If you are a history buff, then what we are seeing in Ukraine is not exactly news to you. Indeed, it may be depressing how much history does repeat itself. And yet, looking at history does mean that you can look at the past and see the parallels to today and decide not to make the same mistakes. It also means that those who do choose to repeat the same mistakes are doing it because they are under the same delusions as their forbears.
And if you play computer games on Steam, you’ve probably at least heard of the Hearts of Iron series, and the last few times I’ve played that game I’ve noticed that the loading screens feature a lot of historical quotes that have at least ironic value, and some of them seem to be that much more ironic in the wake of the first large-scale war in Europe since 1945.
Gaiety is the outstanding feature of the Soviet Union.
-Joseph Stalin
This is an example of how “truth” works in a totalitarian universe where everybody HAS to believe the government line (on pain of death) and so politicians don’t even need to lie well. It’s of a piece with the Winter War against Finland, where Finns invented the phrase “Molotov cocktail” but also invented the phrase “Molotov’s breadbaskets” because Foreign Minister Molotov insisted that Soviet bombing runs on Finnish cities were really just dropping food parcels for Finland’s starving masses.
Alternately, it could be that this phrase is just an example of Stalin’s famously dark sense of humor. But as Stalin was (inaccurately) quoted as saying, “Dark humor is like food. Not everybody gets it.”
-Sir Arthur “Bomber” Harris
Harris was a leader of the British Royal Air Force Bomber Command in World War II, and like America’s General Sherman, he had a single-minded focus on destroying the enemy’s home ground as the most quick, efficient, and therefore humane, means of ending a war that was thrust upon his country.
In World War II, this led to the outright destruction of cities like Dresden from conventional bombs.
It’s been slightly less than two months, and already there are reports that Ukraine has been able to target supply depots in Russian territory with air attacks. Recently Vladimir Putin’s government acknowledged that the economic sanctions from the West would have an effect on his economy, contradicting previous government remarks. Which is funny, given that shortly after the invasion started, Putin’s main protege (or perhaps ingenue) told his own fan club that the invasion was a genius move because Putin got access to all that territory for maybe $2 in sanctions. But that’s understandable, given that said protege launched his own half-assed attack on a national capital over a year ago and hasn’t even paid two dollars for it yet.
Yes, despite all the carnage in places like Yemen and Palestine and all the violence previously committed by Putin, the attack on Ukraine was what finally got the world’s attention. Even then, if Putin had succeeded in taking Kyiv in the first week and sweeping through the east, the international community probably would have had to take it as a fait accompli like his other aggressions. But then, the feat has not been accomplished. Because Ukraine fights back, it exacts a price for aggression, and that makes it a lot easier for the rest of the world to do likewise.
It brings to mind a much more famous quote by wartime prime minister Winston Churchill: “Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The statesman who yields to war fever must realise that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events.”
That’s the part of the speech most people know. The part that isn’t quoted as often is: “Antiquated War Offices, weak, incompetent, or arrogant Commanders, untrustworthy allies, hostile neutrals, malignant Fortune, ugly surprises, awful miscalculations — all take their seats at the Council Board on the morrow of a declaration of war. Always remember, however sure you are that you could easily win, that there would not be a war if the other man did not think he also had a chance.”
People don’t matter, only what they represent.
I would rather live in a swamp of Greater Romania than a paradise of small Romania.
-Ion Antonescu
Ion Antonescu was a general in the Kingdom of Romania leading up to World War II, at a time when the political spectrum there ranged between pro-German and people who thought the Nazis weren’t anti-Semitic enough. Antonescu’s faction ended up winning control of the government by 1940 and Romania ended up joining the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union next year. Part of this was to take back territory that the previous government had conceded to Stalin, even though Romania had also surrendered Transylvania to Hitler’s other ally Hungary. The rearranged borders were defined by Antonescu as “Greater Romania.” Of course the Axis lost that war and Romania ended up losing that eastern territory again.
Antonescu’s quotes above reflect the philosophy of collectivists, whether they be left-wing socialists or right-wing fascists. They don’t see people as individuals. They don’t think that individual lives matter, or even the collective impact of government decisions. All that matters is the collective – the State, or the race. Any deprivation the individual people suffer is irrelevant to the goals of the state (or rather, the people who currently own it).
Which is why, contrary to some analysts, I don’t think that Putin is going to acknowledge a timeline. They say he only has a few months worth of supplies and financial reserves to wage a war, but that assumes he actually cares about the discomfort of the civilian population, or even his elite allies. So of course he’s going to let the government default on its debt, of course he’s going to create a national draft, of course he’s going to institute rationing and of course he’s going to come up with even more restrictions on public activity that would make all his “freedom-loving” fellow travelers in the US howl and scream if they were enacted by a Democrat. I mean what else could he do, back off and admit he made a mistake? See, that’s the beautiful thing about fascism. Fascism means never having to say you’re sorry.
Germany will either be a world power or it will not be at all.
-Adolf Hitler
In review of Putin’s career, there are a lot of quotes that indicate certain ideas are consistent in his mind even if he has not always been so reckless in pursuing them. The press has brought up where he said that the death of the Soviet Union was “the greatest geopolitical disaster of the 20th century.” More recently in December 2021, Putin did an interview and said that the event was ” the disintegration of historical Russia under the name of the Soviet Union”.
Further back, Putin made a speech to the Munich Security Conference in 2007 lamenting the “unipolar” state of the world, namely a world in which America and the West were dictating terms without Russian influence. A few months after his Munich speech, Putin spoke at a meeting with members of the Valdai International Discussion Club. In that speech, he elaborated: “I know that, unfortunately, in some Eastern European countries, not just the candidate for the post of defense minister but even candidates for less important posts are discussed with the U.S. ambassador. Is this a good thing? I do not think it is very good for all the countries concerned because sooner or later it will provoke the same rejection that Soviet domination once provoked in these countries. Do you understand? It might seem welcome today, but tomorrow it could lead to problems. Even old Europe is obliged to take NATO’s political interests into account in its policies. You know how the decision-making process works. There is probably no need to explain. Sovereignty is therefore something very precious today, something exclusive, you could even say. Russia cannot exist without defending its sovereignty. Russia will either be independent and sovereign or will most likely not exist at all.”
Similar to the quote about Greater Romania, the status of the nation is more important to the fascist than its living conditions. In the case of World War II, it’s worth noting that the main nations of the Axis Powers – Germany, Italy and Japan – were all latecomers to empire after the great powers of Britain and France had already taken the best colonies in the undeveloped world. Germany had lost World War I while Italy and Japan were on the winning side but both thought they didn’t get enough spoils from the war, and both (like later Nazi Germany) wanted to re-assert themselves via imperial expansion at the same time that Britain, France and the United States were seeing colonial empires as not only contradictory to their humanist ideals but more hassle than they were worth. The Axis nations’ struggles against not only the West but neighboring nations endangered their economies and in the long term lowered daily living standards. And that of course was before full scale war in 1939, which ended up with the Axis being bombed into the Stone Age and occupied. And yet Germany and Japan in particular recovered from that occupation and became economic powers with an arguably better standard of living than America or Britain.
Germany ended up losing its colonial empire and Great Power status, just as Britain and France did, and had to suffer a lot more for it on the way because it decided to force itself on the rest of the world rather than adapt to it. Now, maybe Russia isn’t going to be fucked in the way that they (literally) fucked Germany after World War II, but like them they might find out that in the long run, plain old market liberalism is better than empire after all. But in the immortal words of Wesley Snipes, “Some motherfuckers just gotta ice skate uphill.”
GIRAFFES ARE HEARTLESS CREATURES
Well, yes.