Like a lot of folks, I wasn't sure that Russia would actually invade Ukraine, and if they did, I figured they'd occupy the Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics and call it a day. I, and all those other people, were terribly wrong. As I write this, Russia is slowly, but maybe not so surely, pounding Ukrainian cities into dust, presumably hoping to achieve its grotesque, nationalist goal of conquest before its supply lines run dry and/or its economy collapses.
I'm no expert on anything, especially Russia, Ukraine, or Eastern Europe in general, so I'm not going to opine at length about the origins of this war. I will say that I've been incredibly disappointed by the responses offered by many American leftists, including the DSA International Committee, which is clearly caught up in some lazy-ass thinking about imperialism. I'm not even that pleased with the National Writers Union statement, but at least that emphasized that arms dealers are the real winners of this war, no matter the outcome. There are plenty of thoughtful responses from the left as well, many of them coming from Eastern Europe, so it's not shamefully rigid thinking across the board, but I bring the issue up because it's embarrassing to see people more concerned about, say, abolishing NATO than starting from a point of self-determination (and self-defense) and acknowledging agency for places like Ukraine. I don't have to be an expert on foreign affairs or Eastern Europe to understand that people and nations (whatever you may think of nation-states as a concept, or particular states) aren't pawns for imperial powers, to be pushed around a sphere of influence-shaped chessboard. They deserve to be engaged with on their own terms, and determine their own futures.
I think this is important because this war—beyond the awful suffering it's inflicting on so many—seems qualitatively different than a lot of the conflicts we've seen in the past decade or so. Not only because it threatens a wider war in Europe, and presents the first serious threat of nuclear war since I was a kid, but because a sclerotic, tottering imperial power has decided to take one last shot at glory and appears to have overplayed its hand. Sure, Russia is likely to prevail in one sense or another, but it'll come at a punishing cost. It already appears that Russia is lurching towards becoming a Chinese client state, and has clamped down hard on any internal dissent. Whether that state of affairs holds, or something happens and the Russian state is toppled (to be replaced by who knows what), there's a palpable sense that the old global order is being rearranged in ways nobody can really foresee. Russia, the United States, The European Union, China— all of these entities will keep treating their internal minorities and less powerful neighboring (and not-so-neighboring) states horribly while ignoring the climate catastrophe and pursuing untenable (supra)national agendas. The multipolar world some think is coming into being won't be much of an improvement on US hegemony, or the older bipolar world of the Cold War. And there's no coherent, flexible approach to any of this coming from the left, which means the right-wingers get to keep controlling the narrative and driving us off a cliff. Everyone—not just the left—is stuck in old modes of thinking, yours truly included, and it seems like we'll be theorizing the literal death throes of the human world using hollow language up until the very end.
But you know what? I could be utterly wrong. Hell, I probably am. Maybe this is one of those events that turns out to be a link in a long, subtle chain that leads to fundamental changes in how the world works. I'm not holding my breath for an optimistic outcome, but I'm also not ruling one out, at least in the long term. There's always the possibility of renewal and revival, because the only constant is change.
Fuck, though. It's absolutely heartbreaking to think that whatever shape the future takes, it's being forged right now in a crucible fueled by human corpses. I don't even want to think about what it'll mean if nuclear weapons are used. Humanity has never come to terms with what it unleashed at Trinity, and if nukes are used again, we may never get the chance.
Maybe I'll have more coherent thoughts soon. Maybe I'll just go back to annotating the Thousand Character Classic. Either way, I'm going to help the people of Ukraine as best I can, and try to stay as even-keeled as possible as I navigate this blood-soaked, mutant world of ours. 生死大事, indeed.
