The Bleating Crowd
Who care about evil and social injustice,
Do you only care about being proud?”
Estimates of the death toll in the disaster zone that is Gaza are around 35,000, many of whom children. From the Ukraine theater — where estimates of either side are incredibly unreliable — it might be safe to assume anywhere from 300,000–500,000 Ukrainian and Russian casualties. (And these are just 2 of the current estimate of 110 armed conflicts going on around the world).
But it is the commentary that surrounds these two wars, much of which from well-meaning individuals on social media, that makes for an utter twilight zone of moral pontificating.
We live in a narcissistic age, identified by this certain kind of metaphysical entitlement that insists the world conform to how we feel, while we yet refuse to see the world as it is. Don’t get me wrong, I too am persuaded of the power of belief to transform the world, but one cannot change what one refuses to understand.
It is easier to live in a fantasy world of good and evil, of black and white. To go on screaming about how bad the aggressor is, as if they could be cowed into acquiescence by strongly-worded posts. But these Übermensch do not live in your world of shame and guilt.
My concern with this is that narcissism of this sort fuels the theater of the macabre. It intentionally misjudges reality, because then we’d be forced to confront just how much the world isn’t safe, how much it cannot be controlled by our good intentions, and worse still, without this escapism that makes us feel good about how much more moral we are, we would recognize ourselves with the worse of them — that this line between good and evil runs through us as well.
One way to ensure violence is to be ignorant of why violence happens. One way to ensure violence is to keep sleepwalking into it. (This is why those like Oppenheimer would’ve wanted us to see the explosions, so that the horror might imprint upon us a strong deterrent from ever finding ourselves playing chicken with nuclear war).
If you want to be on the side of the innocent — the real human being who does not want to fight and die — then for their sakes, clear the moss from your eyes.
Understanding War
Broken down as simply as possible, wars are fought over security interests, resources, or ideology (or some mix of these). The more parties involved, the more cross-purposes arise.
Israel is caught in a security dilemma, it oversees its Palestinian brethren who have been seeped in an ideology that glorifies death and hates the Jews, for which itself is partially to blame, but so are the surrounding Arab states, some of whom fund this, and others who go out of their way to feign a kind of solidarity with Palestine but are more than happy to use them to antagonize Israel rather than lift a finger to open their own countries for a right of return.
You can only have the moral authority to demand an immediate end to the Israeli bombardment of Gaza if you first demand Hamas release the hostages and unconditionally surrender. Anything short of that is a kind of bewildering delusion, one that could make one wonder if Hamas is not in the service of ultraright Israeli movement.
Similarly Russia — a declining power within the delicate balance that is Europe — in facing what would be a much more intense isolation in the face of a Western-controlled Ukraine, and caught within its own security dilemma of being increasingly unable to trust the West (largely having itself to blame for its own lack of straightforwardness), and following generally understood concepts in international relations, took what it saw as an opportunity to forestall its demise, and perhaps to change its fortunes, by entering into what would then become a proxy war.
The Americans have said as much. Recently the British have reiterated this by pointing out that this is the best deal we ever had to forestall perceived Russian expansionism. There is nothing ‘wrong’ with proxy wars; it is much more expedient if you could pay someone to fight your enemy for you than to fight them yourself. But you cannot have it both ways. You cannot pretend to really care about Ukrainian lives, all the while funding a proxy war so we can inflict the most damage on Russia.
But much more importantly, this was such a seemingly avoidable scenario. We have too many hammers getting together and going crazy about how many nails they’re finding. Now, even if war was unavoidable, even if Russia was too thick-headed to be persuaded down another path, even if the Ukrainians are perfectly happy be funded, we in the West should still not be so easily overcome by simple propaganda. “Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime. Ask the infantry and ask the dead.” We will be finally forced into peace when the people refuse to go to war, when the people refuse to be persuaded into war.
As the saying goes: It is only when a mosquito lands on your testicles that you realize there is always a way to solve problems without violence.
Ps. China is also caught in its own security dilemma, aware of the theory that a dominant power may attempt to preemptively attack or undermine a rising power as its position is being threatened (the Thucydides Trap). Without Taiwan, China runs the risk of being encircled, of being unable to project power into the Pacific or to be a major maritime power. (Of course, reuniting Taiwan would be a glorious bonus for Xi). China though, seems to have a better grasp on history and a longer-time frame than the West (or Russia, for that matter). As they say of themselves, China thinks in 100s of years while the West thinks only in 10s. Therefore, there is hope we might escape armed conflict in this region.
