Bad behavior is almost always good politics (2021)
This book is spot on, except it should also mention the role centralized mass media and government education plays in brainwashing the public into echo chambers that support the leaders’ agenda and military apparatus — in times of conflict, the war effort. People believe “us” is their country’s people while “them” is the people who “voted” for the other side of the conflict they’re in. When in reality “us” is the civilians and “them” are the policians and military industrial apparatus, and top down mass media and education systems that try to pit us against each other.<p>Case in point: the war in Ukraine. At the moment there are perhaps <i>hundreds of thousands</i> of people fighting, either in armed forces or deputized civilians. But do they represent the <i>millions</i> of people who will be affected by starvation and bombs by their decisions to keep fighting? Weapons have been pouring in from all sides since 2015, and was localized into a proxy war in Donbass, but now the coflict has spread into all cities around Ukraine.<p>Civilians are told every day by their local mass media about atrocities committed by the other side, and little is said about why, say, a school was bombed or some other war crime was committed. People can’t personally witness everything, they get all their news digested and fed to them by their news networks.<p>As a result, many people want to fight to the last. They’ve been told that the enemy is close to laying down their arms and surrendering. This is especially true for able-bodied men whose country has been invaded.<p>The trouble is, that reality is far more complex and no one is about to stop fighting. Meanwhile, cities like Kherson are about to be without food due to supply chain disruption. Mundane, non-dramatic breakdowns like that is how millions of people enter a humanitarian crisis.<p>I have seen it before — Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria … neither the host country’s government nor the rebels are “defeated”, because weapons are funneled into the country endlessly by proxies, funded by countries where citizens sit in comfortable armchairs and post their thoughts on the Internet, while their politicians say things like “better the Russians fight them over there, than over here” (Schiff).<p>The object of my frustration is how the governments are conducting “peace talks”. While the blame for invasion lies squarely with Putin, the “leadership” in Kiev seems to be one of the most incompetent at negotiations I have ever seen. It is their job to negotiate peace, but first they venue shopped for a few days, then they came with zero demands “just to listen”, then the next time they came for a mere 2.5 hours and disbanded, only negotiating “humanitarian corridors”. Is it incompetence or malice? They are likely waiting for more weapons to arrive so homegrown fighters can defend the country some more. These fighters (and their national pride) have been radicalized by how the war in Donbas was reported over the years and are ready to fight, some might even asassinate their government if they made any peace deal. The problem is that they are vastly outnumbered by a “silent majority” of peaceful civilians who will have to starve and live in a war torn region because of all this.<p>Even Hamas and Israel regularly make peace. And they have a ton less in common than Russians and Ukrainians.<p>This war could have gone almost exactly like the Russo-Georgian war except in that one, a truce was negotiated by France and the Russians withdrew their armies a couple months into the conflict. Now Georgia continues to be an independent country.<p>Sometimes it gets dangerous for the whole world when nukes are involved. The nationalists want a no-fly zone. Zelensky appeals for it all the time. Russian television hosts like Kiselyiv almost embrace nuclear war and elimination of the humanrace to defend Russia and its territory. This is collective insanity. These people are prepared to start World War 3 before their nation is “humiliated” in any way, even if the way is largely symbolic.<p>When Khrustchev was able to “gift” Crimea from Russia to Ukraine with the stroke of a pen, everyone understood it mostly a formality. That’s because the two republics could simply come to an agreement about vacationing, employment, dual passports or whatever else. Visiting your relatives wasn’t even an issue. Planes flew direct flights between everywhere, and people had tons of ties. Those are the ties that bind. A decade of no direct flights and severed ties has taken its toll and even Zelensky complains about losing friends and business partners in Russia. This is a gradual process and the inexperienced politicians who can’t bridge the gap wind up sliding us civilians more and more into war. But the role of mass media and education is crucial for enabling these echo chambers and support for conflict between people who were not too long ago quite close.