From Tepid to Hot!

At the end of WWII, we went from hot wars to cold wars that ensued until the fall of the Berlin Wall, give or take a few years. We have been in a Tepid War ever since, well, until last week. We just went from Tepid to Hot! Just how hot it will get is anyone’s guess, but it doesn’t take much to make a limited war a world war. 

On July 28, 1914, Cavrilo Princip, a Serbian Nationalist, shot Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife. The fatal gunshots that rang out in Sarajevo that sunny day resulted in a world war in which 17 million people died and 25 million suffered injuries. It didn’t have to be!

Europe of that day was a conglomeration of empires with secret treaties propping them up, pledging mutual military support, with generally high regard for members of the nobility. Austria Hungary had to avenge the death of its next Emperor. Germany had to protect itself from Russia, The Ottoman Empire had to support its allies and Great Britain had to feign support for France. Historians still argue over the real causes of “the war to end all wars,” but Cavrilo gets most of the blame.

Russia invaded Ukraine last week. We now live under a new world order.

The NYT editorial, on February 24, 2022, may have said it best:

“The magnitude of the Russian gambit is staggering. Whatever Mr. Putin’s ideas on how Ukraine should relate to Russia, whatever his grievances over Western encroachment on what he perceives as Russia’s sphere of influence, whatever his views on Russia’s place in Europe and the world, an unprovoked invasion of a sovereign European state is an unprovoked declaration of war on a scale, on a continent and in a century when it was thought to be no longer possible...  There will be body bags.”

Putin signaled months ago that Ukraine was in the crosshairs and belonged to Russia, politically and culturally. Most Ukrainians disagreed.  Many didn’t believe him. Too many ignored his bluster, World leaders couldn’t imagine a European country invading another. It really hasn’t happened since WWII, when international law ruled out this sort of thing. Russia proclaimed international law null and void.

In a speech to the Russian people, Putin proclaimed two small sections of Ukraine, Donetsk, and Luhansk, to be independent states. True, they were centers of Russian resistance, but they were controlled by Ukraine. Putin declared that it was necessary to invade Ukraine to provide for the safety of Russian nationals in those two areas. Then he invaded from the north, the south, and the east. Tanks rolled, rockets flew, troops came ashore near Odessa, airfields were bombed, cyber attacks cut off communications, and women and children fled. Every man eighteen to sixty years old was ordered to stay and fight. And fight they did, slowing the Russian advance to the capital and other major cities. Russia had the missiles but Ukraine had the hearts of its people.

Ukraine isn’t a member of the EU or NATO, so it is on its own in this battle. The rest of Europe can provide it with arms and equipment, impose economic sanctions on Russia, and wring their hands in despair, but that might not help much in the end. Putin warned the west that if they interfered in Ukraine, they would face “such consequences that you have never encountered in your history,” a clear statement that he was prepared to retaliate with nuclear weapons. On Sunday, he put the nuclear forces in a “special regime of combat duty.”

The West has cut Russia out of SWIFT,[i] the international bank clearinghouse. Without access to SWIFT, Russians can’t trade in anything but rubles, and they can’t exchange them for any other currency. They can’t bring dollars or Euros into Russia or use foreign currency to live outside the country. Switzerland froze all Russian assets in its banks, an unheard-of reversal of its claim to neutrality that has reigned for many decades. On Sunday, Europe closed its air space to all Russian-controlled airplanes, including private planes. Ukraine looks like a donut hole on the map of planes in the air. Unless a Russian wants to go to China, they are pretty much forced to stay in the country.

So what does this all mean for the future of Europe and the U.S.? It is too early to tell, but one can imagine, can’t one?

The best-case scenario has Russia realizing the error of Putin’s ways, going home, and paying for the damage it inflicted. Not likely!

Putin’s stated objective is to decapitate the government of Ukraine, take out the military, and install a puppet government that it can control. That would give Russia control over the vast mineral resources of Ukraine as well as the food production capability of the nation.[ii]

The worst-case scenario is that Russia sees how easy it is to take over one former soviet state and then it decides to take over another former member of the Soviet Union. That means an all-out war on the continent. China is watching how the U.S. responds to Russia. That will give Beijing a hint to how we would respond if it tried to take Taiwan by force.

NATO’s[iii] members are bound by Article #5 which calls for collective defense: if one country is attacked, it is considered an attack on all member states and that all members will come to the aid of other members. The only time Article #5 has been invoked was on 9/11/2001. An invasion of Poland, or the Baltic countries would put NATO at war with Russia. It would put the U.S. at war with Russia.

The rub, of course, is that you have another world war. Today’s military equipment is too sophisticated to allow for fighting like past wars. Simply knocking out a few satellites brings down the internet worldwide; a bit of computer hacking brings down the electric grid, a bit more shuts down the bank ATM machines. Rockets can still reach the U.S. mainland in less than thirty minutes. Are we ready for that?

Are we ready to send hundreds of thousands of troops and armament to the European continent? Are we ready to reinstitute the draft for both men and women? Are we ready to …?

I don’t like Hot!

[i] SWIFT is the Society of Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications located in Belgium.

[ii] Ukraine’s vast resources include large amounts of uranium and other minerals. Today 42.6% of Ukrainian exports go to the E.U.

[iii] NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) consists of 30 member states, most of Western Europe and  Canada, and the U.S. 

 It was meant to be a relaxing day: sunny, warm for the time of year, blue sky, nothing on the schedule. Then I read the morning readings: online newspapers, favored blogs, unfavorable musings just to “keep the enemy closer.”[i] What could go wrong?

I read about a former president’s Texas rally, where he called his base of supporters to march in the streets if prosecutors across the country tried to take him to court for felony crimes, including trying to overthrow the government, to which he admits involvement. At that same rally, he stated that he had encouraged the Vice President to alter the results of the Electoral College votes because he had the right to do that.  

Then, there was an article reporting efforts by legislators and ultra-conservatives to ban books by the hundreds from school libraries. And to add interest to the day, I read an in-depth review of a new book by Barbara Walter, How Civil Wars Start and How to Stop Them. It was not to be a relaxing day no matter the sunshine in mid-winter.

Walter is a professor at the University of California San Diego. She spent thirty years studying civil wars. She has the chops to help us understand the phenomena. Her research spans the globe’s uprisings over the centuries. She concludes that there are three early indicators of potential civil wars.[ii]

The first is when a country begins to trend away from democracy or moves away from autocracy. The Polity Index developed by the Political Instability Task Force measures those movements using a +10 to -10 scale. They place the U.S. smack dab in the middle with other countries defined as anocracies, neither democracies nor autocracies. We can argue about our place on the scale,[iii] but data, developed over several decades, shows us moving further away from a true democracy than more of us think we are.[iv] Anocracies are most vulnerable to civil uprisings.

The second indicator is factionalism, defined as when a political party is based on ethnicity, religion, or race instead of ideology. This is the point where politics goes from being about the good of the country and more toward the interest of their members and their group.[v]

The third indicator is when a dominant group senses a loss of status reversal. On a Washington Post Live broadcast with Jonathan Capehart, Walter said that a large segment of Americans is experiencing status issues. She says, interestingly, that it isn’t Republicans vs. Democrats or whites vs. blacks so much as it is whites vs. brown people and Christians vs. Muslims and Nones.

If Walter is correct, we should prepare for more insurrections, for more street fighting. The “Troubles” in Ireland[vi] might be the model rather than Gray and Blue armies marching toward the capitol.

Last week, speaking before a Federalist Society meeting in Florida, the former Vice President stated the issue saying, “I had no right to overturn the election … The truth is there’s more at stake than our party or our political fortunes. If we lose faith in the Constitution, we won’t just lose elections – we’ll lose our country.”

Mike Detmer, a candidate for the Michigan Senate told his followers that they needed to show up armed to ensure that they can observe vote counting in the next election.[vii] He went on to explain that the Second Amendment is there to let the government know that the people are armed and ready to “lock and load.”

Thirty-four states have bills before them designed to make it more difficult for people to vote. Most will pass into law, including possibly a bill or two that allows the legislature to overturn the results of elections; although that was a bridge too far for the Speaker of the Arizona House who ensured the bill would not see the light of day.

Last week the National Republican Committee censured two sitting members of the House because they are willing to serve on the committee investigating the January 6, 2021 insurrection. The RNC described the assault on the Capitol as “persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse.” Generally, ordinary citizens visiting the Capitol don’t bring war-grade guns while dressed as trained militia.

Then, I read a news article about the ban-the-books movement that engrosses the nation, often promoted as moms and dads seeking input into what kind of books are in the school library. A political candidate in Texas asked the state school board to review over 850 books that he and his supporters find objectionable.[viii]

The books on the list include classics used in grade schools and high schools for years. MAUS, a graphic novel about the Holocaust is very popular for banning because it has one drawing of a semi-naked woman in a bathtub, never mind that the book won a Pulitzer Prize.  Within weeks of its banning in a school district in Tennessee, it rose to #1 on the Amazon best-seller list.

If you want a teenager to read a book, ban it!

So, what is the point?

The U.S. is in a period of severe flux to be sure. Iron-clad truths are questioned, long-established institutions tossed about, and millions are seemingly willing to accept political power struggles as the new norm. All of these are moves away from democracy. They are power plays, always in the name of preserving our way of life. Is it serious? Yes! Will we outlive it? I think we can but who knows? We can if the majority of people erect a firewall to prevent armed insurrections, tearing institutions asunder, and call for renewed adherence to traditional approaches to governance. At some point, someone has to say, “Enough is enough.”

For the republic to survive, political parties must focus on ideology and programs that move us toward a more perfect union. We must come to grips with the idea that this isn’t our grandparent’s country. It is a younger nation with younger ideas looking for younger leaders. This cohort wants the people to rule, not some party. We need to accept the migration to urban areas where high-skill jobs await. 

We must remember what happened in other countries when the party and the party leader became more important than the free exercise of democracy. Where shall we start – Hong Kong, China, Russia, the USSR, Sudan, Ethiopia, Congo, Eritrea, Rwanda, Argentina, Chile, Uganda, Myanmar, etc? It always started with a small group discontent with changing power cells, loss of influence, or unhappiness with immigrants and the economic system.

 

In our current state of affairs, we have a political party hell-bent on making it difficult for people to vote. The most popular talking heads on cable TV continually foment distrust of opponents and transform public health precautions into political actions that keep the pandemic going. It’s the Proud Boys spewing white nationalism and anti-Semitism, then being described as “good people” by our national leader. It's a political party's strategy to create distrust of the electoral process. Book banning and book burning limits education rather than encourage it.

Each action is one small step in our national journey away from democratic ideals.  

The point is we have always criticized other countries for these same misbehaviors. Are we no longer any better than them?

Are we no longer the shining city on the hill casting a bright beacon for democracy?

Are we no longer us?

 

 

 

 

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[i]The Prince, Nicole Machiavelli, “keep your friends close and your enemies closer,” “One who deceives will always find those who allow themselves to be deceived.”

[ii] New York Times, 01/18/2022, How Civil Wars Start and How to Stop Them, Barbara F. Walter, PhD

[iii] A group sponsored by the CIA originally maintained the Polity Index. Many political scientists question its approach but generally use it as a reference to track political movement in a country, trends if not absolute progress.

[iv] We can argue that we are a republic, not a democracy, but that isn’t the point.

[v] NYT ibid

[vi] The Troubles lasted from 1960-to 1998. It began when Catholics demanded equal treatment from the Protestant ruling party, and it was a fight to free the country from England. 3,500 people died because of the conflict which included street fighting and assignations on a regular basis.

[vii] Detroit News, January 31, 2022

[viii] Matt Krause, a member of the Texas Legislature, who is running for Attorney General sent a letter to all school districts in the state asking them if they have any of the 850 books in their school libraries or in classrooms because the books might make students “feel discomfort, guilt, anguish … because of race or sex.”