On Putin’s Vanity War

I thought that we were better than this.

When I was in school, we were taught history and especially the history of how war had shaped the world – the boundaries of nations, their governments, and their political and economic alliances. I always thought that the trajectory of civilization was upward and positive; certainly there were regressions and areas of backwards savagery, but overall there were fewer reasons to go to war, fewer instances of brutal takeovers of territory in the name of expanding an empire.

The Berlin wall and the eventual dissolution of the USSR were prime examples of this trend. East Germany became free and joined West Germany; Poland, Hungary, the Baltic republics, and the rest regained their long-lost sovereignty.

But now, for no reason that anybody can see except for his personal desire to “make Russia great again”, Vladimir Putin has decided to wage war on Ukraine in order to bring it back into the Russian orbit of influence. He obviously plans to subjugate the Ukrainian people with as much force and terror and he can bring to bear. When that is done, he will annex Ukraine or at least install puppet rulers who will toe the Moscow line. So somehow, despite the trend of of civilized behavior among nations, he has chosen to revert to an atavistic mode of operation in order to get what he wants.

The most striking image of the war for me is the man sitting at the foot of the gurney that holds the body of his teenaged son, with the father’s head bent down to the gurney. We can’t see the body, but a sheet was put over the boy when the blood was still wet, so that we can see the bright red blood staining the sheet. Losing your home is one thing, but losing your beloved child – the heart just aches to see that poor man sobbing. And the boy’s death was for nothing but to satisfy Putin’s ego.

It is thrilling to see how the rest of the world responded – well, the rest of the civilized world. Messages of support are being issued by most governments, aid of all kinds is being sent, even active military support is being contemplated by the Western nations. Most of all, ordinary people have rallied to express their support of the Ukrainians and their desires for an independent and peaceful life out from under the Russian heel. Even in Russia there have been protests (which of course have been put down with force and prison terms because freedom of speech is just a joke there). The Internet and the news media have greatly facilitated and accelerated this swell of opinion from all sides – a shining moment for the people working for these entities, God bless ‘em, especially for those who were killed reporting on the war.

Now, along with the yellow ribbons and the Stars and Stripes, the blue and yellow of the Ukrainian flag will be a symbol of the human aspiration to be free. I was startled when a friend concluded a phone conversation with me by saying, “Pray for Ukraine”, but I loved the sentiment. I hope that every free-minded person in the world is saying frequently to his family and friends “Pray for Ukraine”, “Free Ukraine”, and just “Ukraine!”

Those countries who have refused to condemn Russia include China, India, Pakistan, Belarus, North Korea, and Syria. Belarus and Syria, of course, are under Russia’s thumb; China, India, and North Korea have ambitions of their own to take or keep territory that contains people who want to be independent, so those three have no incentive to condemn Putin for the type of action that they themselves might take. Pakistan ostensibly wanted to refrain from taking sides, but this seems more a case of hedging their bets with regard to future handouts from Russia than a principled stance.

So good news and bad news. The bad news is the war, which has made Putin the current holder of the title Most Hated Man In the World. I heard on NPR something about Putin, apparently from back when Russia was re-subjugating Crimea. There is a Russian song about rape – I hope one that speaks of it in realistic and not laudatory terms – that Putin publicly quoted a line from. I can’t remember the exact line, but it ran something like this: “There is nothing you can do, my beauty, so do not resist”. What a striking illustration of his mindset his quoting of that line is!

But the good news is that people everywhere have been moved to support peace and self-determination. I hope that the US and the other countries in a position to support Ukraine in the war do not hesitate to pull out all the stops in order to check Putin and his armies. In the history of the world, this is clearly a war between good and evil going on. Like the Resistance heroes in Star Wars, we should not hesitate to step in and ensure that the good guys win. The good guys, of course, would be most of the people in the world.

Maybe after all, we “are better than this”: maybe it is clear that what most of the people in the world is not domination of other people, but just living in peace with them. As the late Rodney King once asked plaintively, “Can’t we all just get along?”