What a tragic week this has been for humanity. Reading optimistic authors like Steven Pinker, I like to believe that our species is maturing, albeit fitfully. Then something like the Ukraine invasion occurs to demonstrate just how much we still need to learn.
As a European this realisation is especially galling. We are arrogant enough to think that we are more civilised than others. America has its guns and its Trumps, Africa has its despots (admittedly in large part owing to the legacy from we Europeans), Asia has its castes and its ethnicities. True, Europe tore itself apart twice during the last century, and then endured a mini war in the Balkans in the 1990’s, but we like to put that conflict down as clearing up unfinished from the cold war. We are Europe, or most of us are. We have our flag and our anthem and our institutions and our welfare states and our soccer tournaments and even our song contest (as a vehicle to laugh at ourselves). We should be above all this.
Indeed, let us spend a moment to reflect on the wonderful creation that is the European Union. We still find it easier to divide along fault lines then to unite around our common humanity. 1947 saw the founding of the UN, but the EU was altogether more ambitious and courageous. History will look very kindly on its originators.
The thought that one European nation can trample over another with horrifying violence, well into the 21stcentury, is sobering indeed. I did not think it would come to this. The Russian leadership must be living in a giant bubble and must have severe mental frailties to even consider such action, leave alone brazenly carrying it out.
While the suffering of Ukrainians is frighteningly apparent on our TV screens, it is hard to see how this will end well for Russia or its leaders. Afghanistan was a quagmire that ultimately led to a regime change in Russia in 1989. Surely Ukraine will prove the same. It is just about possible to suppress twenty million Belorussians for thirty years, because one authoritarian regime took over from another and inherited its apparatus of fear. Forty million Ukrainians and a large diaspora have become used to something very different and their rejection will linger long beyond the overt resistance of its armed forces.
I can only conclude that there is a dimension to this that is not in the public domain. The Russian leadership are cavalier but they are not usually dumb. There might be a mafia conflict between elite groups in Russia and Ukraine that got out of hand. More likely, the CIA somehow touched one nerve too many. Even that feels unlikely, since US intelligence has been demonstrated as excellent throughout the crisis, unsurprising since Russia had been its single focus since 1945. Still, Trump did more damage than we see on the surface, and perhaps the uneasy equilibrium started to collapse under him and the frenzied restaffing of the state department came too late.
Now there can never be any equivalence here, but the gospel on the Sunday after this all started sent me pondering US foreign policy over the last forty years. It is uncanny how often the weekly gospel seems to be apt. The gospel was the famous one about the wisdom of focusing on removing the large wooden beam from our own eye before trying to remove a splinter from that of our neighbour. The last week has seen most of the world accusing Russia of having splinters in its eyes. It has been all about them. It is possible we are missing the beam somehow?
Well, of course it is. It is what we do. That is why the gospel is so powerful. It always seems to be right and it is always helpful if we take the time to think deeply enough.
While US foreign policy did the world a wonderful service after the last world war and has notched some achievements since then, there have been many areas when it has served its own country badly and left it in a compromised position when trying to cajole others.
We can start with Cuba. A threat sixty years ago led to drastic action. The threat level seemed high because of the proximity of the adversary, some ideological differences and the strident views of minority concerning culture and history. Justified or not then, surely such an aggressive embargo against a weak neighbour cannot possibly be justified all of sixty years later? And how can the US lecture Russia over Ukraine or China over Taiwan as a result?
Then there all the questionable interventions with troops, both overt and covert. Many an autocratic regime in Africa has been propped up. We all know about Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq. Guantanamo Bay remains a stain on so-called US values, removing legitimacy from many claims. Can we sure that CIA black sites no longer practise torture or even exist?
This is manifested in the approach to international institutions. Financial ones are captured to pursue the US view of the appropriate economic order, even if most of the world would disagree. Political ones are treated only to project power, their effect reduced when the US refuses to accept jurisdiction when that does not suit. Many pundits and headlines this week have called for Russia to be tried by various world bodies, failing to mention that the same bodies are not ratified as applying to the US. There has been no attempt to reform UN protocols that have lost legitimacy over time, such as security council membership and vetoes. And every year without fail the general assembly passes a resolution concerning Israel that passes something like 190 to 2. Might the 190 be onto something?
Arms control is also seen as only applying selectively. Iran is sanctioned brutally for not following a non-proliferation treaty over which India and Israel were given a pass and which also mentions obligations on nuclear powers which are ignored completely.
More recently China policy has been short-sighted and self-defeating. There is little happening in Xinjiang that native Americans would not recognise, so human rights are hardly a strong talking point. But now we have economic bullying in reaction to sense of being overtaken. The Chinese are justly lauded for stealing the playbook of others. There is little doubt that their new prowess in cyber warfare was learned from the CIA.
When I even start to explore this list with Americans, I often regret it. First comes the question about whether I actually like America. I do, very much, but that doesn’t mean I have to agree with all its policies, even as a guest rather than a citizen. Next comes a stunned denial. That is no surprise either, because education, culture, churches and especially politics all conspire to prevent Americans asking hard questions of themselves. Next comes a sweeping argument that our side is good while their side is evil and evil must be fought, just like the US (eventually) did against Hitler. Hollywood can answer to that one. Next, everything is blamed on Trump. Well, there is a lot to blame to apportion in that direction, but all of the worst policies predate his presidency. Finally comes the argument with some merit, that of comparison. Yes, we have made mistakes, but look at the other side! That, of course, is precisely the argument that Jesus was warning us against.
World weary cynics and those attractive to binary logic about Putin being either a reincarnation of Hitler or Stalin like to argue that there is no practical alternative. In the heat of the moment, that can be true. I feel that the Biden administration has played this crisis very well so far. It is over the longer term that lost opportunities come home to roost. None of the calumnies listed above is beyond restitution. A working deal with China remains possible, while the lack of any attempt to strike one is what has resulted in damage to the west from China abstaining in the current dispute.
What would be wonderful would be a true commitment to international institutions with teeth and with no nation above the law. It takes courage to stop bullying and to start treating others with respect. A reformed security council would be a good start, one that would surely have helped this month. What about a commitment that 20% of all military spending, rising over time to 50%, must be allocated to global peace-keeping bodies? Now that would be a game changer.
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