Still I'm very sceptical about sanctions that affects mostly innocent and poorest people and destabilise overal economy that is already very fragile. Just look at the history, what happened after Spanish influenza and escalated in 1928. Today, with technology all this could happen again but much more quickly.
Even more I'm worried about censorship. What make our values differnet if we implement exactly same politic that we fight against?
It is one thing if you have to be afraid that a Goebbels or Putin manipulates public opinion. But if it should turn out that it's people's craving for easy answers itself that leads to the emergence of mass delusions, then that would be much, much scarier.
In my country, one week ago private DNS provider CZ.NIC blocked 12 "disinformation" websites - it is probably more now. There was no law, no definition. Just private decision about few sites that was propagandistic from Russia. My question is... If we do not have definition of disinformation (who has patent on truth anyway?), then should we allow commercial TV's stream for example Putin's speeches?
Tech has increased our ability to spread messages. But what it has not increased is our ability to validate those messages.
In a sense, we have perverted the original idea of the computer. The computing pioneers of the 1950s and 60s saw the computer as a tool to help us deal with the complexity of the world's problems [1]. What we have focused on instead is to use computers to make our information landscape even more complex than it already was.
It is very telling to look at our advances in A.I.. GPT-3, for instance, can produce massive amounts of pausible sounding content. But what it cannot do is verify a piece of information.
That, right there, is our problem in a nutshell. We've already seen it play out in Trump, and in Covid. And we're going to see it play out in many, many more ways in the years to come.
[1] Doug Engelbart, I believe, had this system in the 1960s. He had the idea that organizations would input all their knowledge into that system. And the system would then help them draw connections, show them gaps in their knowledge, make predictions, give them suggestions on what questions to ask or experiments to run, etc.. He believed that, eventually, such a system could be used at a global scale. So that, ideally, no human would ever again waste his time trying to solve a problem that has already been solved by someone else, no matter where or when. And that we as a species would, instead, be able to focus all of our intelligence on those questions and problems that are yet unsolved.
Putin is not some new piece on the table and this is not his first move, he done many moves so far and somewhere a line must be drawn.
I understand though that some people far away from this region would be happy to sacrifice Ukraine,Moldova maybe some Nordic countries just to keep Putin happy a few more years, but when do we say: enough, we don't want to do business with war criminals, we don't want to kiss killers asses anymore. Sure the innocent Russian citizens will suffer but that is preferable.
What is your solution though? And what countries would you sacrifice? How many people would be enough for you to say "I won't send our kids to fight but maybe I could be OK not to do business with this criminals" ?
First of all, I think we're on the same page in terms of what we want here. We want to end or, even better, avoid war. And we also do not want to encourage dictators, or let them get away with "salami tactics", i.e. taking one piece by force after another, each one small enough that nobody will bother to make them pay for it.
And I can tell you: When I first heard about this invasion, I also immediately thought of Hitler and Czechoslovakia in 1938. Hitler, back then, had sensed that Britain and France like to talk of peace and of the souvereignity of nations etc.. But that, deep inside, they are really way too comfortable to get involved in yet another war. And Hitler guessed correctly.
And I, too, thought that Putin might be thinking the same thing. That we are way too busy with Bitcoin and gender issues than to get our hands dirty for some slavic country that most of us couldn't find on a map.
So I can actually relate to the thought that such action needs to have immediate consequences. Not just to put Putin back into line, but to also send a signal to any other dictator now or in the future.
So if Putin was a Hitler 2.0, I'd agree with your prescription here.
I just think two things are different:
First, nukes. Even Churchill would have acted very differently if Hitler would have had nuclear weapons. That changes the entire equation. Outright conflict just isn't an option anymore in this situation. You have to find a compromise. Or, if the other party truly is a monster, like Hitler, and a compromise is completely out of the question (that is to say, not because of your own ego, or because it would mean sacrifices, but because it would mean an unbearable humanitarian disaster like the Holocaust), then you need to get this person removed, as fast as possible, AND ensure that nobody even worse is going to take his place.
Secondly, I don't think Putin is a Hitler. Yes, he is a dictator. Yes, he has invaded a souvereign country. And yes, he puts political enemies in prison. But that is what dictators do. And to claim that any dictator is equal to Hitler is to belittle Hitler's crimes.
You ask what I suggest as a way out of the current conflict. I have to say, I haven't paid any attention to Russia until a week ago. Until that time, all I knew about Ukraine was that there apparently are lots of beautiful women and that it's a popular place for digital nomads (a correlation that I'm sure is just coincidental). So I really do not have any "solution".
But the most reasonable thing I have heard, so far, is the suggestion by Mearsheimer, that NATO and Russia agree that Ukraine will be a neutral state. Kinda like Switzerland. So no NATO membership. But also no Russian influence.
Now I get that you could say, "But what if the Ukrainians want to join NATO? Isn't that their right?". But I mean, that's what a compromise is about. Everybody has to make some concessions. And, as far as I know, the main reason for Ukraine wanting to join NATO is as an endurance against a Russian invasion. Which such an arrangement would ensure just as well.
If I would see that "our guys" are making such offers to Putin, but Putin turns them down -- either for no reason at all, or for reasons that are obvious excuses -- then I'd be a lot more convinced that de-escalation of the conflict actually wasn't possible.
But I'm not hearing anything about such offers being made. I would assume that, if they were made, and Putin rejected them, it would be all over the news.
What do you mean learning from history? The historic parallels to another leader are so overwhelming that I'm not even going to point them out to you.
Their "viewpoint" is that other, free, people should be forced with violence to bow to his will.
History is famed for repeating itself and analogies are a powerful tool, some (Lakoff) even asserting that they are the core of cognition. That's the entire premise behind "learning from history". When a dictator starts invading his European neighbors while ranting about building an empire and restoring former glory, it is difficult to come to a different conclusion than Churchill did about Hitler.
I also think it is crucial to see the whole picture, and to take counter positions into account e.g. this [1] interesting talk by John Mearsheimer.
It is not only Russia that lost its position in the world, the West has been playing contradictionary set of games in the last two decades as well: The events in Iraq and Afghanistan, the approach that outsourcing of production and technology for short term capital gains that was sold as an act that will bring the world together and not carry any risk in the form of a shift of industrial and military dominance.
How did you come up with your position? Are you a pol.sci., or history aficionado?
While I don't have any deep insight what actually drove Churchill what you described to the be an almost inquisitive research on Hitler's motives, I do think that he was able to see beyond the first level array of interests of his political class and understood the second order and long term implications for the British Empire and the European society as a whole when it came to let fascist take power on the continent. I always thought it was not morals that drove him, but a strong sense of Realpolitik and political opportunity. He had the same reasons to be wary of the terror in Russia - an antagonistic system to the British order and tradition... it was just that they were the enemy of his enemy and thus a very useful ally that turned out to be critical for the war effort.
[1] #UChicago Why is Ukraine the West's Fault? Featuring John Mearsheimer, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrMiSQAGOS4
> While I don't have any deep insight what actually drove Churchill what you described to the be an almost inquisitive research on Hitler's motives, I do think that he was able to see beyond the first level array of interests of his political class and understood the second order and long term implications for the British Empire and the European society as a whole when it came to let fascist take power on the continent.
I agree. And it seems to me that precisely this "seeing beyond" the immediate future, and paying attention to second order effects is suspiciously missing from public discourse, at least on the Western side.
You ask why viewpoints like this get downvoted. I don't know either. If I had to guess, I think it might have to do with the fact that most of us are overloaded with information and with decisions. We cope by employing a "swipe left" strategy, where we feel relieved if we can find a reason to dismiss a piece of input quickly without exerting too much energy on it. So we can get on to the next thing that needs to be dealt with.
Also, it's not very satisfying to most people if new questions are being raised without a clear-cut answer being provided. In a sense, it's almost as if that's inflicting a form of psychological pain -- creating an open loop with no resolution.
A few years back I had the opportunity to have a chat with the grandson of C.G. Jung, the psychologist. I asked him what he remembered as the most striking trait of his grandfather. And he said that it was C.G. Jung's ability to "stay with the tension" of two competing narratives. His ability to stay with a question without succumbing to the urge of arriving at a conclusion.
The same I have heard being said about Peter Thiel. And when I read biographies of Churchill, or JFK, I see that same trait as well.
And it's a trait that we, as the internet generation, seem to be losing. Because it's just so easy to swipe left and say, "Next!" That's why it sometimes feels as if you were talking to GPT-3. Use a few wrong keywords, and the reaction is pre-determined.
That being said, I also understand that, while we are philosophizing, people are losing their homes, or even their lives. So if someone has these pictures in mind, and they come across a post like this one, it can easily make them angry.
Even my own wife gave me the "stare of death" when I began voicing my concerns. She's not a random stranger on the internet. She loves me, and she knows me for more than a decade. And still, when I started speaking my mind about this topic, she initially resisted heavily, because it sounded to her as if I was somehow "on Putin's side". That's just how the human brain works, I guess. But the thing is: We only ended up having a conversation because she stayed with me on this, and actually heard me out. Random people on the internet are not going to do this. And for the same reason, if you are a newspaper, or a blogger, or a YouTuber, you would need to be very, very careful. Because if you say something that triggers that "stare of death" in your listeners, they will not hear you out. They will "swipe left" - or worse.
Actually, this dynamic of our internet-driven media is beginning to give me the chills. There is this part in Sebastian Haffner's account about living inside Hitler's Germany where he describes how intellectually isolated he became. All of his friends from university became Nazis. All stimulating books were banned. And so, if you had any doubts, any questions, or any dissenting views, you became a prisoner in your own head.
We are still very far from such a reality. Russia is a lot closer to that. But still, I would guess that there are probably many people who have views that are different from what is being -- reflected? No -- fed to us in the media. But they are going to keep quiet. Because they see that you cannot take any chances. They are afraid not of being wrong. That would be easy. That might actually be a relief. No, what they are afraid of is that people are going to "swipe left" on them, not because of anything they really meant, but because one other person did not hear them out and drew some grotesque conclusion.
I normally try to stay as far away from politics as I can. I also never paid any attention to Russia. It is not a country I am interested in. And when the news about the invasion hit, my own thoughts also immediately went to Hitler, and to Czechoslowakia.
The thing is: I just couldn't find an answer on what the hell Putin actually wants in Ukraine. It just didn't make any sense to me. As far as I know, the man practically owns Russia. Nobody knows his precise net-worth, but it doesn't seem like there is anything he could not buy if he wanted to. So self-enrichment hardly can be a motive.
Also, starting a war is a very dangerous move. He is putting his own power on the line. Not only is he giving the western world more reasons and more urgency to depose of him. But he's also risking a revolution from inside his own country.
And whereas the other statesmen just care about the term they are elected for, Putin practically "is" Russia (or at least he sees it that way). He is not merely putting other people's blood and money on the line. He has got to have a really strong motive for this.
Now, Hitler had such a motive. His motive was that he thought himself to be the chosen one to "free" Europe from an imagined "oppression by the Jews", and to build an Arian empire that should last for a thousand years. That was a lunantic motive, of course. But it was there, plain to see and hear for anybody who would pay attention.
(We can forgive those who read it and dismissed it as "not to be taken literally". Just imagine somebody predicting the Holocaust before the Holocaust actually happened. People would have laughed at you. But for us, who come after Hitler, that excuse is no longer valid.)
So for me, that thing about NATO and the U.S. missile defense system really does make a lot of sense. I've read a lot about JFK. And one of the big insights that JFK had was that in a world where nuclear weapons exist, world peace depends on an equilibrium of both powers having them.
If Putin is afraid that his country's nuclear deterrent is being "castrated" by an expanding NATO, that can hardly be counted as "just a pretext".
And there's also the human element. Posner talks about this in his talk at Yale [1]. The Russians want to be taken seriously. Let's not forget: They were the ones who paid the highest price in WW2. And they eventually lost out in the Cold War. We know from Germany what this can do to a country's psyche.
And Putin has, as I hear, voiced his concerns about NATO at Russia's borders frequently. He has pointed out that the West had broken promises that were made when Russia pulled out of Germany in 1990.
And now here we have this crisis. People are being killed. Homes are being destroyed. Families are being ripped apart. And we have our leaders fly to the Kremlin and hold six hour talks with Putin. But what I'm not hearing is that the concerns Putin has voiced and which look to be quite likely a major motive for his current actions are being addressed.
Instead, it is being said that Putin's fears about NATO expansion are unfounded, because Ukraine isn't going to join anytime soon, anyway. In other words, his concerns are being dismissed.
That's basically like when your wife has been complaining for years that you spend too little time with her. And now she's about to divorce you, which you claim you absolutely want to avoid. And what do you do? You tell her that her concerns are unreasonable. That she has no reason to complain.
I can tell you exactly how this story is going to end. If John Gottman had written a guide on How to Seed Distrust, Break A Relationship and Make Life Miserable for Everybody, this would be it.
In fact, Gottman has a term for what the West is doing with Russia: Stonewalling. "It's all your fault, I've got nothing to do with it, and I'm not even going to listen to you any longer. Or I'll just pretend to be listening, but then turn around and tell everything you just said to me to my friends to prove just how crazy and unreasonable you are."
Thas is not de-escalation. I don't want to call it "provocation", because I don't want to take agency away from Russia (that would be ridiculous). But somewhere, somebody must have been able to predict that this kind of behavior is going to increase the likelihood of Putin doing something stupid and dangerous.
I'm grateful for places like HN where thoughts like these can be discussed. Because, frankly, the possibility of this thing escalating into WWIII concerns all of us. And once that happens, the question "Who started it?" or "Who is to blame?" will have become totally meaningless.
I mean, whose fault was WWI? I think not even the historians can tell at this point. And with WWII, it surely is a lot easier to say who started it. But at the same time, with hindsight, it is also obvious how Hitler could have been stopped early on. Perhaps as early as Versailles.
I understand that that kind of reasoning doesn't make for as good as a Disney movie where it's just that one bad person out there that needs to be overcome. But then again, hasn't C.G. Jung shown that even such stories are just symbols? That the evil we see personified "out there" might very well be something inside of us? Some fear, some desire to be right, to exert power, to blame, to fit in, to be comfortable -- or even just to have all the answers.
very interesting and thoughful post touching a full spectrum of topics. Please let me come back to you this week - my schedule is full, and I need time to digest what you wrote.
Cheers!
Have a good week!
There is an interview from today from Durão Barroso that was President of the European Commission for two terms. He says in 2014 Putin told him: "I could take Kiev in 2 weeks if I wanted to"
https://www.portugalresident.com/durao-barroso-warns-we-cant...
https://expresso.pt/internacional/entrevista-durao-barroso-l...
Q:"What has changed? has Putin changed?"
A:"...Some say that the man himself has changed: has Putin changed or the situation? Both things changed. President Putin, whom I knew until 2014, was the leader outside the EU I met the most. My office counted 25 times. But what has changed is, above all, his perception of the circumstances. The Putin I knew was a person with a deep resentment against Russian decadence. He himself said publicly that the greatest tragedy of the 20th century was the collapse of the USSR, not because of the collapse of communism, but because many Russians were left outside their homeland, and their Russian citizenship was not recognized. He's a man deeply scarred by resentment, but he's also someone who made rational calculations in terms of weighing the costs and benefits of each decision, and tactically seeing how far he could go..."
I think we are in danger of applying the wrong lesson from history.
People today say you cannot be a "Putin apologizer", or that looking for reasons for Putin's behavior was a form of "appeasement".
People who say these things believe they have learned from history. They look back at Hitler in 1938. Czechoslovakia. Austria. And, finally, Poland.
They look back at England and France, who, not wanting to risk war, sought ways to "appease" Hitler. And by doing that, they lost valuable time and allowed Hitler to grow stronger, making the situation much worse for the world.
Now, people are drawing the conclusion: "You should never try to appease a dictator!"
But I'd argue that this is the wrong conclusion.
What backfired back then is not that England and France tried to appease Hitler. What backfired was that the leaders of England and France grotesquely misread Hitler and his goals.
Their mistake was not that they tried to understand Hitler's motives. Rather, their mistake was precisely that they failed to accurately understand his motives. They did not do too much understanding. They did too little.
This is why the English public finally turned to Churchill. Because Churchill actually "grokked" Hitler:
He had formed an accurate mental model of Hitler's motives.
Did that make Churchill into a "Hitler apologist"? Not at all. Instead, it allowed him to accurately predict Hitler's next moves. It allowed him to predict that making territorial concessions to this man would never help to guarantee peace long-term.
Churchill was actually one of the few European leaders who had troubled to read "Mein Kampf". He also read the books written by Sebastian Haffner, a German who had chronicled his life under Hitler from inside Germany.
Whereas the others sought to resolve the situation by ignoring and disengaging, Churchill engaged with Hitler's thoughts. And he did so intimately and with a grave sense of personal responsibility for the outcome of this conflict (even though he did not start it).
When I see people today saying they cannot stand Putin, and therefore they don't want to hear what he says, because it's all lies and propaganda anyway, that worries me.
Even if Putin was a Hitler 2.0 (which is very doubtful, since History rarely repeats itself and reasoning by analogy often leads to spectacular failures), then that would mean that we should pay even more careful attention to his motives, and not less. We should pay even more careful attention on the outside contingencies and the mental frameworks that drive Putin's actions, and not less.
Nietzsche has said, "If you look into the abyss, the abyss looks back into you." And it almost seems that people are afraid of precisely that. They almost think that by not acknowledging a thing they don't like, it will go away.
Those who have been warning about a war in Ukraine have correctly pointed out that this strategy will not only not work. But that it will backfire.
So the true lesson from 1938 is not that one should "never negotiate with dictators".
The true lesson is that you have to make an effort to face the other party's viewpoint. To make an effort to understand the true motives, without any fear of what you might find.
That includes the fear of finding out that your own behavior might have contributed to the status quo. You need to let go of your comforting beliefs -- that things will "sort themselves out", that it's "just the other party's fault", that there's "nothing to learn or understand" because you already know exactly what the other party is really after, etc..
What made Churchill great, in my view, is that he was able to overcome all of those comforting beliefs. People respected him because he would tell them not what they would have liked to hear, but what they needed to know, and needed to face.
I think this is very, very different from what we're seeing today from our own leaders.
Our leaders are posturing. They claim that the inconvenient truth is that "Putin is worse than we thought", and that the necessary sanctions will require "sacrifices from all of us".
They try to sound like a Churchill. But they make no effort to be one. They imitate the outside posture, but they totally miss the inner essence.
Scholz said something very revealing. He said to Putin during that recent press conference (and I'm paraphrasing), "What do you care about Ukraine and NATO? It's not going to happen anytime during our terms of office anyway".
That isn't Churchill. That's Chamberlain.