M: “I am drifting into cynicism. It’s the only word to describe what I try to avoid becoming, still, I see myself slide down the path. I end up sounding like someone in the State Department!”
Gerald and Christine exchanged a few smiles.
G: “I find that hard to believe.”
M: “Gerald, you try to read the foreign policy outlets, don’t you? The human angle, that has been always been my policy, not some realist school calculus over the various actor’s calculations.”
C: “Always the humanist, true. What’s bugging you?”
M: “Usually language saves me. I formulate every position, and it works. For some reason that method fails me on Iran. My best ‘human angle’ makes me sound exactly like various US diplomats and analysts over the years. I know, because I found some of their memoranda.”
C: “But doesn’t that mean that those people in the State Department also count on a human angle? I mean, they examine motives. They need to acquire knowledge of the internal mechanisms in a country to provide good advice.”
G: “Or is it that you don’t want to be lumped into the same bucket as ’them’?”
C: “Are you starting to look pale, Miranda? Who is now guilty of meta-narratives? The State Department people are calculating cynics whereas you are a human with empathy and understanding? "
Gerald found Christine’s imitation of Miranda amusing.
M: “Probably I’m guilty as charged. What disheartens me is to wade through miles of analytical wasteland produced by all sides and all the way fighting this feeling that analysis is just another battlefield. Insight used to gain an upper hand.”
C: “In that way government people are mostly cynics.”
G: “I disagree. Ethics and insight are two sides of the story, and a professional must know when he is building a map.”
M: “The problem is that almost everything in foreign policy is anticipatory. When I write, I try to predict the reaction of you and you, well knowing that your reaction is premised on your expectation of my expectation of your expectations and so on. And into that equation goes the public, who need emotional anchor points, such as moral transgressions.”
C: “I find that thing about the public the hardest part. It’s like chess on two levels.”
G: “Yes exactly. The public has an enormous stake in for instance Russia-Ukraine, but how many of us are aware of the upper echelon Cold War machinations that let to the conflict? You can just as well accuse Putin of remembering the 90s. A lot of young people don’t remember that time, so to them, Russia is acting irresponsible. But for years Putin and others talked about encroachment. Wouldn’t it be much more intelligent to say that Putin belongs to the last chapter of the real reasons for the Russian despair in the 90s and the eternally broken trust between East and West? Then comes along the next generation who cannot for their life understand why those old people keep talking about encroachment.”
C: “That’s right. I remember how my friends’ reaction to the invasion expressed fury because of the injustice of attacking ‘one of us’ who had never wanted to hurt Russia.”
G: “And the irony is that because the young are blind to the old enmity, they misjudge the context of the actions — drastically helped by the media and the intelligence agencies who clearly know what they are doing — they end up fostering a new, fresh enmity against a foe who apparently strikes for now justifiable reason at all on people who “just don’t want an autocracy”. "
Now it was Miranda’s turn to smile back. Those two rascals opposite her table were her best and only intelligent conversation, and daily they were honing their skills. The fact that they were different from Miranda herself was really starting to be a refreshening aspect.
M: “So the key becomes: Who can read the situation and what do they do with it. By situation I mean what you just provided as an example. If a budding narrative has taken hold of a demographic group, such as those who only see the injustice of Russias actions which they cannot ascribe to a reaction since they are not part of the long hand of history, some agency in the West can exploit that perception with a proper selection of news.
And to make it all the more complicated, too many old news editors may even see it as their escape ticket out of their membership in the old club.”
C: “A chance to redefine the game.”
G: “If I no longer punch your country as part of a Cold War legacy, I must be doing it because I belong to an elite of insane leaders.”
C: “That’s all well for our little discussion club. But now what? War crimes are war crimes.”
M: “As always …”
C: “The idea of war crimes diminishes the fact that war is a crime.”
M: “International law accepts that our species is a violent one and contends itself with a meek “at least play nice”-attitude.”
G: “War is also justice. The right to defend yourself. It’s the frayed ends of defence that are very hard to distinguish from aggression. Especially given that most wars are the end result of years of disagreement, and the resulting bitterness and hatred simmering in both military men and civilians alike.”
C: “They are still civilians and one of the parties will have to be the aggressor and the other hence the suffering part.”
G: “Show me anybody confronting hatred who does not interpret that very hatred as aggression.”
M: “And Christine, that very logic is not at all built into the words! The fact that someone strikes first doesn’t exonerate both parties from building up tensions over many years.”
G: “The only problem is that according to international law, the most virulent, toxic and hateful journalism is within our freedoms as humans.”
C: “And governments allow it, while almost all governments, once war breaks out, penalises any explanation of the enemy’s actions or any hint at own culpability. Hatred is almost a religious right if not an outright virtue.”
M: “If wars are driven by social factors, then the law it clear: It is legal to start a war, but not to stop one. Our reality, the very air we breathe is so starkly different from the entities discussed by lawyers that the law is close to useless. And it is, if you think about it. The law is one aspect of societal control, a method of dampening the exigencies before too much harm is done.
What scares me is that we still have many entry points to religious warfare, and by that I mean political and cultural warfare, but the only way out of a war is to let the fires burn out.”
G: “I’m not altogether convinced that your analogy with past religious wars holds up. The world has changed, and by that I just mean that comparing with the past is apples-to-potatoes.”
M: “But it is nothing but the great wars of religion all over again. You belong to one side, if you feel that side’s underlying existential premise like a fire, like something that preconditions the debate and hence can’t be discussed.
Nobody even considers questioning Ukraine’s claim to be the inheritors of Kievan Rus and that they historically have been oppressed always by Moscow, i.e. until 2014 where finally all that changed.
Nobody, except serious historians, who have to dismiss such neo-nationalist thoughts as unserious.
Iran-Iraq war of 1980-1988 was not about cultural identity. Saddam even had to recast the war into a Persian-vs-Arab matter to avoid his Shia majority to side with Iran.
Russia isn’t really helping. For strange reasons Ria.ru has been banned from many places in the West. Why? They rehearse a tired old routine while Ukraine’s European penetration is looking ever better. No doubt the Russian universe is a large one and defied by the West, but Ria.ru is a lousy representative of that space.
Now that we mention it, I find it harder than previously to find well written Russian articles providing deep insight into a Russian psyche. The pro-Kremlin essays are running on repeat and that cannot help being worn out.
If you ask me, the very Russian identity may be weakened.”
G: “Specifically the Kremlin’s version of an identity, right? How do young people see themselves? In conflict with the West?”
C: “My God, could you imagine a country the size of Russia losing their political identity?”
M: “Even Russians claim they may be militarily superior, a claim that is certainly disputed by the West, but that they are losing the so-called PR war. But that PR war is the modern day religious war. Which faith is the right one?”
G: “What a thing to be fighting over! Competing unprovable theories end up turning to violence to figure out which one is closer to an unverifiable truth.”
M: “Imagine ’the West won’ as we so nebulously put it. What would that actually mean?”
G: “In practice very little. A demarcation line, some agreements on war reparations.”
M: “And yet this is not at all makes people flock to the front. Look at the rhetoric. If Russia were to capitulate on conditions of the West, it would dissolve into a number of smaller ethnic countries and a real civil war would soon ensue. They would have to see themselves as the result of an endless series of autocratic and brutal tyrants and the lovechild of Mongol overlords and swamp people. Just look at the complementary set left out by what we all think would be Ukraine’s part.”
G: “I’m sorry to bring it to your attention, but statistics is neither on your side nor on anybody else’s. Look at this recent Russian survey. Look at the bottom. First notice that many people want to be done with the war. "
C: “What an odd mix. They want the war to stop and they support the military operations in Ukraine!”
G: “Notice the big difference between TV spectators and YouTube spectators.”
M: “Notice also another peculiarity: Less than 17% of the one-third who want to continue fighting provides Bandera as a reason. Apparently the whole Nazi-spin is not something that propels the war at all!”
Miranda did look a little embarrassed that she apparently was going down the wrong track.
C: “For the record, Miranda, I see the logic of what you said.”
G: “Why would we be different than any other politician or agent trying to read the signs of where people are headed? Look for instance on the difficulties the US had in gauging where the 1979 Iranian revolution would end up. Memorandum, Zbigniew Brzezinski to President Carter.”
C: “I don’t see the relevance?”
G: “In the thick of the revolution, even the US State Department didn’t have a clue where it would end up. We are all fumbling. Who is to say what the Russian population would look like in ten years?”
/ПРИЗРАК