Tag Archives: war

Pilar Rahola Speaks: Jews with Six Arms

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by Pilar Rahola

Why do so many intelligent people, when talking about Israel, suddenly become idiots?

This speech was given December 16, 2009 at the Conference in the Global forum for Combating Anti-Semitism in Jerusalem. Pilar Rahola is a Spanish Catalan journalist, writer, and former politician and Member of Parliament, and member of the far left.

A meeting in Barcelona with a hundred lawyers and judges a month ago.

They have come together to hear my opinions on the Middle-Eastern conflict. They know that I am a heterodoxal vessel, in the shipwreck of “single thinking” regarding Israel, which rules in my country. They want to listen to me, because they ask themselves why, if Pilar is a serious journalist, does she risk losing her credibility by defending the bad guys, the guilty? I answer provocatively – You all believe that you are experts in international politics when you talk about Israel, but you really know nothing. Would you dare talk about the conflict in Rwanda, in Kashmir? In Chechnya? – No.

Cultured people, when they read about Israel, are ready to believe that Jews have six arms.

They are jurists, their turf is not geopolitics. But against Israel they dare, as does everybody else. Why? Because Israel is permanently under the media magnifying glass and the distorted image pollutes the world’s brains. And because it is part of what is politically correct, it seems part of solidarity, because talking against Israel is free. So cultured people, when they read about Israel, are ready to believe that Jews have six arms, in the same way that during the Middle Ages people believed all sorts of outrageous things.

Bottom of Form

The first question, then, is why so many intelligent people, when talking about Israel, suddenly become idiots. The problem that those of us who do not demonize Israel have, is that there exists no debate on the conflict. All that exists is the banner; there’s no exchange of ideas. We throw slogans at each other; we don’t have serious information, we suffer from the “burger journalism” syndrome, full of prejudices, propaganda and simplification. Intellectual thinkers and international journalists have given up on Israel. It doesn’t exist. That is why, when someone tries to go beyond the “single thought” of criticizing Israel, he becomes suspect and unfaithful, and is immediately segregated. Why?

I’ve been trying to answer this question for years: why?

Why, of all the conflicts in the world, only this one interests them?

Why is a tiny country which struggles to survive criminalized?

Why does manipulated information triumph so easily?

Why are all the people of Israel, reduced to a simple mass of murderous imperialists?

Why is there no Palestinian guilt?

Why is Arafat a hero and Sharon a monster?

Finally, why when Israel is the only country in the World which is threatened with extinction, it is also the only one that nobody considers a victim?

I don’t believe that there is a single answer to these questions. Just as it is impossible to completely explain the historical evil of anti-Semitism, it is also not possible to totally explain the present-day imbecility of anti-Israelism. Both drink from the fountain of intolerance and lies. Also, if we accept that anti-Israelism is the new form of anti-Semitism, we conclude that circumstances may have changed, but the deepest myths, both of the Medieval Christian anti-Semitism and of the modern political anti-Semitism, are still intact. Those myths are part of the chronicle of Israel.

For example, the Medieval Jew accused of killing Christian children to drink their blood connects directly with the Israeli Jew who kills Palestinian children to steal their land. Always they are innocent children and dark Jews. Similarly, the Jewish bankers who wanted to dominate the world through the European banks, according to the myth of the Protocols, connect directly with the idea that the Wall Street Jews want to dominate the World through the White House. Control of the Press, control of Finances, the Universal Conspiracy, all that which has created the historical hatred against the Jews, is found today in hatred of the Israelis. In the subconscious, then, beats the DNA of the Western anti-Semite, which produces an efficient cultural medium.

But what beats in the conscious? Why does a renewed intolerance surge with such virulence, centered now, not against the Jewish people, but against the Jewish state? From my point of view, this has historical and geopolitical motives, among others, the decades long bloody Soviet role, the European Anti-Americanism, the West’s energy dependency and the growing Islamist phenomenon.

But it also emerges from a set of defeats which we suffer as free societies, leading to a strong ethical relativism.

The moral defeat of the left. For decades, the left raised the flag of freedom wherever there was injustice. It was the depositary of the utopian hopes of society. It was the great builder of the future. Despite the murderous evil of Stalinism’s sinking these utopias, the left has preserved intact its aura of struggle, and still pretends to point out good and evil in the world. Even those who would never vote for leftist options, grant great prestige to leftist intellectuals, and allow them to be the ones who monopolize the concept of solidarity. As they have always done. Thus, those who struggled against Pinochet were freedom-fighters, but Castro’s victims, are expelled from the heroes’ paradise, and converted into undercover fascists.

This historic treason to freedom is reproduced nowadays, with mathematical precision. For example, the leaders of Hezbollah are considered resistance heroes, while pacifists like the Israeli singer Noa, are insulted in the streets of Barcelona. Today too, as yesterday, the left is hawking totalitarian ideologies, falls in love with dictators and, in its offensive against Israel, ignores the destruction of fundamental rights. It hates rabbis, but falls in love with imams; shouts against the Israeli Defense Forces, but applauds Hamas’s terrorists; weeps for the Palestinian victims, but scorns the Jewish victims, and when it is touched by Palestinian children, it does it only if it can blame the Israelis.

It will never denounce the culture of hatred, or its preparation for murder. A year ago, at the AIPAC conference in Washington I asked the following questions:

Why don’t we see demonstrations in Europe against the Islamic dictatorships?

Why are there no demonstrations against the enslavement of millions of Muslim women?

Why are there no declarations against the use of bomb-carrying children in the conflicts in which Islam is involved?

Why is the left only obsessed with fighting against two of the most solid democracies of the planet, those which have suffered the bloodiest terrorist attacks, the United States and Israel?

Because the left no longer has any ideas, only slogans. It no longer defends rights, but prejudices. And the greatest prejudice of all is the one aimed against Israel. I accuse, then, in a formal manner that the main responsibility for the new anti-Semitic hatred disguised as anti-Zionism, comes from those who should have been there to defend freedom, solidarity and progress. Far from it, they defend despots, forget their victims and remain silent before medieval ideologies which aim at the destruction of free societies. The treason of the left is an authentic treason against modernity.

Israel is the world’s most watched place, but despite that, it is the world’s least understood place.

Defeat of Journalism. We have more information in the world than ever before, but we do not have a better informed world. Quite the contrary, the information superhighway connects us anywhere in the planet, but it does not connect us with the truth. Today’s journalists do not need maps, since they have Google Earth, they do not need to know History, since they have Wikipedia. The historical journalists, who knew the roots of a conflict, still exist, but they are an endangered species, devoured by that “fast food” journalism which offers hamburger news, to readers who want fast-food information. Israel is the world’s most watched place, but despite that, it is the world’s least understood place. Of course one must keep in mind the pressure of the great petrodollar lobbies, whose influence upon journalism is subtle but deep. Mass media knows that if it speaks against Israel, it will have no problems. But what would happen if it criticized an Islamic country? Without doubt, it would complicate its existence. Certainly part of the press that writes against Israel, would see themselves mirrored in Mark Twain’s ironical sentence: “Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please.”

Defeat of critical thinking. To all this one must add the ethical relativism which defines the present times: it is based not on denying the values of civilization, but rather in their most extreme banality. What is modernity?

I explain it with this little tale: If I were lost in an uncharted island, and would want to found a democratic society, I would only need three written documents: The Ten Commandments (which established the first code of modernity. “Thou shalt not murder” founded modern civilization.); The Roman Penal Code; and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. And with these three texts we would start again. These principles are relativized daily, even by those who claim to be defending them.

“Thou shalt not murder” … depending on who is the target, must think those who, like the demonstrators in Europe, shouted in support of Hamas.

“Hurray for Freedom of Speech!”…, or not. For example, several Spanish left-wing organizations tried to take me to court, accusing me of being a negationist, like the Nazis, because I deny the “Palestinian Holocaust”. They were attempting to prohibit me from writing articles and to send me to prison. And so on… The social critical mass has lost weight and, at the same time ideological dogmatism has gained weight. In this double turn of events, the strong values of modernity have been substituted by a “weak thinking,” vulnerable to manipulation and Manichaeism.

Defeat of the United Nations. And with it, a sound defeat of the international organizations which should protect Human Rights. Instead they have become broken puppets in the hands of despots. The United Nations is only useful to Islamofascists like Ahmadinejad, or dangerous demagogues like Hugo Chavez which offers them a planetary loudspeaker where they can spit their hatred. And, of course, to systematically attack Israel. The UN, too exists to fight Israel.

Finally, defeat of Islam. Tolerant and cultural Islam suffers today the violent attack of a totalitarian virus which tries to stop its ethical development. This virus uses the name of God to perpetrate the most terrible horrors: lapidate women, enslave them, use youths as human bombs. Let’s not forget: They kill us with cellular phones connected to the Middle Ages. If Stalinism destroyed the left, and Nazism destroyed Europe, Islamic fundamentalism is destroying Islam. And it also has an anti-Semitic DNA. Perhaps Islamic anti-Semitism is the most serious intolerant phenomenon of our times; indeed, it contaminates more than 1,400 million people, who are educated, massively, in hatred towards the Jew.

The Jews are the thermometer of the world’s health. Whenever the world has had totalitarian fever, they have suffered.

In the crossroads of these defeats, is Israel. Orphan and forgotten by a reasonable left, orphan and abandoned by serious journalism, orphan and rejected by a decent UN, and rejected by a tolerant Islam, Israel suffers the paradigm of the 21st Century: the lack of a solid commitment with the values of liberty. Nothing seems strange. Jewish culture represents, as no other does, the metaphor of a concept of civilization which suffers today attacks on all flanks. The Jews are the thermometer of the world’s health. Whenever the world has had totalitarian fever, they have suffered. In the Spanish Middle Ages, in Christian persecutions, in Russian pogroms, in European Fascism, in Islamic fundamentalism. Always, the first enemy of totalitarianism has been the Jew. And, in these times of energy dependency and social uncertainty, Israel embodies, in its own flesh, the eternal Jew.

A pariah nation among nations, for a pariah people among peoples. That is why the anti-Semitism of the 21st Century has dressed itself with the efficient disguise of anti-Israelism, or its synonym, anti-Zionism. Is all criticism of Israel anti-Semitism? NO. But all present-day anti-Semitism has turned into prejudice and the demonization of the Jewish State. New clothes for an old hatred.

Benjamin Franklin said: “Where liberty is, there is my country.” And Albert Einstein added: “The World is a dangerous place. Not because of the people who are evil; but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.” This is the double commitment, here and now; never remain inactive in front of evil in action and defend the countries of liberty.

Thank you.

May It Do the Same for You

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As you may well imagine, over the last couple of weeks writing my posts has become more and more difficult. I spend hours in front of the computer, trying to find topics fit to be explored or elaborated. Such as, amidst the cannons’ roar (or rather, since I live about 60 miles from the Gaza Strip, the sirens’ occasional wail or the near-constant noise of Israeli fighters flying overhead), still seem worth of being bothered with. Such as will not be too repetitive. And such as, in these difficult times, will not make “the daughters of the Philistines rejoice,” as the Old Testament puts it. So far, without success. So, I’ve decided to throw in the towel, at least for this week. I am going to upload one image. Downloaded from the Net, of course. One that, amidst all the misery and anxiety, caught my attention and made me smile. May it do the same for you.

Note: Just why the image caught my attention and made me smile at this time I do not know. I have only visited Death Valley once and did not stay long enough to really appreciate its marvels. Still I saw more of it than most people or even, I daresay, most Americans. This was in late 1998 and there was not a drop of water for miles and miles around. My strongest impression in fact, was the taste of salt and borax that refused to leave my mouth for hours after leaving the district. The image, like so many other good things, came to me by accident. It shows the lake after a recent storm, said to have brought down more rain in a day than is usually the case in an entire year.

 

This is WAR!

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As anyone who has gone through it knows, war is the domain of confusion. Some people don’t see the enemy when and where he is there (this is what happened to us in Israel). Others “see” him when and where he is not. Everyone’s nerves are on edge, causing them to behave somewhat strangely and often making measured, coherent communication all but impossible. Rumors, censorship, disinformation and plain deception abound. Obstructed by censorship, clearing up the confusion so as to get a proper picture of what is happening can take weeks, months, years, or even decades. Indeed the more evidence emerges, the greater often the difficulty of shifting through it all and making sense of it all. 

Yet man is the explaining animal. His huge forebrain means that he cannot exist without some kind of scaffolding to explain what has happened, why it happened, and what is likely to happen next. Absent a real explanation, he will first invent an unreal one and then, by repeating it, convince himself that it is true. Still, at the risk that everything I say will quickly be disproved, I shall try to pose some questions I have been asked and my answers to them.

Hamas took Israeli military intelligence, supposedly the world’s best, totally by surprise. How could this have happened?

It is as Nietzsche says: A great victory makes the winner stupid and the loser, malicious.

Can you explain?

Yes. It seems to have been a question of mirror-imaging. The confrontation with Hamas has now lasted for about twenty years. The IDF being greatly superior to Hamas, every clash ended in some sort of victory for Israel (or so at least the government and general staff, mindful of public relations, said). As “victories” piled up on top of each other, Israel’s confidence that it could handle this kind of attack grew. Just days before the sky came down on 7 October military intelligence was telling “the political echelon” (as we say here) that Hamas was being “deterred” and wanted nothing other than quiet. Punctuated, perhaps, by a few pinpricks to show it still existed and had something to say.

Today is Wednesday, the 17th of October and the twelfth day of the war. What is the situation now?

As far as I can see, the worst for Israel is over. The country has been put on a war footing, complete with the evacuation of many settlements bordering on the Gaza Strip. The reserves, 300,000 of them, have been called up and are deploying for action. Above all, the element of surprise is gone.

Obviously the first task is to make sure that no more terrorists remain at large inside Israel, a slow and, in terms of the necessary manpower needed to search every stone, expensive process. In the meantime, no doubt Israel’s airpower will continue bombing the hell out of Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip. In fact I can hear the jets flying in the skies above.

How did the destruction of al-Ahli hospital in Gaza affect the course of the war?

We—meaning, man (and woman)—have a strong tendency to always pounce on the latest events as the most important ones of all. After the attack on the hospital took place Hamas was quick to blame Israel, making the latter’s enemies leap for joy and causing Israelis to fear for the international support their country so urgently needs. Once it turned out that it was a rocket fired by the Islamic Jihad which did the damage and killed people things returned more or less to “normal.” Meaning, both sides stick to their strategy. Hamas in sending rockets into Israel in the hope of killing and injuring as many people as possible. And the Israeli military, in trying to “get” as many terrorists as possible so as make them stop doing so.

President Biden visited Israel and stayed for about five hours. What has he achieved?

The original objective of the visit was to a. Demonstrate American support for Israel; b. Help enlist humanitarian assistance the residents of Gaza; c. Bring together Palestinian, Jordanian, and Egyptian leaders in the hope of finding some kind of solution to the crisis. The first and second of these objective may have been achieved, at least to some extent. As to the third, no progress at all.   

Will there be a full-scale Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip?

I hope not. The Strip is one of the most heavily populated and urbanized pieces of land in the world. If that were not enough, the population is among the youngest—fully half of it is under nineteen years old. In countless cases, a combination of unemployment and chronic shortages mean that these people have nothing to lose, increasing their hatred for Israel and turning them into easy targets for Hamas recruiters.

As the World War II sieges of Leningrad and Stalingrad e.g showed, urban terrain, provided it is properly defended, can present an attacker with formidable problems. The deeper into it he wades, the greater his problems. Such as getting in supplies and reinforcements, ambushes, evacuating the wounded, etc.

How about Hezbollah in Lebanon? Will it join the fray, or will it stay out?

Very difficult to say. Hezbollah is a secretive organization and notoriously hard to penetrate. So far its leaders have been almost rabid in their declarations of support for Hamas; over the last few daysת their attacks on Israel have been increasing. They seem to be testing the waters—a dangerous game that may escalate שא any moment.

Syria and Iran?

Following twelve years of more or less intensive civil war, Syria hardly has any armed forces worth mentioning. Those it does have are busy fighting their domestic enemies. The Iranians provided political and logistic support and may have helped Hamas in planning the attack. Currently they are making all kinds threatening noises. However, and perhaps because they worry about a possible American threat and/or nuclear escalation, they seem to have done little to turn them into reality.

The rest of the Arab world?

The war presents the Arab governments with a dilemma. On one hand, ere hostilities started more and more of them were either signing peace with Israel or inching towards doing so. On the other hand, many have been feeling the pressure of their peoples which are less inclined to peace than their governments are. Should hostilities in and around Gaza continue, one may certainly expect negative political repercussions including, in cases where this is relevant, the breaking off of diplomatic relations. But war? Only in case Israel aces imminent collapse.

The international “system”?

Many countries are involved. Including, besides Lebanon, Syria and Iran, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the United States, Russia, China, and the EU. The United States has promised to stand by Israel. However, the record—Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan (twice)—makes this promise look somewhat dubious. Russia/China are in league with Iran, but fortunately there are limits to what they can do. And the EU? Being Dutch, I shall use a Dutch expression to describe them: klootzakken (scrotums).  Hopeless cowards who can only talk.

Do you think this may be the beginning of a third world war?

I consider that a remote possibility. But yes, it could be. 

Returning to Israel and Hamas, who is going to win?

Victory means breaking the enemy’s will so that he ceases to resist. At the moment I cannot see this happening on either side; either they are too eager trying to exploit success (Hamas) or too busy licking their wounds and restoring the balance (Israel). Such being the case, Voltaire’s saying about the imaginary battle between Avars and Bulgars will apply. Both will sing mass, each in his own camp.

What can this struggle teach us about the future of war?

In my best-known book, The Transformation of War (1991) I argued that the future of war was guerrilla and terrorism. This prediction seems to be coming true, isn’t it?

In a rapidly changing world, each time s war breaks out the media are flooded with accounts of the technological marvels it has spawned. That is understandable; taking a longer point of view, though, one could argue that the most important lesson is that war still remains war. Includes its nature as a violent encounter between two (or more) belligerents, each of whom is at least partly free to do as he pleases; the enormous challenges, physical and mental, it poses to those who direct it and fight it; its roots in interest on one hand and sheer hatred on the other; its tendency to call out the most brutal  qualities of man and make them spread; its tendency to escalate and, doing so, escape not just political control but any kind of rational calculation; the role played by stealth, deception and surprise; its dependence on the social makeup of the societies that wage it; and many other things which, together, do as much as in shaping it as any number of computers, missiles and drones.

Friction

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Imagine a number of families—say, ten of them. Some with children and the elderly, some without. Living in the same town, they decide to spend a day together. Fun for the kids, relief for the adults who will not have to ensure that their offspring get bored. Meeting point is at 1100 hours, at place X where there is good parking. From there they plan to drive fifty miles to the beach, arriving at 1200. What could be simpler? But no. Family A finds that the GPS of their car (old and somewhat battered) refuses to work and so informs the rest (some get the message, some don’t). Family B cannot leave their home before grandfather, who is a widower and had lost his false teeth, finds the other set he owns.

Everyone does/do their best to be on time, but not all succeed. All around, children quarrel or must faire pipi, causing a delay. Either they are looked after, or there is going to be an even longer one. Messages—this, after all, is the age of WhatsApp—are passed from one group member to another, causing confusion all around. Exactly where is that left turn you have been talking about? Some arrive, but some do not. Some messages are correctly understood, some not. Assuming every family contacts every other just once, there are going to be 90 of them in all. In practice the number is likely to be considerably larger.

This is friction. Few of us have not experienced it more or less often; the larger the number of those involved, the worse thing are likely to be. Friction in ordinary life can be bad enough, causing the best-laid plans to go awry. Friction in war is two, ten or twenty times worse, at times to the point where it decides the fate (as Napoleon said) of crowns dynasties, and empires. In mid-June 1815 his communications with Field Marshal Grouchy failed. As a result, Grouchy’s corps spent the 18th marching to and fro and, doing so, missed the battle of Waterloo much in the same way as General Stuart’s cavalry did at Gettysburg forty-eight years later. In both cases, and in spite of historians’ attempts to unravel it, the exact chain of cause and effect remains obscure. But certainly friction had everything to do with it.

Two main reasons explain why friction is so much greater in war than in peace. The first is the extraordinary demands war makes both on the spirit and, often enough, the physique of those who engage on it. In these respects, the only equivalent is some natural disaster such as an earthquake or a flood. But even such events tend to be over in minutes or hours. Either you die at once, as the citizens of Pompeii did, or the danger recedes. Seldom does it last for weeks or months, let alone, years; people either adjust or move.

To repeat, war decides the fate of crowns, dynasties and empires. The burden of responsibility is crushing and can easily cause those who bear it to go off the rails. As happened, for example, during the last days of World War I when the de facto chief of the German general staff, General Erich Ludendorff, told the Kaiser that defeat was staring the country in the face and that the army could not wait “even 48 hours” for a ceasefire to be arranged. Yet Ludendorff at the time was comfortably ensconced in his headquarters way out of reach form the front. Those further down the hierarchy were often not so lucky.

The second reason why friction tends to be so much greater in war than in peace is that we are fighting an enemy who is deliberately doing whatever he can to increase it. Too often, with success.  The first step is to try to divine what the enemy is expecting and then do the opposite. When you are strong, confuse the enemy by pretending to be weak. When you are weak, confuse him by pretending to be strong. But take care; such measures always come at a price. Troops sent on a diversion will not be available for your main thrust. The least- defended approach is often the most difficult one to take, and vice versa. Worse still, he who tries to confuse the opponent may very well end up by becoming confused himself. As, it is said, not seldom happens in espionage etc.

The measures needed to guard against friction are often well understood. Good intelligence, especially of the kind that succeeds in putting you in the enemy’s shoes and, by doing so, anticipate his moves. Good organization, good discipline, good training, good security. Good communications, including redundant ones in case some are lost. Superior communications-technology with an emphasis on reliability, ease of use, and secrecy. Such measures can and often do mitigate friction. They cannot, however, eliminate it. Nor is there any reason to think that there was less of it in the highly disciplined Roman legions than in today’s most advanced armies.

So it has been in the past. And so, regardless of the tsunami of wonderful new weapons about which are told almost day by day, it will remain in the future too.

Oppenheimer

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What has not been written about the movie, Oppenheimer? That it does not sufficiently bring out the fact that the chief character, Robert Oppenheimer himself, came from a wealthy Jewish family. That it is anti-feminist, figuring very few women and only allowing the first female character to speak after so and so many minutes from the beginning. That it is an “intelligent movie about an important topic that’s never less than powerfully acted and incredibly entertaining.” That it is an “unrelenting stream of bombastic vignettes in need of narrative chain reaction.” And so on, and so on.

Far be it from me to dwell on each of these and other points, let alone explore them in depth. I do, however, want to take up a few issues that I consider critical for forming an understanding both of the movie and of the historical reality behind it.

First, contrary to the impression made by the movie, especially its opening minutes, there was never any danger that the Germans would get there first. True, back in 1938 it was a German scientist, Otto Hahn, who succeeded in splitting uranium for the first time, thereby giving his country a head start that did not escape the notice either of the international scientific community or of various intelligence services around the world. From that point on active efforts were mounted to monitor the Germans’ progress; however, the vision of a Nazi bomb turned out to be a will o’ the wisp. The longer the war and the deeper into former Italian and German-occupied countries the Anglo-American armies penetrated, the less the danger appeared. True, then as always caution was the best part of wisdom. Still, by late 1944 the various teams, commanded by a Colonel Pash and operating under the code-name Alsos (“grove,” in Greek), were able to “categorically” report that the Germans were not nearly as advanced as the Allies and that there was no room for worry on that account. Why this was the case is another question; but one that neither plays a major part in the movie nor that I intend to pursue here.

Second, the episode—only mentioned in passing by the movie, but often highlighted in other accounts—in which Oppenheimer, having asked to meet Truman, tells him that he, Oppenheimer has blood on his hands. Only to watch Truman take out a handkerchief and ask whether Oppenheimer wanted to wipe them dry. Many authors have presented the story as an encounter between the kind-hearted, pacifistically-minded, scientist and the hard-boiled, tough and cynical, veteran of a thousand political battles. In fact it was nothing of the kind. While Oppenheimer did build the bomb, his guilt, if any, was nowhere like that of Truman who, having overridden all suggestions to the contrary, ordered its use (not once but twice), got 150,000 dead Japanese, men, women and children, on his conscience. Really, Dr. Oppenheimer, what did you think? That Truman was a father confessor or a Freudian psychologist, perhaps? No wonder that, the meeting over, he called Oppenheimer a “crybaby” and ordered his staff to make sure he would not come to pour out his heart again. Faced with a world in ruins and with Stalin as his adversary, he had more important things to do than console a distraught scientist.

Third and most problematic of all, throughout the movie there is great and graphic emphasis on the danger the atomic bomb, and even more so its successor, the hydrogen bomb, poses to humanity at large. The danger of course, is real enough. For the first time in history, humanity was put in possession of a weapon that enabled it to destroy itself. Nor, given the known history of warfare with all its attendant atrocities, mass massacres and genocides, did there seem to be much of a chance that, once the weapon had become available and its power demonstrated for all to see, it would not be used.

In fact, though, this has not happened.  Far from opening the door to even larger, more deadly wars, “nukes,” as they came to be known, have caused war to shrink. Nowhere was this more evident than in the case of major powers. As of the time of writing the way the Russo-Ukrainian War will end remains unknown. But the very fact that it has been going on for over a year and a half without anyone resorting to nuclear weapons and opening the road to Armageddon is, in my view, encouraging.

Pity that, in what is many ways an excellent movie, it is not even mentioned.

Victory for Ukraine?

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A year and a half after it got under way, the war in Ukraine shows no sign of coming to an end. Not coming to an end, it is interesting to explore what might happen in case Zelensky’s famous counteroffensive finally starts doing more than reoccupying half a godforsaken village here, half a godforsaken village there, but gains some real strategic traction instead. As, for example, by developing the following scenario.

In the flat, mostly open terrain that is Ukraine airpower ought to be the key to everything. Worried about Ukraine’s ground-based air defenses, Putin’s air force continues to make its existence felt mainly by its absence from the battlefield; a development which, ere hostilities broke out, few people predicted or would have predicted.

Next, so the scenario, Ukrainian forces put the Kerch Strait rail and road bridges out of action. Not just for hours or days as they have done at least twice in the past, but in such a way as to require extensive repairs lasting weeks or months. Armed, trained and supplied by the West, Zelensky’s troops break through key Russian fortifications somewhere along the front. They retake some occupied territory and cut their enemies’ land bridge that reaches from the Donbas along the Azov Sea coast all the way down to the greatest prize of all: the Crimea with its great port, Sebatopol.

With their logistics in a mess, and perhaps left without clear instructions from Moscow, major parts of Russia’s fighting force disintegrate. Others either retreat or surrender. Relying on combinations of modern technologies, including not just land-to sea missiles but perhaps unmanned surface vehicles too, Ukraine could blockade and barrage Crimea, trapping Russia’s Black Sea Fleet like bugs in a bottle. If Ukrainian forces appear to be preparing for a frontal assault on Crimea, risks of Russian use of tactical nuclear weapons might rise—with consequences that would require more than one separate article to think out.

Short of Putin resorting to the use of nuclear weapons a comparison of the forces on both sides, along with the outcome of recent combats, suggests that Ukrainian forces could prevail. Conversely, any major Russian attempt to take back even modest amounts of previously occupied territories would likely fail. Were Russia’s air force and antiaircraft defenses to suffer substantial losses, this could weaken the defense of Moscow or other Russian strategic assets.

Ukrainian forces appear not to be using Western arms to attack targets in Russia. However, with their home-manufactured weapons they are increasing indirect and direct fire strikes against headquarters and logistical facilities, transportation hubs, and troop formations deep inside Russia. Even early in the war, a Ukrainian Neptune missile was able to sink the Moskva, Russia’s Black Sea flagship. By now even Moscow, almost a thousand kilometers in the rear, has been repeatedly hit by Ukrainian drones. Not that they caused any great damage; as is also the case with their Russian counterparts, the warheads they carry are too small to kill more than a few people (mostly civilians) here, bring about the collapse of a building there. However, their psychological impact is said to have been considerable.

Such, seen from the point of view of Kiev and its Western backers, is the optimistic scenario. Note, though, the elephant in the room: namely, the fact that it leaves the Donbas, its natural resources and its industry, in Russian hands. Heavily fortified–fortification is an art in which, as Germans of all people should know, the Russians are past masters—and containing quite some mixed-population cities, it is a tough nut to crack. Disorderly, to be sure, but packed not only with regular Russian forces but with every kind of militia under the sun. Just look at the weeks-long struggle for Bachmut. And behind those cities Russia’s endless spaces, soon to be enveloped in the arms of General Winter, will be waiting.

Such developments will no doubt reduce Putin to dire straits. They will not, however necessarily bring about the end of the war. That could be achieved only in case he and his clique finally give in and ask for negotiations—something which, as long as he remains in control, is unlikely to happen.

So everything depends on Putin being removed by his own people, likely either the military, the various security services, or some combination of both. Speculation about such a coup has been rife right from the first days of the “special military operation.” With the exception of the rather strange and ill-understood Wagner “Uprising,” though, there are few signs to show either that Putin’s will is weakening or that he is losing control.

My conclusion? Even if Ukrainian forces book additional military successes like those outlined above, the real decisions will be political and have to be made in Moscow and specifically behind the walls of the Kremlin. Until they are, the war will go on.

God Help Us All

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By definition all armed conflicts, even strictly local ones, are dangerous to the people so unfortunate as to be caught in them. That said, there is no denying that some such conflicts are much more dangerous than others. Generally speaking, three factors are likely to make them so. The first is their strategic significance, as when hostilities threaten to cut off important international sources of food, energy, raw materials, transportation arteries, and so on. The second factor is foreign intervention. The third is the absence or presence in the belligerents’ hands of nuclear weapons.

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The present Russo-Ukrainian War contains elements of all three factors. Ukraine is a large country with a far from negligible population of (before the war) about 40 million. It has long exported both oil (primarily vegetable oil of which it is the world’s largest supplier) and, which is even more important, wheat. As the price of this vital food goes up many “developing” countries will suffer shortages which in turn will bring on all the social and political consequences such shortages normally entail.

As Putin himself has repeatedly and correctly said, strategically speaking the importance of Ukraine can hardly be exaggerated. Controlling Ukraine, Russia should be able to dominate the Black Sea and prevent anyone from opening another front from that direction. Not controlling Ukraine, it will find doing so much harder if not impossible. During the Cold War the distance from the East/West border to Moscow was about 2,000 kilometers as the crow flies. Should NATO grant Zelensky’s demand and allow Ukraine to join NATO, then it will be down to about 1,000 kilometers. Briefly, Russia with Ukraine is an empire. Russia without Ukraine is a mere state among others, albeit still a huge and, thanks primarily to its nuclear arsenal, a very powerful one.

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Next, foreign intervention. As anyone with a map can see, Russia is entirely lacking in natural borders. Granted, much of the southern part of the country (though not the Ukraine, of course) is mountainous and hard to cross. Not so the northern half which is as flat as, if nor flatter than, any other on earth.

Nor is it merely a question of geography. As Stalin once said, the country has always been backward. It was this backwardness that enabled first Mongols, then Ottomans, then Poles and Lithuanians, then Swedes, then French, then Anglo-French (in the Crimea, (1853-56), then Japanese (1904-5 and 1939), then Germans (in 1914-18 and 1941-45) to establish or try to establish their rule over huge parts of it. All this without even mentioning the Civil War of 1918-21, a low point in the country’s history which saw everybody treating it as carrion and sending in forces; including, in addition to most of the above, Americans, Estonians (who almost captured St. Petersburg), Romanians, Italians, and even Greeks. This is not a situation many Russians are eager to repeat.

Today, too, foreign intervention is one of the main reasons, perhaps even the reason, why the war is as dangerous as it is. Throughout the years of Ukrainian independence, from 1991 to 2022, both the West and Russia have been trying hard to draw the new country into their orbit. Doing so, between them they have used means fair and foul: including propaganda, economic ties, political legerdemain, military assistance, and at least one attempted coup and at least one poisoning to achieve their goal.

A war between Russia and Ukraine is one thing. A war between Russia and NATO, quite a different one. Currently Western weapons, provided by the West and operated by Western-trained crews, are being used against Russia, much to the latter’s chagrin. One by one, on both sides of the conflict, we can see the elements that could make for a third world war being put in place. The miracle is that it has not yet broken out.

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Next, nuclear weapons. Starting in 1949, the year when the Soviet Union caught up with the United States and tested its own atomic bomb, nuclear weapons have affected war here on earth in two contradictory ways. First, the so-called balance of terror has undoubtedly prevented many international crises from escalating; not just those affecting the US and the USSR but also such as involved lesser powers such as India and Pakistan. Looking forward from 1945, who would have predicted that eighty years would pass without a third world war breaking out? To judge by best-sellers such as Aldous Huxley’s Ape and Essence (1948), Nevil Shute’s On the Beach (1957), and Walter Miller’s A Canticle to Leibowitz (1959), as well as the immense success of movies such as Stanley Kubrick’s Doctor Strangelove (1964), almost no one.

Second, they have made the relevant international crises much more dangerous. Make the wrong move and, to revive a vintage Cold War phrase, poof goes “civilization as we know it.” Not as a matter of weeks, months or years, but within, say, a few hours of the button being pressed. For those who put their hope in anti-missile defenses, keep your hair on. Provided only such an attack is made with the right delivery vehicles and on a sufficient scale, no defenses existing today are capable of saving the country at which it is aimed.

*

As the above considerations show, the Russo-Ukrainian War is dangerous enough. Two scenarios can make it much more dangerous still. One is that Russia will win, presumably meaning that its armed forces will crush those of Ukraine, occupy Kiev and other key cities, do away with Zelensky and his government, put another, Russian or pro-Russian, one in its place, and annex parts of the country to Russia. Tired of the war and concerned about a possible Chinese invasion of Taiwan, the US resigns itself to the outcome and ends its support for a government that no longer exists. Assuming the Russians, having paid a heavy price, know where to stop and do not exploit their victory in order to invade additional countries in Eastern Europe, e.g the Baltic ones, or Poland, or Moldavia, that is the optimistic scenario.

The pessimistic scenario is much worse. Under this scenario the Russian army either suffers a crushing defeat—a possibility which, given the gigantic size of the theater of war, appears unlikely—or starts disintegrating through incompetence, corruption, and the sheer reluctance of its troops to fight. The revolt of the Wagner Group, quickly suppressed as it was, may at any rate indicate that such a collapse is possible. The war comes to an end—either because Putin starts putting forward peace-proposals that Ukraine and NATO can accept or because his subordinates mount some kind of coup, remove him, and come up with similar proposals.

Either way, the danger is great that defeat will cause Russia to disintegrate. As the term Federation implies, Russia is anything but a unified country. Sources differ; however, the best estimate is that, out of a population of 144 million, just 103 million are Russian. Depending on one’s definition, the remaining 41 million comprise anything between 120 and 170 nationalities and ethnic groups. As events in Chechnya e.g during the 1990s showed only too clearly, some of these are only waiting for an opportunity to throw off Moscow’s yoke. Faced with such a scenario, whoever rules in the Kremlin, cornered and unwilling to watch his country disintegrate, will be tempted to turn to nuclear weapons—first by way of a warning, then perhaps against real targets—as his last resort.

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To recapitulate, there are several ways to make a dangerous war more dangerous still. Arranged in order of increasing danger, the list starts with the disruption of communications and economic life and proceeds through escalation as additional countries join the fray. The most dangerous possibility of all is a total Russian defeat leading to the use, by Putin or whoever may replace him in the Kremlin, of nuclear weapons.

In which case, God help us all.

In the Middle East, the Alarm Bells are Ringing

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In the Middle East, the alarm bells are ringing. In this post I shall make an effort to explain, first, why this is so; and second, what a war might look like.

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In the Middle East, the alarms bells are ringing. There are several reasons for this, all of them important and all well-able to combine with each other and give birth to the largest conflagration the region has witnessed in decades. The first is the imminent demise of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, alias Abu Maazen. Now 88 years old, his rule started in 2005 when he took over from Yasser Arafat. Unlike Arafat, who began his career as the leader of a terrorist organization, Abu Mazen was and remains primarily a politician and a diplomat. In this capacity he helped negotiate the 1995 Oslo Agreements between Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Movement. Partly for that reason, partly because he opposed his people’s armed uprising (the so-called Second Intifada of 2000-2003) some Israelis saw him as a more pliant partner than his predecessor had been.

It did not work that way. Whether through his own fault, or that of Israel, or both, during all his eighteen years in office Abu Mazen has failed to move a single step closer to a peace settlement. Israel on its part has never stopped building new settlements and is doing so again right now. As a result, Palestinian terrorism and Israeli retaliatory measures in the West Bank in particular are once again picking up, claiming dead and injured almost every day.

Nor is the West Bank the only region where Israelis and Palestinians keep clashing. Just a few weeks have passed since the death, in an Israeli jail and as a result of a hunger strike, of a prominent Palestinian terrorist. His demise made the Islamic Jihad terrorist organization in Gaza launch no fewer than a thousand rockets at Israel, leading to Israeli air strikes, leading to more rockets, and so on in the kind of cycle that, over the last twenty years or so, has become all too familiar. Fortunately Hezbollah, another Islamic terrorist organization whose base is Lebanon, did not intervene. It is, however, not at all certain that, should hostilities in and around Gaza resume, it won’t follow up on its leader’s threats to do just that. Certainly it has the capability and the plans; all that is needed is a decision.

Israel armed forces are among the most powerful in the world. In particular, its anti-aircraft, anti-missile, and anti-aircraft defenses are unmatched anywhere else. It may take time and here will be casualties. Still, unless something goes very, very wrong, Israel should be able to silence not just the Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah but another terrorist organization operating out of Gaza, i.e Hamas, too. If not completely and forever, then at any rate partially and for some time to come.

However, two factors threaten to upset this nice calculation. The first is the possibility that, as hostilities escalate, the Kingdom of Jordan will be drawn into the fray just as it was both during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and then during its 1967 successor. With Palestinians now comprising a very large—just how large no one, perhaps not even the Jordanians themselves, knows—percentage of the kingdom’s population, there is a good chance that the ruling Hashemite House will not be able to remain on the sidelines. Either it joins the fight, or it risks being overthrown.  Nobody knows this better than the Hashemites themselves. From the king down, not for nothing have some of them been buying property, including both real estate and stock, abroad. Currently Jordan is an oasis of stability and not at war with any of its neighbors. Should the regime fall and leave a behind failed state, though, it is likely that terrorists from all over the Middle East will flock to establish themselves there, setting off the powder keg.

The other possibility is more ominous still. Over the years Iran has been assisting various Middle Eastern terrorist organizations, providing them with money, weapons, logistics, training and more. In response Israel has been using its anti-aircraft defenses to bring down Iranian drones and its air force, to hit Iranian targets in Syria. As of today Iran lacks some of the elements that make up a modern air force, specifically including the all-important early warning systems. On the other hand, it does have the ballistic missiles and the drones it needs to reach and hit any Israeli target. Now Iran is a large country with 0.63 million square miles of land and a population of almost 87 million. Defeating it, if only to the extent of making it cease hostilities for the time being, will take more than just a few Israeli air strikes, however well planned, however precise, and however well executed.

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To recapitulate, in the Middle East quiet, or as much of it as there is, is hanging by a thread. Israel, the occupied West Bank, the unoccupied Gaza Strip, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Iran are all at imminent risk of war. Not just with each other but, in at least some cases, war combined with struggles against all kinds of terrorist organizations. As history shows, wars of the second kind are particularly likely to last for years and end, to the extent they ever do, in chaos. All this, before we even consider the role nuclear weapons, both those Iran may develop and deploy and those Israel already has, may play.

Head to Head

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Ukrainian Blouse

Russian Blouse

Like almost anyone living in the West today, I am exposed to a flood of media accounts practically all of which explain how good and bad, respectively, Zelensky/Ukraine and Russia/Putin are. Unlike many people living in the West today, I have my doubts about this picture. Which is why I decided to take a look, albeit a cursory one, into the origins of the conflict that is now threatening to escalate to the point where it takes the world apart.

I History and Politics

Before 600 BCE. The land now known as Ukraine, previously inhabited by horse-riding, nomadic or semi nomadic, tribes known to the Greeks as Scythians, was occupied by tribes later designated as East (as opposed to North and West) Slavs. They lived in fortified settlements which, however, were few, small and scattered all over the immense country.

860-62 CE. Some of the country was unified under a leader named Rurik. What information we have about him is contained in chronicles written centuries later and is therefore not very reliable. However, most historians believe that he and his “Rus” followers were of Scandinavian origin. The term, Rus, originating in Old Swedish, means “men who row.” This would be consistent with the idea that the invaders came by river.

870s. Rurik’s successor, Oleg, establishes Kiev as his capital. In the chronicles, which continue to serve as our main sources for the period, the polity he and his successors headed is known simply as “Rus” (and not as “Kiev Rus.”).

988. The rulers of Kiev, now headed by Volodymyr the Great, reach the Baltic for the first time.

12th century. Various Rurikid princes start intermarrying with the rulers of Muscovy, thus gradually leading to the establishment of Rurikid rule there as well

1187. The term “Ukraine,” meaning “borderland” or “march” is mentioned for the first time in the so-called Hypatian Codex; a compendium of three local chronicles originating in three separate “Rus” cities that is the most important source of historical data for those cities. The term “Ukraine” refers to the principality of Pereyaslavl, located east of Kiev. 

1250s. The Mongol invasions end the independence of Kiev. However, Rurik’s descendants continue to rule as vassal kings both in Kiev and Moscow.

1335. Yuri II Boleslav, the ruler of the RuthenianKingdom of Galicia–Volhynia (the latter, a province of Russia), signs his decrees Dux totius Russiæ minoris. (Duke of all Minor Russians), thus for the first time distinguishing “Great” Russians from “Little” (i.e. Ukrainian) ones.

1383. The Kiev Rus revolt and defeat the Mongols in the Battle of Kulikovo Fields. This marks the beginning of the Golden Horde’s decline.

15th century. Present-day Ukrainian territories come under the rule of four external powers: the remnants of the Golden Horde, the Crimean Khanate, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland. Of those the last two would later unite, forming a huge commonwealth that reached from the Baltic all the way to the northern shores of the Black Sea.

1480. The Grand Duchy of Muscovy, whose known origins go back to the first half of the fourteenth century, throws off Mongol rule and gains its independence. Moscow assumes its historical role as the capital of Russia.

1610. The last Rurikid Tsar, Vasily IV, dies. The first Romanov Tsar, Mikhail I, succeeds to the throne.

1648. A Ukrainian (Cossack) rebellion against Polish-Lithuanian rule jump-starts a century and a half process whereby the tables are reversed. Poland, instead of ruling vast stretches of Russia and Ukraine, ends in 1798 by being partitioned between Muscovy/Russia, the Habsburg Empire, and Prussia.

1721. The Grand Duchy of Muscovy declares itself the Russian Empire and Muscovites are proclaimed to be Russians.

1768-83. A series of Russo-Turkish wars, launched by Catherine the Great and commanded by Alexander Suvorov, extends Russian, rule right down to the Black Sea. The conquest gives Russia access to the Bosporus, thus immensely increasing the strategic importance of Little Russia (Malorussia), as Russians call Ukraine.

1918-21. Well aware of what they called “the nationality problem” Lenin, and under him Stalin, seek to solve it by dividing the newly-established Soviet Union into Republics enjoying (rather limited) autonomy. In 1919 the “All-Russian Central Executive Committee,” as the responsible organ was known, created the broad outline of the Ukraine-Russia border by including in Ukraine, roughly, the former Russian imperial provinces of Volhynia, Kiev, Chernigov, Kharkov and Ekaterinoslav. It based this decision on the 1897 census which showed a majority of Ukrainians in each of these districts.

1932-33. These are the years of the Holodomor, the Stalin-inspired and enacted collectivization of farmland which involved the deliberate starving-out of perhaps 10 percent of Ukraine’s population. Memory of the Holodomor is held up as perhaps the most important reason behind Ukraine’s separatism and the current war with Russia.

1941-44. “The Ukraine” as it is known, is occupied by the Germans for the second time in a quarter century. As in almost every other occupied country, the outcome was not insignificant cooperation between occupiers and occupied, with the latter striving towards independence and the former steering an uneasy compromise between encouraging local nationalism and trying to suppress it. Still hatred for Stalin may have led to more collaboration in Ukraine than in most other occupied Soviet districts. World War II over, armed skirmishes between the KGB and various Ukrainians groups continued and only ended about 1950.

  1. For reasons unknown, Stalin’s successor Nikita Khrushchev transfers the Crimea from the Russian Republic to the Ukrainian one.

II Religion and Culture

867. The Patriarch of Constantinople, Photius, triggers the process that, over the next century or so, led to the Christianization of the “Rus” of Kiev

986. According to the Primary Chronicle, a document that covers the development of the Kievian “Rus” from about 850 to 1100, a Rurikid ruler known in Ukrainian as Volodymyr, in Russian as Vladimir, and in both as “the Great,” summons a conference to decide which religion he and his subjects should embrace, finally deciding on Eastern Christianity.

1299-1325. The Russian Orthodox Church moves its headquarters from Kiev, first to Vladimir, east of Moscow, and then to Moscow itself.

1325-1654. Various attempts to unite the Russian Orthodox Church with the Catholic one, imported from the West by way of Poland and Lithuania, were made but ended in failure. The process ended in 1654 when the Russian Church transferred its allegiance from Constantinople to Moscow, thus becoming autocephalous. Over the next two and a half centuries many senior “Russian” ecclesiastical posts were occupied by Ukrainians.

2022. As per a survey published by the Kiev International Institute of Society, 85% of Ukrainians identify as Christians. 72% call themselves Eastern Orthodox, 9% Catholics (8% Eastern-rite, 1% Latin-rite) and 4% Protestants or adherents of other Christian movement.

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Russian and Ukrainian are similar, but they are not the same. Both grew out of Old East—as opposed to West—Slavonic. Their development into separate, though still closely related, languages started between 1,000 and 1,300 CE. While the Ukrainian alphabet is similar to the Russian one, it also comprises four unique letters to represent sounds specific to Ukrainian. The two languages are mutually intelligible, though often not without some effort. Partly as a result of having learnt it at school, Ukrainians are more likely to understand Russian than the other way around.

While it is always possible to find precedents—going back, in this ease, to the great 17th-century Cossack revolt against Poland/Lithuania—Ukrainian nationalism is mainly a product of the nineteenth century when country’s western provinces were strongly influenced by the Austrian empire. Much later this fact enabled Russian President Vladimir Putin to claim that it was not a native movement but an imported one.

In Ukraine as in other countries, initially nationalism was generated by a tiny urban elite of highly cultured literati by no means representative of the people as a whole. In Ukraine as in other countries, members of this elite sometimes went to the countryside in the hope of discovering and preserving “aboriginal” and “pure” traditions in which to anchor their views. In Ukraine as in other countries, some such traditions were invented almost ex nihil. Old or new, they provided people—mainly Russians, Ukrainians, and Poles—with additional reasons for fighting each other tooth and nail; nowhere more so than in the “Bloodlands” (historian Timothy D. Snyder) of Eastern Europe.

On the other hand, many famous “Ukrainian” (in the sense that they were born in Ukraine) writers actually wrote in Russian. Nikolai Gogol, the best-known “Ukrainian” writer of all, was born in Sorochyntsi, a Cossack village in what is now Ukraine’s Poltava Oblast, but wrote in Russian. The same applied to Anna Akhmatova and Isaac Babel (both from Odessa) and Mikhail Bulgakov (from Kiev). This list could easily be extended.

As per the latest census, 67 percent of Ukrainians use Ukrainian as their “native” language whereas 29 percent use Russian. Most Ukrainian speakers are concentrated in the west and center of the country; whereas Russian ones inhabit in a long arch that starts in the north, extends to the east, and ends in the south. Yet “native” does not necessarily mean day today, as many Ukrainians start using Russian either when they attend school—formerly, having to do so was part of Moscow’s attempts to Russify them—or, as adults, as part of normal social life. To add to the confusion, about 30 percent of the population use both languages interchangeably both at home and elsewhere.

III. The Current Crisis

The current crisis can be said to have originated in late 1989 when the East Block broke up. Since then both Russia and the West, the latter headed by the U.S, have been using all kinds of methods, fair and foul, to make sure Ukraine, a large and strategically very important country, should be on their side. Including, in 2014, the attempted assassination, probably by Putin’s agents, of a leading “Westernizer”, Viktor Yushchenkoof, who was then running for president. In 2019, the election as president of Volodymyr of Zelensky marked the West’s victory in this struggle.

On 9 February 1990, during a meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, then US secretary of state James A. Baker promised that NATO would not expand past the territory of the former East Germany. Speaking in Brussels on 7 May of the same year, NATO’s Secretary General Manfred Woerner repeated that promise. Whether either of these promises was ever put in writing is moot. Certainly they were not made the subject of any treaty.

1991. In February the Warsaw Pact, the chief instrument long used by the Soviet Union to dominate the countries of Eastern Europe (and threaten those of the West), is dissolved. In July-December 1991 the same fate overtakes the Soviet Union. Its place is taken by a “Commonwealth of Sovereign Republics” of which, Russia apart, Ukraine is the largest and most populous. With Kiev as its capital, Ukraine for the first time in history becomes a unified country separate from Russia and under its own independent government. Reflecting the change, the term “Ukraine” takes over from “The Ukraine.”

1997-2004. A number of East European countries, emerging from the Soviet-dominated East Bloc, apply to join NATO and are accepted. To justify this expansion, it is claimed that the promises made by Baker and Woerner did not apply to the new circumstances. In 1997 then Russian President Boris Yeltsin personally expressed his unhappiness with NATO’s eastward expansion, calling it a “threat” to Russians security. Using less restrained language, subsequent Russian spokespersons have spoken of a Western “betrayal.” To Vladimir Putin, who assumed the presidency of Russia in 2000, his country’s collapse is the greatest disaster it has ever sustained and he vows to reverse it. The outcome is a series of relatively small wars: in Chechenia, in Georgia, and in Dagestan.

2014. The Donbas, which is part of Ukraine but has proportionally more Russian speakers than any other Ukrainian region, breaks into civil war, causing Putin to intervene on the Russian side. Other Russian forces seize a corridor from the Donbas to the eastern shores of the Black Sea and from there to the Crimea, which they occupy. This makes alarm bells ring not just in Ukraine but all over Eastern Europe as well as NATO.

2020. By then not only the signatories of the Warsaw Pact but all East European countries, including the newly-established Baltic ones, have joined NATO. The number of NATO members has gone up from 12 in 1949—the year it was founded—to 31. More than one Russian spokesman has said that the “betrayal” is part of a Western plot whose ultimate goal is to dismantle Russia altogether.

Meanwhile the distance between Moscow and its western security border has gone down from 2,000 kilometers during the Cold War to a mere 1,000 today. Should Ukraine’s request to join NATO be granted it will be down to just 850—rather less than it was in 1941 when Hitler attacked.

2021. As preparations for accepting Ukraine into NATO go ahead Russian’s leadership, President Vladimir himself included, repeatedly warns that their country is not going to accept such a move laying down.

2022. On 24 February Russia invades Ukraine. All hell breaks loose, without an end in sight.

Conclusions

Almost as far back as anyone can look, the histories of Russia and Ukraine have been closely intertwined. Now it was Kiev that was the senior partner, now—definitely since about 1500—it was Moscow. Culturally the two nations (a term used by the Russians, but denied by the Ukrainians) are both similar and different. The greatest difference is religion, followed by language.

Concerning the present crisis, the most important factor behind it are 1. The collapse of Russia’s western security zone; and 2. NATO’s eastward drive which Russians see, not without reason, both as a threat in itself and as a possible prelude to an effort to dismantle their country.

With rare exceptions—Sweden in 1905, Czechia in 1992—states are not in the habit of letting parts of their dominions go without a fight, often a very bloody one. Specifically, I am not aware of any great power allowing the zone between its security-border and its capital to be cut by over half without engaging in massive bloodshed. Not ancient Assyria. Not Babylon, not Persia, not Athens, Sparta and Rome. Not China. All used might and main to crush would-be separatists, sometimes with success, sometimes not. More recently, the same applied to Spain, Portugal, Britain, France, and the Netherlands. The South’s attempt to secede led to the Civil War, AKA the War of Northern Aggression, which resulted in as many dead as did all of America’s remaining ones combined. As early as 1833, with a population of only 13,000,000 (including 2,000,000 slaves) the U.S had the unheard-of effrontery of claiming the entire Western hemisphere as its exclusive stamping ground.

I know: It is mostly power and interest, not justice and morality, which govern relations between nations and states. So it has always been, and so it will always remain. But I think that what we can do, and what I myself have been trying to do in this essay, is get rid of some of the ira et studio. Both of the lies and the idea that one side is completely right and the other, completely wrong. Whatever else, doing so may make reaching some kind of agreement that much easier.

Going On and On

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Now that President Biden has given his European NATO allies the green light to provide Ukraine with “fourth generation” fighter aircraft, everyone and his cousin are talking about those aircraft. What “fourth (and first, and second, and third, and fifth) generation” means; what the aircraft in question can and cannot do; and the impact their participation in the war is, or is not, going to have on its conduct. Time to shed some light on these questions.

First, this “generations” business.  Starting with the German Me-262, the first three generations of jet fighters entered service in 1944-45 and ruled the skies until about 1970. With each “generational” change they grew faster, enabling them to seize the initiative and dictate the rules of engagement; but only at the cost of being less maneuverable and, to that extent, less suitable both for air-to-air combat and for air-to-ground operations. Starting around 1975, these problems led to a fourth generation of fighters. As the famous late USAF Colonel John Boyd, a fighter pilot who in some ways acted as the brain behind the idea, explained it to me many years ago, aircraft such as the American F-15, F-16, and F-18 were provided with computerized controls. So, somewhat later, were the Russian Su-27, the French Rafale, and the Anglo-German-Italian Tornado. The advent of “fly by wire,” as the system was known, greatly reduced the burden on the pilots, enabling them to focus on fighting rather than simply keeping their machines airborne. In this way, but also by enabling the aircraft to turn much faster than their predecessors, it gave them a decisive edge in combat.

Fifth-generation aircraft are characterized above all by stealth, a technology first introduced around 1990 that greatly reduced their exposure to radar. They also carry sensors able to identify and engage multiple targets simultaneously as well as long-range air-to-air missiles that enable them to take advantage of those sensors. Prime examples are the American F-35 and F-22 as well as the Russian Su-57. By contrast, all Ukraine has are some fourth-generation, Soviet-built, Mig-29s and Su-27s. Old as these aircraft are, just keeping them air- and combat-worthy represents a formidable task; let alone making them fight and defeat their most modern Russian opponents with their superior stealth characteristics, radar, avionics, and air-to-air missiles.

There is also something known as “4.5-generation” fighters, but since there are too few of them to be sent to Ukraine I shall not consider them here. Granted, supplying Ukraine with F-16s is going to solve some of the above problems. But not completely, and perhaps not even by very much. Many of the to-be-provided aircraft are early models built from 1976 on and still being provided to various, mostly third world, customers. Operated for many years—in some cases, decades—by various NATO air forces, making them fit for war risks becoming entangled in a logistic nightmare of different operational capabilities, different spare parts, and different training systems. Of the three, the last-named may well be the most problematic. Some of the sources I consulted say that a Ukrainian pilot accustomed to flying old Soviet-made equipment can be retrained in a matter of months. However, doing the same for the ground-crews may take a year or more.

Nor are those the only problems. At the beginning of the war many observers, comparing the mighty Russian air force (currently it is probably the second most powerful in the world) to the much smaller, in some ways outdated and rag-tag, Ukrainian one predicted a swift victory of the former country over the latter. Two factors explain the failure of Russian air superiority to have a greater impact than it did. First, there is Ukraine’s sheer size—about 600,000 square kilometers, twice as much as Germany—and the consequent dispersed nature of the fighting, much of which takes place not between mighty ground formations but between small and highly mobile teams operating now here, now there. Second, Ukraine’s ground-to-air defenses, particularly those brought into action not against Russian fighters but against cruise missiles and drones, have proved much more effective than anyone could have thought when the war got under way. True, command of the air, meaning the ability to fly where they want and bomb whom they want, has remained mostly in Russian hands. But never at any time has it reached the point where it was absolute.

Overall, the outcome has been and still remains a war of attrition. By definition, and if only because the belligerents tend to imitate one another, in such a war what decides is not tactics, nor even operational art. It is, rather, sheer endurance—a quality which itself is made up of adequate reserves on one hand and willpower on the other. In point of reserves, my prediction is that Western economic might will prevail over that of Russia, even that of Russia as receiving modest support from China. In point of willpower I am not so sure. Some of Putin’s collaborators, tired of the war they fear could end in the disintegration of their country, may band together to remove him and start a new policy. However, it is equally possible that, as happened in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, the American people, media and Congress will become tired of the fight and compel the government to abandon it. The more so because an election year is coming up. Do I have to add that, without the US to provide the necessary physical and mental backbone, the rest of NATO is more or less useless?

But these are long-term considerations. My immediate prognosis: With or without the yet-to-arrive F-16s, expect the war, like the Energizer Bunny, to go on. And on. And on.