We are haunted by ghosts - and Vladimir Putin's sickly dreams
Ian Mc Ewan
March 5, 2022 (The Guardian)
Catastrophe looms in Ukraine and we cannot just be onlookers. If we don’t try
everything to stop hostilities, we will never forgive ourselves.
Here we are, in our ringside seats at a bloody circus, watching on TV and
Twitter, trapped between infinite pity and rational self-interest. The tension
between two opposing forces is unbearable. Pulling from one side, our horror at
a senseless invasion, our wonder at the Ukrainian resistance, the unarmed
villagers mobbing a Russian tank or feeding a captured Russian conscript
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/04/russian-soldiers-ukraine-anger-duped-into-war
sobbing as he is allowed to phone his mother, and our sorrow at the sight of
terrified children in the bunkers huddling against their parents while their
towns are destroyed; and from the other, waiting outside Kyiv, the 40-mile
column
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/01/fears-of-bloody-fight-for-kyiv-as-huge-russian-army-convoy-gathers-on-outskirts
, which we know could be destroyed in an afternoon by satellite-guided cruise
missiles and stealth jet fighters invisible to radar.
The unlockable buckle restraining the west is fear of nuclear war
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/mar/02/russia-ukraine-putin-nuclear-taboo
, and Vladimir Putin, elevated into a deranged and unpredictable adversary,
has played us well. So we are strapped in place by a bluff we dare not call,
expert watchers with the mouse clicks and screen swipes, and in our communal
anguish, incapable of much beyond sanctions
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/03/uk-imposes-sanctions-on-russian-billionaire-and-former-deputy-pm
and arms donations, alms and fulminations.
At each stage of the long Russian buildup of forces around Ukraine’s borders it
was Putin’s privilege to call the next move and the west’s to respond, which,
game theorists will insist, is weak play
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/mar/03/vladimir-putin-ukraine-war-chechnya
. The strong hand first seeks cooperation, then, when failing to get it, comes
back hard with raised stakes. But Nato is not a single player, it’s a crowd of
30; and when groups make decisions, they tend to moderation. There are ghosts
in the circus ring. In 1914, European nations protested peace as they
“sleepwalked” into war. They got there by slow steps, unhindered by nightmares
of nuclear winter. Now we are forced to interpret the tainted neural processes
of one man and his sickly dreams
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/24/putin-russian-president-ukraine-invasion-mental-fitness
. This is the ultimate “madman” sanction in nuclear tactics; if you cannot
rely on your opponent to act logically to his own advantage, you are frozen in
place, waiting for his next move, unable to take risks by direct intervention.
There are younger ghosts in the ring in the form of Grozny, Aleppo and Idlib.
There the Russian calculation was to destroy from the air
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/02/our-fates-are-united-syrians-rally-behind-ukraine-after-years-of-russian-torment
hospitals, triage clinics, residential blocks and schools in order to
demoralise the population. In Ukraine, as Russian troop movements falter, the
same cruel tactics are beginning to be repeated. There has always been a
special dispensation for artillery units denied to “poor bloody infantry”. As
they lob their shells across the landscape with fine regard for the mathematics
of parabolic curves, artillery soldiers need never look into the eyes of a
dying child. The same goes for guided missiles, and for bombs “aimed” from
military planes. Murder at one remove is a simpler, more abstract crime.
Ordinary Russian conscripts have no such luxury of dispassion. Those who have
been captured
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/27/ukrainian-officials-upload-videos-of-captured-russian-soldiers-on-telegram
or have surrendered appear spectacularly ill-informed about their mission.
They are amazed by their lack of welcome on Ukrainian soil. If they are
extremely lucky, they are overwhelmed by the kindness of locals. They are
ill-served by their lines of supply, often disrupted by Ukrainian forces using
anti-tank weapons against transport trucks and petrol tankers.
For all the talk of a modernised Russian army, ordinary soldiers appear to be
treated like serfs. That fearful column outside Kyiv may be regrouping and
preparing to strike or it may be an emblem of all that has gone wrong on the
Russian side. With only five days’ supply allotted to each vehicle, the troops
may be hungry, thirsty, short of fuel and, most vitally, of motivation to kill
fellow Slavs. We will soon find out which it is.
The paradox is that the more Russia fails in the field, the more Ukraine has to
fear from dispassionate shelling. There seems no way out, for a dazzling
Russian military success would be Ukraine’s nightmare too. Grim success may be
the more likely outcome. Kherson has fallen
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/03/kherson-russian-army-moves-to-cut-ukraine-access-to-sea
, Mariupol is under heavy pressure, Odesa may be next
https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2022/mar/03/ukraine-news-russia-war-vladimir-putin-biden-latest-live-updates-kherson-kyiv-kharkiv-refugees-russian-invasion?page=with:block-622086cc8f08c1dd5f659b5e#block-622086cc8f08c1dd5f659b5e
. Ukraine could soon be overrun. Recent history assures us of the capacity of
the Russian command to allow atrocities on a colossal scale.
For all our pity and anguish, our status as onlookers is luxurious. We have
enjoyed moments of clownish light relief as chortling farmers on tractors steal
a tank or a bemused passing motorist offers to tow an armoured vehicle back
across the Russian border. For now, in the west, thoughts are mostly on
punishing Russia. Symbols preoccupy us. An orchestral conductor is sacked from
his roles in Edinburgh and Munich. Football matches are cancelled. Oligarchs’
yachts have been seized. Beyond these important tokens, only financial
sanctions really bite, and they have been impressive.
But even as his economy crashes
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/28/the-damage-is-done-russians-face-economic-point-of-no-return
, Putin seems to have persuaded himself he can, in the celebrated formulation
of Tacitus, make a desert and call it peace. It is painless to order up
slaughter and destruction in the grisly security state over which he presides.
If nothing changes in the Kremlin, the collective minds of the international
community must turn to solutions, for the added danger is of conflict spillover
– as powerful weaponry from Europe and the US flows across the Polish border
into Ukraine, it could become convenient for Putin to decide that he is at war
with Nato after all. On behalf of all of us who root for Ukraine, some creative
thinking is required beyond symbols, punishment and rearmament. It should not
be left to ad-hoc face-offs of the belligerents in a hut on the Belarus border.
It does not look hopeful. Ukrainians are in an existential struggle for the
country they love. Putin believes he is bound to prevail.
Between the “eastward expansion of Nato” and the “right of a sovereign state to
decide its arrangements” there may appear to be no compromise. But all brokered
cessations of hostilities begins with such irreconcilables. A sophisticated, if
not sophistic diplomatic culture that includes China should now be straining
all its resources to devise, as a minimal first move and with all the ingenuity
and compassion it can muster, the terms of a ceasefire. Without the attempt we
will be condemned to watch mass death up close – and we will never forgive
ourselves.
Ian McEwan is a novelist and screenwriter. He has donated the fee for this
article to the Disasters Emergency Committee https://www.dec.org.uk/
------------------------------------------------------
"ubi solitudinem faciunt pacem appellant"
(Tacitus, Agricola) is fast becoming a meme. Irember it from my college
('gymnasium') days, when it sounded totally appropriate for the war in Vietnam.
yesterday, at the peace demo on the village square of Fiesole, the former chief
rabbi of Firenze reminded us that there are currently well one hundred wars
going on on this damned (and doomed?) planet ...# distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
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