A little too pessimistic, I think. Europe is coming together over Ukraine. Russia has emptied its gaols to man the front line in Ukraine. It is estimated that nearly a million Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded so far in the three years of the invasion of Ukraine. China needs the wealthy consumers in the West as much as we need the mass production of low priced technology that China and the East can produce. I am optimistic that Europe will prosper and prove an example for the regions of Latin America and South Asia. Certainly any war would destroy the prosperity that most of the world is enjoying at this stage in our development.
"Russia now has a war economy and Vladimir Putin is bent on restoring as much as he can of the Russian empire"
Horse sh _t.
Give us-& Russia a break. A sovereign nation has a right to defend itself against aggressors fixated upon destroying it, through, for example, basing N-weapons just a five minute ride from Moscow.
Try the seldom practiced thought experiment of these same missiles on the MEX: Texas border.
Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine has nothing to do with who has nuclear weapons pointed at whom, but with Russian history and historiography. Putin has stated this numerous times; see, for example, his long, rambling essay posted on the Kremlin website on July 12, 2021, about 7 months before the full-scale invasion, in which he writes about "the historical unity of Russia and Ukraine."
It's impossible to understand this war without understanding both Russian history AND Russian historiography, going back to the early Middle Ages. Putin is obsessed with this mythical history. If you've spent a lot of time with it, you'll start to notice things that most people, including journalists, don't because they can't; for instance, right after Feb. 24, 2022, President Macron stated publicly that every time he gets on the phone with Putin, he (Putin) holds forth for 45 minutes to an hour or more on the subject of "history." Those of us who understand how important this "history" is to Putin would have noticed how much of Tucker Carlson's interview of Putin last year was taken up by Putin's monologue about "history;" Tucker Carlson was quite obviously puzzled by it. If you've familiarized yourself with Russian history and historiography and follow the war closely, which means reading the social media posts of people close to Putin, you'll read posts, the meanings of which, will go right over the heads of at least 98% of journalists and the general population, all having to do with "history."
None of this was problematic for Putin when Viktor Yanukovych was president of Ukraine. Recall that right after the Rada revoked his presidency in 2014, Putin ordered the invasion of Crimea. Crimea is important for Putin because he believes that because the Rus' prince St. Volodymyr (the Ukrainian form; "Vladimir" is the Russian form. It's interesting to note, by the way, that the Ukrainian "Volodymyr," not the Russian "Vladimir," is the form used by the Medieval chroniclers, a fact that Putin ignores) was baptized in Crimea (in the Byzantine city of Chersonesus) in 988, Ukraine—but especially Crimea—belongs to Russia.
Note also, that a monument to "St. Vladimir" was unveiled in Moscow in 2016. Historian Serhii Pokhy writes that "the statue's height and central location make it more prominent than the one to Prince Yurii Dolgoruky, who is alleged to have founded Moscow in 1147 [...] The monument was officially unveiled on November 4, 2016—the Day of National Unity, a statutory holiday in Russia—by Vladimir Putin himself. The Russian president delivered a speech in the presence of the head of the Russian government, Dmitrii Medvedev, Patriarch Kirill of the Russian Orthodox Church, and the widow of Russia’s most celebrated national writer, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Vladimir Putin praised Prince Volodymyr as a 'gatherer and protector of the Russian lands and a prescient statesman who laid the foundations of a strong, united, centralized state, resulting in the union of one great family of equal peoples, languages, cultures, and religions.' Putin pointed out that the prince’s choice of Christianity 'became the joint spiritual source for the peoples of Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine, laying the foundations of the morals and values that define our life even to the present day.'"
Note Putin's choice of words here: He describes St. Volodymyr as the "*gatherer* and protector of the Russian lands." This gathering refers to his belief that Belarus', Ukraine, and Russia are one, indivisible. As long as Putin has Mr. Potatohead in place in Belarus', Belarus' doesn't pose a threat to this mythological history. But if the Belarus'ian opposition, now in exile in Latvia, were ever to come to power, or attempt to do so, it's likely Putin would invade Belarus'. We've already had a foretaste of this after the fake elections in 2020, when Putin helped Lukashenko out.
Serhii Plokhy. Lost Kingdom: The Quest for Empire and the Making of the Russian Nation (p. vii-viii). NY: Basic Books, 2017.
I loved reading Serhii Plokhy's "Lost Kingdom." I'm what I would classify as an advanced autodidact historian, mostly of Central and Eastern Europe. CEE history, especially Ukrainian history, is dense, but even more so for Westerners (I found the years of Ukrainian history c.1917-22 so unspeakably difficult that I very nearly threw my arms up in the air and gave up). I had to struggle with it for about 2 years before I was finally able to internalize it. Because I want non-historians to understand Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine, I'm always looking for books that I can recommend to them. This is one that I heartily recommend for those people.
As Prof. Timothy Snyder has pointed out, and as Prof. Plokhy writes in this book, Russia suffers from an identity crisis. There is no such thing as a country called "Russia." Before Great Britain became an empire, there was a country called England. Russia became an empire without first founding a country. Because Russia doesn't know what it is, it doesn't know what it *isn't* (Ukraine and Belarus'). Most historians trace the problem to Ivan IV, but I trace it to Ivan III when, after he threw off the Tatar Yoke for good in 1480, claimed a fake patrimony to southern Rus'. Northern and southern Rus' had been separated from each other since 1337. For that reason, both had developed very differently. The first major contact that most of the lands of Ukraine had were not with northern Rus', but with Poland which, by the way, explains why there's a 70% mutual intelligibility between Polish and Ukrainian. This is irrefutable proof that Ukraine doesn't belong to Russia. Most Westerners would be surprised to learn that if any country has legitimate territorial claims to Ukraine, it's not Russia but Poland. But Poland gave up its imperial claims to Ukraine, Belarus', and Vilnius when Juliusz Mieroszewski and Jerzy Władysław Giedroyć returned to Poland from exile in 1989. When Chancellor Helmut Kohl tried to reclaim western Poland, the response from Poland was, "We've given up our imperial claims and you must do the same." It worked. And talking of giving up imperial claims . . .
P.S. When I was reading about Mieroszewski and Giedroyć in Prof. Snyder's "The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus 1569-1999," I practically had to remind myself to breathe. That is THE most remarkable story in history that I've ever read.
Good! It was published in 2003, so it reads more like a dissertation than his later books, say, Bloodlands and Black Earth. But it helped me to fill in a lot of blanks about those four nations. It took Poland more than 10 years to convince Lithuania that it no longer had imperial ambitions against it. The Lithuanians had not forgotten Poland's annexation of Vilnius in 1920—even though there weren't very many Lithuanians in and around Vilnius at that time. The main goal of the Lithuanian nationalists after the Wehrmacht invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941 was not to get rid of their Jews, but the Poles, so they could form a Lithuanian national state.
I don’t think that invading a neighbor Country can be dismissed as self defense. Not to mention the fact that Russia’s missiles are very close to Ucrain’s and Europe’s borders as well (and they’re much more, Russia didn’t eliminate its nuclear missiles as fast as the US did). Up to now, the only Putin’s great achievement in protecting russian borders has been to push Finland and Sweden into the NATO; and since Putin didn’t complain this much about it and didn’t invade Scandinavia, I guess that self defense and borders’ protection are just excuses for an imperial program.
A sovereign nation has a right to defend itself against aggressors fixated upon destroying it, such as when a revanchist regime decides it wants to restore its former empire.
There is also a long of history of Russian aggression towards its neighbours and former subjects.
I plan to share this piece together with an earlier one on my blog with attribute. Would you be interested in an interview sometime? My questions to you would be partly that but also about your experiences before 1989. Please let me know and I can send you the questions. Thanks 👍
Bleakly persuasive, Tim. I’ve spent enough time watching our own State Parliament implode to recognise the scent of decline. The postwar order isn’t dying with a bang, just a slow, wheezing loss of credibility.
Everyone’s armed, unmoored and algorithmically radicalised. The concert’s over. The ushers are drunk. Cohen was right, what comes after America isn’t liberation, it’s entropy with a press pass.
The likelihood and severity of the period of geopolitical disorder you describe is likely to be accentuated due to the current neo-liberal order, the dominant economic dominant paradigm since the 1970s, has also been showing signs of reaching an impasse. The persistent exercise of unbound greed is increasingly pitting owners of corporations against the well-being of society and the planetary constraints to sustain life and civilisation.
We are 'In the glooming' with little prospect of a happy reconciliation, as is said to have happened with the couple this song was purportedly written about.(Poem written by Meta Orred and published 1874, was very popular America.)
I appreciate the hope you instill and "to-do" list with ideas for action, instead of sitting around bemoaning the situation. I'm so tired of people saying they hate what's happening followed by"but what can I do?" Plenty.
The myth goes around that Zeus loved Europa so much that he showered her with three priceless gifts:
• the first one was a bronze man, Talos, who served as a guard to her;
• the second was a dog, Laelaps, which could hunt anything she wanted;
• the last one was a javelin that had the power to hit the target, whatever it was.
DARE TO BELIEVE in THE IDEA of EUROPE and in the EUROPEAN PROJECT, making it possible to increase well-being and to play a powerful role on the world stage.
In the present interim period, we mark an era where the old times are over and where other forms, systems and ways of life are being explored and built, accompanied by (cyber) war, terror, sabotage, undermining and untold human suffering.
Europe is not only a story of tragedies, but also a story about universitas, the values and imagination. Based on new trends emerging in the field of corporate social responsibility and on innovative digital techniques, Europe is working towards more sustainable production and a fairer outcome of benefits and burdens, creating an era of ecomodernism and a concept of technological humanism.
But for protection, we desperately need Zeus' gifts.
A little too pessimistic, I think. Europe is coming together over Ukraine. Russia has emptied its gaols to man the front line in Ukraine. It is estimated that nearly a million Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded so far in the three years of the invasion of Ukraine. China needs the wealthy consumers in the West as much as we need the mass production of low priced technology that China and the East can produce. I am optimistic that Europe will prosper and prove an example for the regions of Latin America and South Asia. Certainly any war would destroy the prosperity that most of the world is enjoying at this stage in our development.
Timothy's article is not pessimistic but realistic about the world we now inhabit.
"Russia now has a war economy and Vladimir Putin is bent on restoring as much as he can of the Russian empire"
Horse sh _t.
Give us-& Russia a break. A sovereign nation has a right to defend itself against aggressors fixated upon destroying it, through, for example, basing N-weapons just a five minute ride from Moscow.
Try the seldom practiced thought experiment of these same missiles on the MEX: Texas border.
Thank you.
Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine has nothing to do with who has nuclear weapons pointed at whom, but with Russian history and historiography. Putin has stated this numerous times; see, for example, his long, rambling essay posted on the Kremlin website on July 12, 2021, about 7 months before the full-scale invasion, in which he writes about "the historical unity of Russia and Ukraine."
It's impossible to understand this war without understanding both Russian history AND Russian historiography, going back to the early Middle Ages. Putin is obsessed with this mythical history. If you've spent a lot of time with it, you'll start to notice things that most people, including journalists, don't because they can't; for instance, right after Feb. 24, 2022, President Macron stated publicly that every time he gets on the phone with Putin, he (Putin) holds forth for 45 minutes to an hour or more on the subject of "history." Those of us who understand how important this "history" is to Putin would have noticed how much of Tucker Carlson's interview of Putin last year was taken up by Putin's monologue about "history;" Tucker Carlson was quite obviously puzzled by it. If you've familiarized yourself with Russian history and historiography and follow the war closely, which means reading the social media posts of people close to Putin, you'll read posts, the meanings of which, will go right over the heads of at least 98% of journalists and the general population, all having to do with "history."
None of this was problematic for Putin when Viktor Yanukovych was president of Ukraine. Recall that right after the Rada revoked his presidency in 2014, Putin ordered the invasion of Crimea. Crimea is important for Putin because he believes that because the Rus' prince St. Volodymyr (the Ukrainian form; "Vladimir" is the Russian form. It's interesting to note, by the way, that the Ukrainian "Volodymyr," not the Russian "Vladimir," is the form used by the Medieval chroniclers, a fact that Putin ignores) was baptized in Crimea (in the Byzantine city of Chersonesus) in 988, Ukraine—but especially Crimea—belongs to Russia.
Note also, that a monument to "St. Vladimir" was unveiled in Moscow in 2016. Historian Serhii Pokhy writes that "the statue's height and central location make it more prominent than the one to Prince Yurii Dolgoruky, who is alleged to have founded Moscow in 1147 [...] The monument was officially unveiled on November 4, 2016—the Day of National Unity, a statutory holiday in Russia—by Vladimir Putin himself. The Russian president delivered a speech in the presence of the head of the Russian government, Dmitrii Medvedev, Patriarch Kirill of the Russian Orthodox Church, and the widow of Russia’s most celebrated national writer, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Vladimir Putin praised Prince Volodymyr as a 'gatherer and protector of the Russian lands and a prescient statesman who laid the foundations of a strong, united, centralized state, resulting in the union of one great family of equal peoples, languages, cultures, and religions.' Putin pointed out that the prince’s choice of Christianity 'became the joint spiritual source for the peoples of Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine, laying the foundations of the morals and values that define our life even to the present day.'"
Note Putin's choice of words here: He describes St. Volodymyr as the "*gatherer* and protector of the Russian lands." This gathering refers to his belief that Belarus', Ukraine, and Russia are one, indivisible. As long as Putin has Mr. Potatohead in place in Belarus', Belarus' doesn't pose a threat to this mythological history. But if the Belarus'ian opposition, now in exile in Latvia, were ever to come to power, or attempt to do so, it's likely Putin would invade Belarus'. We've already had a foretaste of this after the fake elections in 2020, when Putin helped Lukashenko out.
Serhii Plokhy. Lost Kingdom: The Quest for Empire and the Making of the Russian Nation (p. vii-viii). NY: Basic Books, 2017.
Great book!
I loved reading Serhii Plokhy's "Lost Kingdom." I'm what I would classify as an advanced autodidact historian, mostly of Central and Eastern Europe. CEE history, especially Ukrainian history, is dense, but even more so for Westerners (I found the years of Ukrainian history c.1917-22 so unspeakably difficult that I very nearly threw my arms up in the air and gave up). I had to struggle with it for about 2 years before I was finally able to internalize it. Because I want non-historians to understand Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine, I'm always looking for books that I can recommend to them. This is one that I heartily recommend for those people.
As Prof. Timothy Snyder has pointed out, and as Prof. Plokhy writes in this book, Russia suffers from an identity crisis. There is no such thing as a country called "Russia." Before Great Britain became an empire, there was a country called England. Russia became an empire without first founding a country. Because Russia doesn't know what it is, it doesn't know what it *isn't* (Ukraine and Belarus'). Most historians trace the problem to Ivan IV, but I trace it to Ivan III when, after he threw off the Tatar Yoke for good in 1480, claimed a fake patrimony to southern Rus'. Northern and southern Rus' had been separated from each other since 1337. For that reason, both had developed very differently. The first major contact that most of the lands of Ukraine had were not with northern Rus', but with Poland which, by the way, explains why there's a 70% mutual intelligibility between Polish and Ukrainian. This is irrefutable proof that Ukraine doesn't belong to Russia. Most Westerners would be surprised to learn that if any country has legitimate territorial claims to Ukraine, it's not Russia but Poland. But Poland gave up its imperial claims to Ukraine, Belarus', and Vilnius when Juliusz Mieroszewski and Jerzy Władysław Giedroyć returned to Poland from exile in 1989. When Chancellor Helmut Kohl tried to reclaim western Poland, the response from Poland was, "We've given up our imperial claims and you must do the same." It worked. And talking of giving up imperial claims . . .
P.S. When I was reading about Mieroszewski and Giedroyć in Prof. Snyder's "The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus 1569-1999," I practically had to remind myself to breathe. That is THE most remarkable story in history that I've ever read.
I’ve just got my copy of ‘The Reconstruction of Nations…’ ;)
Good! It was published in 2003, so it reads more like a dissertation than his later books, say, Bloodlands and Black Earth. But it helped me to fill in a lot of blanks about those four nations. It took Poland more than 10 years to convince Lithuania that it no longer had imperial ambitions against it. The Lithuanians had not forgotten Poland's annexation of Vilnius in 1920—even though there weren't very many Lithuanians in and around Vilnius at that time. The main goal of the Lithuanian nationalists after the Wehrmacht invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941 was not to get rid of their Jews, but the Poles, so they could form a Lithuanian national state.
I don’t think that invading a neighbor Country can be dismissed as self defense. Not to mention the fact that Russia’s missiles are very close to Ucrain’s and Europe’s borders as well (and they’re much more, Russia didn’t eliminate its nuclear missiles as fast as the US did). Up to now, the only Putin’s great achievement in protecting russian borders has been to push Finland and Sweden into the NATO; and since Putin didn’t complain this much about it and didn’t invade Scandinavia, I guess that self defense and borders’ protection are just excuses for an imperial program.
A sovereign nation has a right to defend itself against aggressors fixated upon destroying it, such as when a revanchist regime decides it wants to restore its former empire.
There is also a long of history of Russian aggression towards its neighbours and former subjects.
https://mountainrunner.substack.com/p/the-rhyming-of-history-and-russian
https://camarra.substack.com/p/putin-wages-war-against-the-democratic
https://howrude.substack.com/p/stop-blaming-the-west-for-ukraine
https://fpribalticinitiative.substack.com/p/contesting-russia-the-baltic-perspective
https://www.thebulwark.com/p/blaming-america-for-russian-aggression-then-and-now
I plan to share this piece together with an earlier one on my blog with attribute. Would you be interested in an interview sometime? My questions to you would be partly that but also about your experiences before 1989. Please let me know and I can send you the questions. Thanks 👍
Oh, oh! So bestätigen Sie leider all meinen Pessimismus!
Bleakly persuasive, Tim. I’ve spent enough time watching our own State Parliament implode to recognise the scent of decline. The postwar order isn’t dying with a bang, just a slow, wheezing loss of credibility.
Everyone’s armed, unmoored and algorithmically radicalised. The concert’s over. The ushers are drunk. Cohen was right, what comes after America isn’t liberation, it’s entropy with a press pass.
The chaos forces order…
Or as Star Wars would put it…
The light rises to meet the darkness.
An intriguing and sobering view of the future.
No kidding
The likelihood and severity of the period of geopolitical disorder you describe is likely to be accentuated due to the current neo-liberal order, the dominant economic dominant paradigm since the 1970s, has also been showing signs of reaching an impasse. The persistent exercise of unbound greed is increasingly pitting owners of corporations against the well-being of society and the planetary constraints to sustain life and civilisation.
We are 'In the glooming' with little prospect of a happy reconciliation, as is said to have happened with the couple this song was purportedly written about.(Poem written by Meta Orred and published 1874, was very popular America.)
I appreciate the hope you instill and "to-do" list with ideas for action, instead of sitting around bemoaning the situation. I'm so tired of people saying they hate what's happening followed by"but what can I do?" Plenty.
Liked it in the FT and approving of it again now. All too prophetically right...
The myth goes around that Zeus loved Europa so much that he showered her with three priceless gifts:
• the first one was a bronze man, Talos, who served as a guard to her;
• the second was a dog, Laelaps, which could hunt anything she wanted;
• the last one was a javelin that had the power to hit the target, whatever it was.
DARE TO BELIEVE in THE IDEA of EUROPE and in the EUROPEAN PROJECT, making it possible to increase well-being and to play a powerful role on the world stage.
In the present interim period, we mark an era where the old times are over and where other forms, systems and ways of life are being explored and built, accompanied by (cyber) war, terror, sabotage, undermining and untold human suffering.
Europe is not only a story of tragedies, but also a story about universitas, the values and imagination. Based on new trends emerging in the field of corporate social responsibility and on innovative digital techniques, Europe is working towards more sustainable production and a fairer outcome of benefits and burdens, creating an era of ecomodernism and a concept of technological humanism.
But for protection, we desperately need Zeus' gifts.