Berlin, 27 Jun 2022. Dear J, my lines are coming late, but they are coming. I am truly pleased that you read my post about the Ukraine war, and even more that you found acceptable reasoning in my 25 cents of assessment. The exception is what I had to say about Switzerland, but we both know that we will not find common ground regarding these matters even if we should reach one hundred years of age. I stick to it: The Swiss alignment with European sanctions against Russia and some Russians is window-dressing. Switzerland, the world’s largest safe for dirty money, should and could do more. Swiss Finish as they called it a dozen years ago when banking was on the verge of collapse and the system required tightening of some rules.
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I will try to answer you a little bit. You suspect that my text puts me against the mainstream. I don’t know and I don’t care. I know what you mean because while a journalist, I had my share of cross currents from various sides (the nastiest one in Zurich where I learned that “good person” – “Gutmensch” – had become an expletive). What I do care about because it bothers me a great deal is a certain naïveté, maybe coupled with arrogance, in the public as well as in publicized opinion. I mean the naïveté of astonishment and abhorrence before the realities of war, death, mutilation etcetera. It made me queasy in the first days of the war already, when I traveled in the US and listened to National Public Radio: The reporters and interviewers (mostly women) on site and in the Washington studios bent over backwards with empathy and sensitivity, through the loudspeakers you could almost feel the tears welling up when they interviewed the bombarded and the fleeing in Kiev. Maybe those were real emotions and maybe not (one of the ten commandments of media consumption reads: Never trust a published emotion), but at any rate they testified to a very selective perception of reality. There were God knows how many wars since the end of the cold one which taught us what happens «in the field». I cannot – for instance – remember this much publicly shown compassion for the victims of Israeli revenge actions in Gaza, not to speak of the horrors committed in the Congo.
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The other naïveté-cum-arrogance is the one I touched in my lines from Berlin/Treptow. I think, several cohorts of observers and reporters are not conscious any more how different and how dangerous the extension of armed conflict into the nuclear dimension is and can be. I occupied myself a lot with these matters in the past, and I know that ever since the arsenals were made smaller and more precise. It is possible today to deploy nuclear battlefield weapons in such a way that physical contamination remains limited. Who is sure that the Russians will not use these instruments when their casualties are too high or success to far away? Surely, the use of nuclear weapons by a nuclear power would be a dangerous strategic quantum leap. A while ago, I came across a new book of a Harvard professor, a Ukrainian: Serhii Plokhy, Nuclear Folly – A history of the Cuban Missile Crisis. The author dismisses the mainstream-tale (I avoid the non-word «narrative» – you too?) of Kennedy heroism. He concentrates on the many errors on both sides during the decisive days and on the ton of luck by which the decision-makers avoided the catastrophe that was hazarded. One example: Until the very end, American planning included a military invasion of Cuba. However, the folks around Kennedy were not aware that the number of Soviet troops on the island was way higher than they thought, and that the Soviet commander on site had the authority to deploy nuclear weapons against an invader if he saw fit. It was much later than this detail came to light, I think in the nineties. Thanks God Kennedy and Khrushchev were conscious of the danger and the implications of a nuclear escalation which both wanted to avoid at any rate. I doubt whether this is the case today. Putin and even more so his entourage are quoted with scary statements, and on the American side there seems to be a wide gap in strategic thinking. The «Atlantic Magazine» recently had an article about the lack of knowledge among today’s American brass of the Cuban crisis and of strategic reasoning in the nuclear dimension of war. If you see how casually American language integrates the atomic bomb (nuclear option in Congress, nuking the cold coffee in the microwave), and if you remember the skullduggery of President Trump (applying the bomb against hurricanes), your head starts spinning.
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I think Biden was right in promising further military support for Ukraine (hopefully including the fruits of intelligence and the capabilities for cyber war), but in making a clear distinction: no American soldiers (which also means no NATO soldiers) to the front and no aid for attacks on Russia. But I doubt that the line can be drawn clearly (the Russians just let us know that they captured Polish soldiers), and I am sure that split-second decisions on interpreting the situation will have to be made. This is why German chancellor Scholz is right in underlining the importance of open communication channels with Russia
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Which mainstream am I going against? I don’t know. It is abundantly clear who is the aggressor. It is Russia. The argument that «the west» (what is this, anyways?) provoked Russia with the offer of NATO-membership to Ukraine is bullcrap. Not mere nonsense but red meat for those who locate all evil of the world in Washington, D.C. Why should a European country not join NATO if it so wants? Why not an Eastern European country that knows how it feels to live under Russian hegemony? Why should Ukraine not be allowed to be a European country, if it decides to do so? Putin and the Russians (most of them, as one reads) see it differently and dispute Ukraine’s own statehood and sovereignty, because it «always» was Russian, etcetera. This too is balderdash. Historical drivel. It reminds me of those Israel-trolls who legitimize the occupation of the West Bank with «historical» situations from Biblical times. If you start arguing like this, you can justify almost every war, and if you start doing so in Europa, you should be aware of robust resistance. Has our continent not learned to relativize such «historic» legitimation of war and violence, to lay them to rest and to “sublate” it in a larger togetherness?
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At this point the attack on Ukraine concerns us as Europeans, more and stronger than the wars in the Congo or in the Middle and Near East. We too must resist. The Ukrainian soldiers not only die for the continued existence of their country but also for the European idea that countries cannot just erased off the map because a large neighbor lay claim to them for “historical reasons. Above all others, it is the European countries which have to resist, most preferably in unison. The attack on Ukraine is for common Europe (if not the European Community) something akin to 9 September in the US – Europe’s nine eleven. I find it right that weapons are going to Ukraine, and the weapons the Ukrainians need at that: Cannons, rockets, tanks. I find it ok that they are delivered as long as Ukraine is willing to fight. And I do not find it right that Switzerland refuses to provide the ammunition for those weapons. If we are able to trade arms o war-waging Saudi Arabia because some smart alecks in the economics ministry weaseled a way to approve the deal, we should be able to provide armament to an attacked European country. The point here is not «neutrality» but the Swiss habit to view everything lying one inch outside of the border as «Ausland» – «foreign territory». There is a mixed zone here. It is called Europe and we belong. Europa is not «Ausland». I know, J., that we will never agree on this one. But arguing a little bit could be worth our while.
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I suspect that we could be of one mind at another level. I detect a certain herd mentality in matters Ukraine, and I cannot stand it – as maybe you cannot either. Surely, a lot of people are upset, they do not want to simply take notice of the attack but “do something.” Me too. But I am concerned about the exclusiveness and the readiness to exclude, and also the cheap radicalism against all who think differently. No, I don’t find it ok to just cry uncle out of angst of atomic war. One must resist, also against fearmongering. Forty years ago, fear of the Russians was used to keep us from protesting the deployment of Pershing-II missiles in Europe. Millions did it anyway and forced their governments to give up. This success, I guess, is the reference point of the green element among the tough talkers on the political spectrum. That’s fine. But military resistance against the invasion belongs to the Ukrainians. It is not for us, to rile them up like a football team (if anything, it would be for us, the ever-so-neutral Swiss, to out and possibly punish the gold buyers and the shady lawyers of the oligarchs). There is no reason to disinvite Russian sportsmen from competition or to boycott Russian artists’ performances. Why can it not be enough to soberly do the necessary while taking into account the risks? This is not end vogue these days. If you want to look for a mainstream, you can find two of them in the detritus of publicized opinion. One consists of the Putin-trolls and the snake oil vendors which blank out the European dimension of the war and find ways to blame the Americans for it. In the other mainstream you find the Never-Give-Uppers which make the unlimited fight to the last Ukrainian man a litmus test for the correct reading of the situation. They are led by, of all people, the slippery doctor Johnson in London whose schtick is to badmouth everything that looks like a common European effort. Copycats can be found everywhere, also in Zurich. It should be added that those who never had to wear a uniform among the politicians and pundits very often are the first ones to demand military action.
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I am just wee bit reminded of what the older generation related about the fifties, when the anticommunist red-baiter McCarthy was lording over public opinion in the US (it was, by the way, a representative of the military who cut him down). We had that too in Switzerland – the Neue Zürcher Zeitung and Konrad Farner, you know. And now they sprout again, the toxic flowers of «Landesverteidigung», the «spiritual defense of the country». Already, the artillery colonel who does the military reporting for NZZ, is demanding a «strengthening of the will to resist» in the population. A while ago, I read an interview with a war strategy expert of ETH university. He diagnosed a «Kriegswiderwillen» in Germany. «war aversion» in the Ukrainian case. A word out of the vocabulary of world-war-militarists. It did not register with the interviewing journalist
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It’s only me. But I take such episodes as signs of the times, and I feel uneasy.
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1967, during the Six-Days-War, I was in 10th grade. Guided by the gym teacher, a moment of action in support of Israel was organized, with flags, probably a speech, and abundant scorn of the Egyptian infantry fleeing barefoot through the desert. Everybody joined in, the whole school. I was among the very few who kept a distance. I understood the Israeli dilemma and I had no doubt of Israel’s right to existence. But I resented the war-whooping and the hooray. It was like rhythmic clapping at a concert – which I hate.
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These days, I am reminded of that moment.