Ten days into the 3rd World War
It is now ten days that Putin invaded Ukraine. What should have been a blitzkrieg is slowly but surely turning into a World War; so that will be the third one. What will be the infamous tryptic: 14-18, 39-45, 22-27?
What should have remained a local conflict between Russia and its neighbor, is now the top preoccupation of the World. The Russo-Ukrainian War has been ongoing since 20 February (2014), so over 8 years ago at the time of writing. How many people did know? How many, in particular, knew about the over 10,000 casualties by the most restrictive accounts?
What was the World doing about this? Nothing. Like the Israelo-Palestinian conflict, or the Yemeni conflict, those are things going on in the background with nobody in the Occident being especially tormented by them. They can keep killing each other, dying by the thousands on a yearly basis, forever, who care? We don't, clearly. Take even the lesser known conflicts: Colombia and Venezuela have been in war since 1964. There are 1,399 dead registered last year only. The Boko haram insurgency led to over 8,000 casualties in 2021, in Syria, 5,828 registered, In Somali, 3,532, Iraq, 2,605, a so-called Kivu conflict brings us a toll of 2,173—who ever heard of Kivu?—add to this South Sudan, Mali, Darfur, Nigeria and you don't even have half the list of ongoing wars! Will this ever stop? It doesn't seem very important, does it?
Putin decided to put a term at the Russo-Ukrainian one. Is that more criminal than letting the situation rotten, and people die for decades to come? If he had managed to bring the conflict to term in, say, ten days, shouldn't the World feel relieved from the most urgent, most catastrophic problem being resolved? The locals would have, for sure. And then, there would be time for diplomacy, negotiations, mutual understanding and balance of powers to get to an agreement. Russia cannot keep hold of Ukraine. It was not its "declared" intention anyway. Have we even listened to any of his numerous speeches ahead, at the fringe and while declaring the invasion? Here is the one Recognizing Donbass's autonomy:
From this speech, a responsible diplomacy would have urged Russians and Ukrainians to negotiate under the refereeing of the World, agreements more binding than those of Minsk, which have been violated since the start. Instead, immediate sanctions against Russia, sent it the message that instead of de-escalating and finding a solution of everybody's interest, there would be more inflammatory actions and a return, one way or the other, of armed conflict, supported by the Occident, as it had been since 2014. Putin, as a military leader, thus took the next step of attacking first. Here is his speech of the armed intervention:
A responsible diplomacy, recognizing its previous mistake of going from bad to worse, would have then, besides condemning, obviously, the military intervention, asked Kiev to depose the arms, don't fight, be deposed and enter the status of an occupied country which would recover its sovereignty in the course of time. Russia would then have to bear the weight of an illegal intervention .
Instead, the Occident decide to turn Russia into a Pariah state, declaring a "total war" on the country, its culture and its people. This is described among other top-officials by French minister Bruno Lemaire, for instance, who congratulated himself in the Occident's ability to ruin the Russian economy and submit Russian people in its wake, even after being explicitely queried by the journalist whether he meant Putin's Russia or People's Russia. He said:
andje veux laisser [sic] planer aucune ambiguïté
We have then seen indirect military support, in the form of equipment, mercenaries, etc., on top of direct financial, political and media support. There has been ostracization of Russia as a whole, including its artists and scientists. For instance, the worldwide famous legendary artists Natalia Netrebko got banned from performing, for refusing to enter into an explicit propaganda condemnation of Russia, but instead, stating thatle peuple Russe en paiera aussi les conséquences, soyons clairs.
and thatI’m Russian and I love my country, but I have many friends in Ukraine and the pain and suffering breaks my heart. I want this war to stop and people can live in peace. I hope so and I pray for that
I am not an expert on politics. I am an artist and my goal is to unite across political differences
We have also seen, among some of the few outrageous moves, the EU Horizon 2020 and CNRS cutting off all collaborations, even contacts, with Russian scientists. ... Several moves are so futile, they are even outright ridiculous. This includes banning Russian cats from international feline competition [1]. ...
Not least is the banning of Russian-affiliated media such as RT or Sputnick, hailed as propaganda tool, when they were fairly neutral and objective on most points, in fact giving a much more balanced and reasonable picture of the Yellow vest movement in France, for instance, as opposed to state-sponsored French media which, never, ever, are being officially regarded as being government-affiliated, despite everybody knowing their total submission to the official line.
All this shows that this war, which should have remained localized at the frontiers of these countries, is growing into one of World War proportions. Emannuel Macron, in one of his early speeches, declared that this was a war on our territory, implying that Ukraine was part of the EU's Europe, despite both being two different concepts. There is a massive propaganda painting Putin as a madman, a dictator, a genocidal maniac, in short, a modern version of Hitler, allying mental disorder with a great power and a thirst for destruction. His assassination has in fact already been called for by several officials and politicians.
Russia, of course, is a nuclear power. So its defeat, let alone its submission, is far from obvious or certain. The nuclear rhetoric has already been profusely used from all sides, even though we are still not yet at the beginning of a World conflict, and still in the first days of its first operations. Should it happen, in retrospect, it will not be surprising, for future historians, that the strange, irresistible attraction of humanity for this display of total chaos, was so easily and eagerly embraced, after decades of a taboo and a genuine fear of the populations and states alike for this weapon. Nowadays, such fear has been demoted for that of viruses, and as societies get into a total paralyzing panic for a flu, they await in parallel and expectatives to see who will be the first to actually dare nuke a city. Hopefully, such a strike will remind everybody of the horrors of nuclear destruction, and as Ternopil, or Zhytomir or Lutsk, will be replaced by a carpet of ashes, we will all of a sudden realize we have brought these things out of proportion. Then it will be time to sit around a table and negotiate. Something which should have been done even before the recognition of Dombas, remember, but that we keep pushing away. That is Putin's fourth or fifth step on a ladder to bring us there, of which he already climbed the first too steps. Unleashing Kadyrov and his Chechen hordes to violently submit resistance is probably an intermediate one. Will he keep climbing? I remember vividly this observation from Putin, that resonates today with particular importance, of what worth would be a World without Russia? This suggests that he is the type likely to keep on climbing till we all tip over, rather than recognize defeat, get down and hand over the ladder itself and the keys. Something which Occidental people do not seem to realize is that Putin has been patiently planning this, with determination and resolution. It might be this is a bluff and his last attempt before giving up. But who would call bluff when such issues are at stake?
And if it's bluff, then indeed the only exit is to give up. Give up independence, that is, give up for Russia to be this huge country with an unfair share of natural resources, vast and basically unexploited territories for a population remaining fairly stable demographically as the rest of the World explodes at a speed that would have made Malthus choke. There is evidence, from the speeches above, that Putin even tried to join NATO, to be part of the concert of Occidental powers. But that cannot be unless they align to its doctrine, that of globalization, that where states and nations fade away and administrators, technocrats take over the control, a society where cultural and national identities become secondary, then irrelevant. It would be difficult to deny the observable cultural, political and, through NATO bases and alliances, even military invasion from the Occident. This is what Putin is fighting against. Is he right?
So far, I haven't discussed moral aspects or taking side myself. Clearly, this World war will not be one between nations, but between doctrines. No doubt many Russians would aspire to joint this New-World Order, where the same ideology, digital wallets and companies rule in Moscow the same as they do in New-York, London or Bruxelles. These people would certainly recognize that Zelenski is the model of what tomorrow will look like, and that Russia, instead of fighting him, should hail him as a hero for accelerating the mondialistic uniformization, where the World will speak with one and the same voice. At the same time, many people in the USA and in Europe are increasingly opposed to the new society, between the covid-passport, the Metaverse and the consensual, follow-the-science, build-back-better narrative. People stick to their traditions, their specificities, their natural rights as, if not human beings, at least living entities, to a minimum of personal freedom not within the clutches of an authority, be it sanitary, scientific, intellectual, moral or societal, however well funded or consensually recognized it is.
That will be a conflict of a new type where sides will not be separated by frontiers, but by virtual connections to a model of society. The conflict which is starting in Ukraine will take time, if only because of its need to transmute into a war of another type, where support and opposition are, if not exactly balanced, at least present in both sides of the physical scenery.
To conclude, my stand, 10 days into a conflict that will probably reshape the World, which I think is still reasonable as of now but that will certainly become criminal in the future, one way or the other, as it is impossible to remain neutral in a conflict, especially when it affects everybody:
I remain surprised, if not exactly shocked anymore, but still surprised, that Putin would make such a forceful move and military invade Ukraine. I believe this is a mistake, not only a moral mistake but also a possible strategical mistake, which is even worst. It's morally wrong since this is a violation of international law and the only excuse he gets for that is that this has been largely and copiously done before by the Occident itself. I was officially and openly condemning this as a potential incitement for others already in 2011 and my personal inclination of our (Occidentals') wrongdoings back to the mid 1990s. In the meantime, the reality and complexity of the situation shows that the moral grounds are even more shacky than I fought and that History will likely absolve Putin of this move, unless if we will witness his demise and complete destruction, in which case it will be qualified as a crime.
I also believe this is a strategical mistake, because the power of the story-telling, of mass manipulation, of the narrative, is much more considerable than even us can appreciate. Putin probably still feels that the nerve of the war is at the level of the military equipment and brute balance of the force, and then at the political level between heads of states. It seems instead that there is no political power anymore, Macron and Van der Leyen obviously do not decide anything. Even Boris Johnson, who has a tiny bit more of margin in the wake of his Brexit, is singing his part in full harmony with a greater narrative. Most obvious of all is Biden, by now openly senile, who from one speech to the other mistakes Ukrainian for Iranians and condemns Putin's invasion of Russia. Clearly Biden decides nothing. This is all at a deeper level, who knows which one? The point is that the front faces, that were previously head of states indeed, with more or less margin for action, have now been replaced directly by the crowds, by people, by collective influences. The underlying force, whatever and wherever it is, is now playing directly with societies as a whole. I believe that we will evolve to a model of society where there are no identified rulers anymore, no personality to give the appearance of taking decisions. All this will be delocalized and diffused in people as a whole, in what is trending on social networks, on what is embracing everybody's passion to drape themselves with colors or symbols to display their adhesion, their support, to bring their tiny weight to an unstoppable total. The power of the media is key in this, and Putin is facing Hollywood. His geopolitical wisdom, his historical erudition, his diplomatic strategies are worth nothing. We can see how Zelinsky, despite a background that includes playing piano with his sex or performing homosexual fetishism in latex and leather, can be transformed into an iconic war hero, courageous, disinterested, sacrificial, as opposed to Putin, sitting a huge distance from his top advisors, only missing a skull sitting by his side to hold a beverage.