg Grandin's "Empire's Workshop" and overloading on anti-imperialist media/podcasts (e.g., Blowback, Moderate Rebels, TrueAnon, Chris Hedges 'On Contact') over the past 8 or so years has made me deeply cynical about the US/Western liberal democratic project. Whatever estimable values and tangible improvements to life and liberty the US-led world order can profess are so rife with grotesque hypocrisy and terror masquerading as nobility, it is difficult to take the moral temperature in the end.
Like Greenwald, Hedges, and other critics of western hegemony speaking out right now, I am struggling to square my disgust at the hypocrisy/culpability of liberal governments with my horror and condemnation of Putin (and other autocratic regimes). They both feel equally vile and depressing, in different ways. What bothers me most as an American is the sense that the promise of liberalism was horribly squandered and corrupted, straight out of the gates, following WW2 and the rise of US hegemony. With the formation of the CIA and the military-intelligence complex, liberalism and democracy became a flimsy rhetorical veil for warmongers and transnational corporations to hide behind while ruthlessly consolidating power. I tried watching some John Mearshmier lectures to understand the "realism vs liberalism" political science debate and found it seriously lacking in this context. Liberalism has now been fully taken over by corporate interests (Sheldon Wolin called this "inverted totalitarianism"), subverting democracy and eroding liberal values at every step. I find this duplicity particularly insidious and revolting. It's unsurprising to me that it has resulted in an existential showdown against more naked forms of authoritarianism. Feels like an inevitable conclusion in a long cycle of violence.
I agree with you about the toxic masculinity at the source of this mess. It really feels like a spiritual crisis reaching its apex in our time. The Algonquin "wetiko" archetype and the Demiurge concept feels very apt. I'm still hoping for a deus ex machina of some sort... 100th Monkey enlightenment, or maybe the aliens will finally make their appearance?...
Without finding a way to transcend/get rid of/abandon patriarchy, capitalism will stay with us until the world collapses of its own insane obesity. The embarrassing half-measures from a profit motive culture meant to address the climate crisis are a case in point. So how do we get rid of patriarchy? Putin and Trump (and millions of other men in all realms) will not simply roll over and play soft, they will not play nice and make room for women at the helm. There has to be no helm. We must learn from our deep shamanic past, our indigenous ancestors, where endless egoic competition hardly existed. Otherwise all the books and thoughts about Ukraine or anywhere else will -- to use a masculine metaphor -- amount to no more than pissing in the wind.
This war, like so many, was made in the USA. This is not to justify war but to understand how the Russians were pushed to do what they have done. Who is most to blame, the person poking someone else in the eye with a stick, or the person being poked who finally hits back?
Would Russia have invaded Ukraine if the Americans had not been pushing for Ukraine to join Nato?
Would Russia have invaded Ukraine if the CIA-concocted coup in 2004 which threw out the pro-Russian, democratically elected President and eventually put in a Nato, local oligarch supported, US friendly puppet had not taken place?
Would Russia have invaded Ukraine if Putin had not been subjected to decades of mockery, dismissal and ignoring if not ridicule of his valid concerns?
Would Russia have invaded Ukraine if the Ukrainians had been smart enough to remain neutral?
Would Russia have invaded Ukraine if the Americans had not kept playing their Cold War games instead of taking Russia into Europe?
As always it is not a simple case of goodies and baddies. The Americans got hysterical about the Russians looking to have a base in Cuba. Remember Bay of Pigs? That was 100km from any US border but they threatened nuclear war and the Russians backed down.
The US has fomented numerous coups in South America, ousting democratically elected leaders, to ensure their puppets remain in place - ask the Chileans.
The Americans support, arm, aid and abet Zionist Israel in occupying all of Palestine, a slab of Syria - the Golan Heights and bits of Lebanon, in the name of their claimed 'security' which is invalid by comparison with Russian security issues, since the only Israel which could legally exist, although never tested in a court of law, is the 1947 UN Mandate anyway.
And the US supports and encourages Israel as an apartheid State which denies 6 million Palestinian Christians and Muslims, justice, freedom and human and civil rights because non-Jews are deemed by Israel to be a security threat.
The hypocrisy and double standards are breathtaking.
“If the West has often engaged in geopolitics based upon greed and self interest, Putin is fueled by a yearning for vengeance — against America, NATO, the former Soviet bloc, dissidents, and so on. As a basis for geopolitics, greed may be bad, but vengeance is far worse.” Y’know, Daniel, as a fan, I find way too many statements like this, here and elsewhere, since the advent of the Ukrainian war. First of all, they’re factually untrue. We all lived an entire decade after 9/11 when nothing but a combination of open rage and greed drove our behavior, including a war that actually destroyed the Middle East as we know it. Obviously no one can know at this point, but I would put money that this war will kill far fewer than died in Iraq, and Syria (whose disintegration was a direct knock-on of that war). Secondly, they’re statements whose rhetorical power is drawn from your apparent ability to somehow divine the distinction between Putin’s motivations and ours. I suggest you actually do not know. I would suggest that Putin, who I do not doubt is a bad dude, is also someone who is very driven by geo-political and yes, greedy motivations, just like us. How about we just stick to what both countries actually do in the world, and not get lost in feats of deep psychological insight into the ‘other’.
Your statement “if the West has often engaged in geopolitics based upon greed and self interest....” implies the space in which our geopolitics is not based on those goals. Pray tell, where in the last few years is the evidence for that? Surely not even during the global pandemic when we could not bring ourselves to provide vaccinations for the world if that shaved a few points off the profits of big pharma and threatened their sacred regime of intellectual property rights (even if created with public money). Surely anyone can cite things we should have done sometime in some moment, but really, let’s be honest, the last two years were an existential struggle, very much a truncated version of the climate change battle, a moment that shined an unforgiving light on our ability to step outside our privatized, marketized economy to address a crisis where we ourselves were dying in large numbers, and simply: we could not do it. No, sorry, I feel more than ever a sense of the autocracy of the world we have created in our empire. Our choices may not be great, but I think our biggest need at this historical moment is to keep our eyes clear and open precisely when the forces of propaganda and bloodlust are everywhere, telling us that we in an epic struggle with an evil force we have not seen before. Sorry, Daniel, you have better places to put your beautiful mind and ideas.
My mother's side of the family is Ukrainian. Albeit, I was confused about the origins of their nationality once I saw the immigration paperwork. Grandma and her husband, a grandfather I never met due to his early death, were listed as "Austro-Hungarian citizens." When they left the old country in 1930, my mother, a one-week-old baby, was "Polish," born in Zelena, Buczacz. Yet, they claimed Ukraine as the homeland. Grandma barely spoke English, but it was clear that she hated Russians and communists. She repeatedly warned us that communism would come to the west, and shoes would be over a hundred dollars a pair someday. I didn't believe her.
It would be nearly impossible to catch up on the entire history of this region and the causes of uprisings and wars. The intense tragedies that have disrupted our idealistic future scenarios are exhausting, at least the ones that are on my mind of late. So much for utopia. Unless the mothership lands and the benevolent ETs take over.
I like the idea that the Hundredth Monkey Effect could be practical, though. Local actions can spark global change if enough people catch on. The speed at which everything is moving seems to be overtaking the average person. So many are still reeling from the pandemic, no matter what their experience with it and the choices they made. Nobody is getting out of this one untouched. Delving into what may be considered WW3 only adds to the anxiety. What has humanity done to deserve this?
I find myself not wanting to hear about this war, at least not the big stories. My half-Ukrainian boyfriend listens to podcasts daily about insider knowledge, opinions, and the bigger picture. I'm gravitating to the small stories; two young, volunteer dog shelter workers gunned down after delivering dog food to a shelter that had been out of supplies for three days. One of my Facebook friends shared the story of panic-stricken horse owners waiting at the border, hoping to cross into Poland with their valuable show jumpers. These scenarios make it more personal for me. I recall the beautiful dance costumes I had as a child. Every time I see the cross-stitched sugar-sack blouses and colourful, flower-laden headdresses streaming with iridescent ribbons and hear the extraordinary voices of Ukrainian choirs, I imagine the presence of my ancestors.
I can't help but think of the kind of men behind all this destruction. As some of my friends have suggested, are they off-planet, reptilian entities? Sometimes that's the only explanation that makes sense. The U.S. has a history of meddling in the politics of a region that has desirable resources, but it is exhausting to dive down these rabbit holes, at least for me.
Most of the Ukrainians in my family have gone to their graves. I think of Grandma's concern for her relatives, who are likely still living in Kyiv. I've never met them. What else do we have but our present moment? What else can I do, right now, besides send them my best thoughts and prayers? I hope we make it out of this one.
I was not prepared for this bitter and uncalled-for rant against Trump (no wars under Trump) and your overt rank liberalism. Clearly you never looked at what people are really saying in alt media. Those are the actual people's stories you'll never see on MSM. You simply read a lot of books by liberal pontificators with an axe to grind. Like you.
I'm sorry now I donated to you a couple of weeks ago. Quite generously too. Won't happen again. You're not the thought-leader I expected.
Enjoy your $8 gallon liberal climate-change gas ... you asked for it. We had $1 gal oil under Trump's solid management.
Goodbye.
Another unsatisfied customer! Sorry to disappoint you, Mike.
Excellent piece, Daniel. Looking forward to your next essay on Russia's sphere of influence.