Last night, around 4:00pm CET, a quick look at twitter before going to bed kept me glued to the screen instead: Russia had started a large-scale military operation in Ukraine and deployed troops there. And this is what Putin had to say about it: [2]
I didn't believe that such an invasion, let alone shelling and using destructive deterrents, would take place. I was already not believing the previous development, despite forewarnings by both US intelligence and the flair of my friend David Colas who even had a date by which Putin would be in Kiev. I still am very much puzzled and unclear as to the opportunity and sense of such an initiative, not even mentioning possible developments, still less than 24h hours after, with already reports of hundreds of soldier casualties from both sides, possibly some civilians too.
Of course, a trivial reaction would be to condemn war, denounce an act of aggression, blame Russia and drape oneself in an Ukrainian flag, etc. The first thing to realize is that this is not something that popped out from a whim of Putin's previous week-end. Instead, this is in direct line of a succession of such moves... from the opposite camp: Irak, Kosovo, Irak again, then recently Lybia, Syria and still others.
I remember the first war against Irak, in 1991. I was in bed, this time, and a child (13 years old). Actually, for reasons that I now forgot, with my brother, we had asked our mom to sleep in her bed, maybe because of the cold in this house of my childhood, that I had to let go just a few months ago. We had to wake up very early for school. First to reach le Vernet la Varenne, 5km away, by car, and then from there, by bus, another 10km to Saint-Germain l'Herm, where School was starting at 8:00, meaning we had to wake up at 6:00. As I'm writing this, I can still feel myself in this bed, of the upper room, with the radio that got triggered by the alarm set to start the day, in what was still the deep night. I was unsure to understand correctly the hurried announcement rushing from the post, still cosy and half-asleep, but my mother confirmed with an anxious voice: «Les enfants, levez vous, c'est la guerre!» (?!) The radio was describing the bombing from the American coalition on Irak. I asked, worried if something was going to happen to us. «I don't know», replied my mother, «We still have to go to school. Wake up.» I see myself again, now outside, in the night, waiting for my mother to lock the door and peering at the depth of an inscrutable dark sky through the breath vapour forming in the cold through my heavily clothed face, still wondering if something would happen to us. Until then, war had been an abstract concept. It was touching my soul for the first time. By then, I was of course lured by the Manichean picture of the rightful Occident against the barbaric evil of faraway countries. We were quickly reassured by the turn of events, that "we" were strong enough to keep the hostilities far away from us. Still, it felt wrong, somehow, to be in a war that was pausing no threat at all, to us. It felt wrong but good, hypocritically good. This was also the first "CNN war", meaning, with massive, continuous and live news broadcasts from the front lines of the battle. Mind you, this one might even have been justified, with the Kuwait invasion. I seldom have the occasion to contemplate my teen ages and when I do, this is not to ponder at the geopolitical quandaries of the time but to entertain the nostalgia and memories of this child now long gone.
Already with the Kosovo war, in 1998, I was not buying the narrative. There was still the TV painting a clear picture of the responsibilities, incriminating for Serbia, of duties and moral right for the Occident. But there was also my father, who—I don't know how or where from, will never know now—was harshly critical of the Americans and their imperialism, and who was already educating me in the notion of state sovereignty, alliances and vassalization. I was upset with that because I wanted to live the American dream too, the American technology, the Silicon Valley, computers, Feynman, the Internet, the science... America was a sort of ideal and being told otherwise by someone who I loved and respected, was naturally troubling and bothering. I still remember being horrified, this time, of the NATO bombings on the country, I remember actually rejoicing at the gunning down of an American jet fighter (the pilot could eject himself and was not captured), but I remember the pride of local people, peasants, pausing with the debris of the aircraft. I felt it as a humiliation that the sheer display of force could submit, with no control, no opposition, the will of a little nation which, I was explained by my father, had historical ties with us, the French people. I remember on TV a Serbian saying to the French journalists, speaking English to him: "France has betrayed us. If there is a Frenchman amongst you, I shall kill him on the spot". I had already read Victor Hugo by this time, the France of whom would have replied "I am French, this is my torso, kill me if you think what you say". But the France of the TV was indeed sneakily covering up and lying and hiding. I felt ashame to be on the wrong side: not the one who is right, but the one who is strong. Putin, at the same time, who was the age of my father, was probably already, if not planning, at least pondering the events of last night. Russia was, at this time, completely powerless. There was a small, insignificant Russian success in their opposition to the NATO aggression, which they even had to pretend to support. I believed that they entered the capital first and without clearance from NATO. But this was an act of bravado of no significance, and Russia got humiliated and played. I also remember that China was similarly ridiculed with its embassy being shelled (officially, by accident).
With the 2nd Irak war, in 2003, I got through a variety of mixed feelings. Now at the University and with the American model and aspiration always more imposing, I was close to recognizing or at least accepting the superiority of the winner. First, the 9/11 trauma had made a deep and lasting impression, and the sentiment again of adhesion to civilization, against barbarism and terrorism, overwhelmed me. Also feeling an easy prey to this powerful paradox that bigger is the lie, easier it is to swallow it full-mouth, I could not get to distrust Colin Powell's now-famous show of weapons of mass destruction in a vial, and was distrusting, instead, those who, prominently for me, my father, but also by then our head-of-state—Chirac, a notorious opportunist and scammer—still opposed Americans. To my great shame, I (morally) supported the wrong side, that is, that of the coalition which this time seized full control of the country, deposed Saddam Hussein, humiliated him and had him hung summarily. It didn't take long for me to regret my stance as I could feel that humanity was siding with the man who, with dignity, resisted till the end, alone in a miserable hide-out, from where he got extirped by a super-equipped military elite, with all the cruelty of a cat preying on a mouse. By the time that he was facing his execution, in the hands of brutes who appear to share throughout history a predisposition for botching executions and turning them into martyrdom, I believe I was clear on the fact that things are not as they are told to us.
The next episode, I have actually it in the records of this blog already, namely, the Death of Osama bin Laden on 2 May (2011), which is the first time that I made public my personal opinion of a matter which was revulsing me all the more that it was uniformly accepted as a good thing all around me, namely, the assassination of Bin Laden. I was nauseated to see the show of the 2009 Peace Nobel prize ordering and then celebrating the summary execution of someone who was then defiled and humiliated. I felt very disinclined to make public an intellectual coming-out by expressing views that I knew were neither popular nor welcomed by people who would lend an ear to me for topics perpendicular to politics. The tension and hostility were already quite palpable in private discussions, so making an opinion public was clearly only calling for enmity. I feared that speaking could be both misinterpreted as a support of a point (here, of Bin Laden), as opposed to decrying the equal or greater wrongdoing of the opposite point (state murder), in addition to also bring noise to my normal and professional communication, which is on scientific topics. At the same time, the hypocrisy was unbearable so I reluctantly wrote it down. Now I can turn to these texts rather than to my own memories, which I find valuable.
I'm writing "these texts" in the plural, because even though I committed myself to remain discreet on such topics, I had not long to wait before something even more shocking brought me again to ward off the spell of guilt and shame by claiming openly, beyond disapproval, my utter disgust at a situation, namely, at the Lybia aggression, again by NATO. This I could still keep to myself, relatives and close acquaintances. But the savage, bestial and criminal assassination of Muammar Gaddafi, on 20 October (2011), and the concert of self-congratulations, the indecent display of euphoria at his torment, I had to atone for my belonging to such a society by at least confessing our collective crime. In fact, the trauma was so profound that a couple of days later, I had to sit with myself in some sort of therapeutical exploration of how we came to accept such a situation where, in the name of rightfulness, we can, not only commit outright atrocities, but also celebrate them. I came to the conclusion that this was related to Orwell's concept of NewSpeak—which he formulated maybe even better in one of his masterpiece Essay, on Politics and Language—that got adapted to our modern "CNN era" of live coverage of everything. Now instead of CNN, social networks are playing the role of some even deeper, more powerful collective consensus opposing the rightful to the pure evil. No nuance. The rightful can do all they want: this is always right. Pure evil is evil even when not doing anything and just waiting for a situation to pass. There, at the conclusion of these recorded introspections, I had written what makes Putin's move not so simple, after war, not reducing to a mere "stop war". I quote my self from the past, 11 years ago:
This is, in my approximative English of the time, exactly what is going on now, with over a decade of the Kremlin resisting the temptation of making a similar, so convenient, but mistaken move. There is indeed no moral grounds to reproach Putin to do what the Occident, NATO at its head, has been doing repeatedly under the most contrived and ridiculous pretences. It does not make it right, nor does it justify, but it explains and distributes the guilt. NATO and the Occident, branding themselves the "international community", are equally if not more guilty, by establishing, not one, but numerous precedents. And because they attribute themselves the morale high, the virtues of democracies, the values of civilization, they should be irreproachable, abiding by even more strict, more demanding standards. Reality shows that, instead, they have a license to do everything they want, in violation of laws, morale, justice, everything. Their storytelling will always absolve them, at the same time as the slightest twist from those not part of the club will condemn them to immediate and complete retaliations.
The same happens with everything. To take a recent example, consider, for instance, protests and manifestations. We have seen, in France, Australia, Netherlands, Belgium, Canada and still other places, brutal repression, with people losing their eyes, their hands, being shot at with real bullets, being trampled on by horses, being surrounded by the police and brutally beaten. This is, of course, unacceptable. This has been, however, very well accepted. Why? Because "democracy". Now compare with Moscow's handling of manifestations against Putin's invasion of Ukraine. They are what you would expect of a democratic society. Imagine if Putin would do a tenth of what our so-called democracies inflict on their people, if he would have thugs split open the head of someone from behind, push to the ground elderlies, cripple for the rest of their life peaceful demonstrators randomly picked from the crowd, tear-gas children and unrelated passer-byes, seize personal properties and bank account of those remotely involved... Imagine the outcry would he do only some of these things? All of these things, we can do them in all impunity because we are, a democracy à la Thiers. If you are instead branded as a "dictator", the mere fact of having a group of people on a Moscow's square means that you are oppressing people. That is the power of the double standard, of spin-doctoring reality. This is what Putin neglects, I believe, his war marketing, his political narrative. He is too candid, too honest, too literal, too genuine and too ingenuous. There might be a point, though, in a world that becomes increasingly tumultuous, and tormented, where he might be tempted to also expediently silence homeland dissent, and send armed police brutal repression. Are we not, the occidental world, showing him the way, inviting to taste what we copiously and avidly devour, with this appetite of a beast that the blood excites?
So regardless of Putin's underlying motivations, which we haven't touched upon yet, the situation is clearly not so simple as "he is a dangerous dictator" but goes back to "the Occident gives the tone and rhythm of the music" and not only the rest of the orchestra has to follow it, but there is a double standard that only musicians can be blamed if they play a false note; the director cannot be frowned upon, however erratic, wrong, wicked and brutish is their direction.
This is the problem. Whoever claims a higher moral standard must abide by it much more strongly and severely than others. This story of "we are democracies" not only should not give us the right to commit crimes, it should make them much tougher on us. The exact opposite happens. Ideally, not only should we refuse this notion that we are morally superior to the rest of the world, and in the hope of getting there, should we feel particularly distressed by our failure to behave to much higher standards than those we'd like to see in others, but in reality, this is much worse than that as what happens is that we are literally, by a thick margin, on the wrong side, up to protecting political dissent, as Assange and Snowden impersonate). Now that Putin also made one false step, it is no surprise that he will be demonized and relentlessly attacked for it.
As for the underlying reasons, ultimately, the most important and relevant question... At this stage, there is insufficient background, and not enough time, to discuss further the extent of, or even qualify, the acts of Putin. My immediate feeling is that if they are not a crime (at worst), they are at least a mistake (at best). Even if he would be justified, his strategy seems too frontal, too brutal and too expeditious. This might turn out to be, on the other hand, the optimum choice in this prisoner's dilemma. One should consider, in particular, the fact that the Russo-Ukrainian war did not start yesterday, but is ongoing since 2014. Right now, each hour seems unbearable to the World as Russian troops march towards the Ukrainian capital. But before that, few of us have realized that each second of a rotten and paralyzed situation were equally unbearable to Russia and its sympathizing separatist fractions. Nobody could have cared less and this could have remained like this forever, like the Palestinian situation, for which the best thing that could happen might be for some authority to decide at some point of a decisive, blitz-action to settle it once and for all, instead of letting it decay and rotten in the open and general indifference. In Ukraine, the repeated insistence of Russia to negotiate with the occidental powers, to be treated as an equal, or at least as a partner, have been scorned. The demands to provide guarantees on NATO membership of Ukraine and/or its capacity in terms of hostile military equipment have been ignored or betrayed. The Minsk agreements, in particular, have been repeatedly violated. In this sense, isn't there at least some grounds, some rationales, for Putin to break the status quo? What would have happened if Russia had developed military capacities in Venezuela? We actually know as History remembers vividly the same scenario involving Cuba. So, again, the situation is not as clear cut as "war is bad, stop the war, value the people".
In this discussion, however, one would have to go further and critically geopolitical aspects that go back, at least to the cold war, as well to WWII. At a more superficial level, I have only commented on the soundness and opportunity of such a forceful move. I still believe, already one day following the events, that this was a mistake. Putin is fighting, not only Ukrainian military, but also American experts of the Hollywood story-telling scene, who will diabolize and vilify him in proportions rarely seen before. Any escalation can be and will be blamed on the party that started the hostilities. The Occident now has a dreamed distraction on which to blame, or at least dilute, all of its coming problems. The greatest flow of Putin seems, again, to be candour and to have opted to resolve problems in a too straightforward and pragmatic way, even if with patience and care, as opposed to cunningly deceiving, playing dirty, in people's back, openly supporting dissent, arming Maduro, fueling and amplifying people's hatred for their respective regimes. Instead, he opted to end a war that has been ongoing since 2014 by squashing skirmishes for good. For this, he will be drowned in infamy.
The night is passing for me, life is passing for others in the meantime. A little observer of no significance, left with his memories, his intuitions, his doubts and useless indignation.
Je m'étonnais surtout
D'être de ce troupeau
Qui m'apprenait à pleurer
Que je connaissais trop
J'avais L'œil du berger
Mais le cœur de l'agneau
[...]
Et la guerre arriva
Et nous voilà ce soir.