How Can We Exit from the Human Carnage in Front of Us (Updated blog from 3/2)

 

How Can We Exit From The Human Carnage In Front of Us

MARCH 4, 2022

We have to give Putin an off ramp,—but one which guarantees the enduring peace and the future sovereignty and stability of the nation of Ukraine 

  

As I have written, while there is blame to go around in what brought us to this calamity over the last 20 years, there is absolutely no justification for the cruel, life-taking and unprovoked  attack which Russia has launched on Ukraine. I have no ambivalence but that we have done the right and only thing in imposing the very severe sanctions and currency restrictions on Russia that we have.  My hope is that this, combined with the inspiring resistance of the Ukrainian people and President Zelensky and increasing protests from the Russian people will cause Putin to pull back, to recognize that the decision to proceed was a mistake.  That the costs of continuing are too high for Russia and the Russian people to bear. And that the future of his leadership is at stake. As a result, good faith negotiations would be undertaken.

 

But there is another result that could come from this. A draconian result. One that is in front of us as I write this. Putin could declare that what has happened here is the manifestation of the West declaring war to hurt and  obliterate Russia that led him to demand Ukraine be in Russia’s orbit in the first place.  He could claim that this is the continuation of the West's encircling and attacking Russia that he has declaimed for decades.  And from this, he could say he is justified in going on an all-out attack on Ukraine, blitzkrieging its cities with bombs and rockets which he has not done here until now--but is beginning to do now-- and which he has the capability of doing. 

 

All of which leads me to say that without compromising our basic principles,  we should consider giving Putin an "off ramp", an outcome which allows him to claim some form of victory as incomplete as it is compared to his messianic, malevolent and delusional vision of making Ukraine part of a greater Russia.

 

What that off ramp might be could, I believe, involve iron clad agreements along these lines: 

 

1.    Ukraine will not become a part of NATO in the foreseeable future.  We wouldn’t agree or say that it “never” could be, but it won’t occur for the foreseeable future.  Which indeed is the plain, simple truth.

2.     The Russian armed forces will leave the borders of Ukraine immediately and completely.

3.     All parties, Russia, the West, all parties, agree that there will be NO armed forces in Ukraine other than those of the Ukrainian government. Neutrality prevails as was agreed decades ago in Austria. 

4.     There will be agreement by all parties, including Russia, that Ukraine will remain an independent sovereign nation without interference from other nations of any kind.

5. Crimea will remain part of Russia.

6. Sanctions against Russia, at least the most severe ones will be lifted. 

7.  The Minsk Agreement will be carried out, including providing appropriate regional autonomy to the Donbass and Luhansk regions. 

The first step to agree and implement these agreements will be to lay down arms, stop the killing, and begin good faith talks on a tight timetable. 

I have no idea if this can be agreed to or whether it suggests a path to a principled and sustained solution. I know the parties right now are far apart in their intent and their avowed views of what is right. It may be too late to avert the catastrophe. I hope not.

I am convinced that something along these lines is the only alternative to the truly dooms -day scenario in front of us for all parties-- the loss and decimation of hundreds of thousand, indeed millions of Ukrainian lives and a continued boiling human crisis in that country and if it is under Russian occupation. This would go on for years. It will make Russia's ten years in Afghanistan look like a cake-walk. And the Russian economy will crater, destroying the livelihood and well being of tens of millions of people. And there will be a geo-political contest that raises the risk of nuclear war. 

Whatever the difficulty of resolving differences, what ever the reality that there will need to be compromise, surely this is the right path to pursue. 

 

A Cruel and Suicidal Decision--A Humanitarian Disaster

 

I am reading a book written decades ago which expresses how I feel this morning about Putin's catastrophically wrong and cruel decision to invade Ukraine--a decision which is already costing an untold loss of life and which I believe  history will record as totally against the interests of  the nations  and people of Ukraine, Russia and the entire world. Never in the last seventy years has the action of one man and his administration created such a humanitarian disaster.

 

The book:  The Face of War by Martha Gellhorn.  

Gellhorn was a fearless war correspondent who covered wars from the Spanish Civil War in 1937 through the wars in Central America in the mid-80s.  She was a leading journalistic voice of her generation.  Her candid reporting reflected her deep empathy for people no matter their political ideology and the openness and vulnerability of her conscience. 

 

In the Introduction to her book written in 1986, she writes:

 

“Only governments prepare, declare and prosecute wars.  There is no record of hordes of citizens on their own mobbing the seat of government to clamor for war.  They must be infected with hate and fear before they catch war fever.  They have to be taught that they are endangered by an enemy, and that the vital interests of their state are threatened.  The vital interests of the state, which are always about power, have nothing to do with the vital interests of the citizens, which are private and simple and are always about a better life for themselves and their children.  You do not (or I would say should not) kill for such interests, you work for them.”

 “An aggressor government sells its people a project of war as a defensive measure:  they are being threatened, encircled, pushed around; enemies are poised to attack them.  It is sadly easy to make people believe any lies; people are pitifully gullible, subject to instant flag-waving and misguided patriotism.  And once a war is started, the government is in total control:  the people must obey the orders of their government even if their early induced enthusiasm has waned.  They also see that however needlessly the war started, it would be better not to lose it.”

 

This explains the pursuit of the Vietnam War, well past the point where President Johnson and most of the leaders in the government felt it could be won.  Tens of thousands of lives were sacrificed on the altar of not losing, which, of course, in the end it was.

It also describes the horrible human tragedy happening in Ukraine before our eyes as I write this.  

Never would I have believed we would again see the kind of horror we did 30 years ago in the bombing of Sarajevo and almost 80 years in the Nazi's obliteration of Poland.

What is Patriotism--What Does It Depend on?

 Yale Professor Steven B. Smith’s book, Reclaiming Patriotism in an Age of Extremes, was heavy going in the beginning for me.  An abundance, perhaps too many, references to ancient and renowned philosophers and political thinkers.  However, page by page, chapter by chapter and particularly with the last one, I became more impressed.  In the end, I am filled with admiration for this book as Smith convincingly pinpointed the differences between Patriotism, which embraces the best values in America without claiming perfection or denying the worth of other countries; Nationalism, which too often excludes or disrespects others; and Cosmopolitanism, which can become too utopian and unrealistic.  

I have also gleaned how the feeling of patriotism which Professor Smith describes can attach in special circumstances not only to our nation but also to an institution or company where one spends their career, in my case,  Procter & Gamble.

Smith, not entirely correctly in my opinion, argues that America was the first, and perhaps still is the only, nation founded on a creed.   We are a creedal people, he asserts.  We keep referring back to our Founding Fathers, to our Constitution and to our Bill of Rights to a degree the citizens of no other country do--even if we argue intensely as to what is the right interpretation of the Constitution. (I write "not entirely correctly" because while our frequent reference to our Constitution is unique, the leadership and peoples of other nations will say and to varying degrees believe they are pursuing a "creed" based vision).

 

There are perspectives which Steven Smith’s book illuminated for me that I believe are very important:

 

One is “the ethos of society.”  Professor Smith writes that Patriotism requires "not only an understanding and appreciation of a set of abstract ideas, but also their embodiment in a particular history and tradition."  He writes, ,  “The ethos of a society embodies those traits of character that are normative for the community.”  They embrace the “kinds of persons and personality traits (who) are deemed desirable (and) or kinds of actions and policies that are worthy of respect.” 

 

There won’t be universal agreement on what those policies and actions were in our nation’s history. However, I believe there will be broad agreement, for example, that Abraham Lincoln’s principles and determined and courageous leadership were what we needed; that Martin Luther King lived a correct and  admirable commitment to non-violent protest to advance the right of minorities; that men and women sacrificing their lives in World War II to preserve the democracy of this country --these all were were irreplaceable, admirable deeds.  There would also be broad agreement on things that have been carried out by our Nation that are not admirable:  lynching, Jim Crow, the appropriation of Native American lands, the internment of the Japanese in WW II. 

The only way to preserve and build on our creed and our Purpose-- the only way to make the ethos of the place real, is by: 1) Results-- demonstrating the ability to take actions needed to progress to achieving the Purpose; 2) Transparency--describing the bases for our actions explicitly in terms of the values they embody and 3) Sharing learning and history--telling memorable stories of how the Purpose has been fulfilled in ways we admire or in ways that fail to measure up to fulfilling our Purpose. achieve at our best. That's how one continues to learn, thereby sustaining the Purpose and continuing to improve in achieving it.

 

Every institution, whether it be our Nation, a company like P&G, a university like Yale or a cultural center like the  National Underground Railroad Freedom Center which I have been part of for 25 years, needs to be clear on its Creed or its Purpose.  It needs to understand the ethos it has and which it seeks to build and what are the actions and values and the storytelling that will make that not just a bunch of abstract thoughts but descriptive of an entity to which one wants to commit his or her very best effort and a good part of their lives.  This is what produces Loyalty and Patriotism. 

Loyalty and a spirit of Patriotism have to be earned by what the institution is setting out to do, by how  well and consistently it is doing it, by living its values in practice, and by how successful it is it is in continuing to do better, despite inevitable setbacks, tomorrow than it is today.

Professor Smith provides a good service to the reader in defining the nature of the "Patriotism" we should seek. What he does not address--nor do I believe it was his intent--is to what degree our Nation today is earning the loyalty and the Patriotism he so well describes or, even more to the point, what can be done to strengthen it.

 I worry greatly that the foundations of Patriotism have been dangerously weakened. Citizens trust in the government has plummeted. Pew reports that the percentage of Americans saying they trust the federal government's decisions most of the time plummeted from 73 percent in 1958 to just 19 percent in 2019. Trust in other major institutions, including religion and schools  (only the military has been immune), has also declined precipitously. 

Respect for "truth" and the commitment to a common, shared  cause so necessary to support Patriotism have been been shattered by a lack of value based leadership, particularly revealed though not started by Trump. Now, following the first year of the Biden Administration, beset with the overhanging pall of Covid, the impact of climate change and the competitive threat of China and  and other geo-political challenges, we are shaken by concerns about  sheer governmental  competence, i.e. is our government being led by capable people able to get done what they have promised and are expected and need to do?

I don't have a confident answer to what can be done to "Reclaim Patriotism", returning to the title of Professor Smith's book--other than to say it depends  on leadership. There's nothing new about that. We  have always depended on strong leadership at times of crisis. Leaders able and brave enough to face reality, frame a uniting vision, marshal a clear and compelling strategy and take actions which,  even if imperfectly, lead to substantive progress toward that vision.  

I also know that I (and all of us) have a personal responsibility--a responsibility to work to the best of our abilities to make the life and the lives of people we touch better because we are where we are. 

 

 

Words to Sign On To--Viktor Frankl--The Need for "Decent People"

Viktor Frankl's "Man's Search for Meaning" is the single most inspiring book I have ever read. Published 55 years ago it continues to speak for me to the challenging period in which we live today. 

Frankl concludes his book by urging us to rather than talk about "Saints" to just talk about "decent people". He acknowledges that they may be a minority; if so, it is our challenge is to join them. "For the world is in a bad state", Frankl asserts, "but everything will become worse unless each of us does our best". 

Those simple words are ones to sign on to: Doing our best, for ourselves and for others on the path of life. Being kind. Seeking truth. Yes, "being decent". 

Minutes after posting this blog, a good friend of mine wrote saying in essence that "being decent" doesn't seem like a very high bar; so what gets in the way of achieving it.

 My response: 

1. Not really deciding it is important. Not COMMITTING ourselves to it personally. Not being conscious and evaluating how we are doing.

2. Self interest; self-absorption, always and inevitably present. 

3. Acting too quickly, without enough thought on the impact on others of what say and do or DON'T say or do. 

4.  Failing to appreciate the benefit which being "decent" can have on another person. 

5. Unintended bias.

He wasn't through with his queries. So what he asked might motivate a person the be "decent" beyond just  "doing what is right"?

My response: 

1. Feeling more worthy as a person.

2. Sleeping better at night. 

3. Seeing your children growing up acting the way you hope they will.

4. Learning, happily, that some people will play your decency back to you.

What One Lives For--Joseph Conrad

 From Joseph Conrad

"What one lives for may be uncertain; how one lives is not. Man should live nobly though he does not see any practical reason for it, simply because in the mysterious, inexplicable mixture of beauty and ugliness, (and) virtue and baseness in which he finds himself, he must want to be on the side of the virtuous and the beautiful."

I offer one caveat to this inspiring quotation-- an important one. Personally, I have found there are "practical reasons" for trying to live nobly. Doing so earns the respect and trust, not of everyone but of many including those whose trust and friendship we most value. And,  if nothing else, doing so let's us sleep better at night. 

Whither Ukraine?

 

Whither Ukraine?

This is such a maddening and perplexing issue to me.  

Here I am on the outside, having read a huge amount of Russian history and a fair amount of Ukrainian history, too. Having come to know and appreciate a good number of Russian men and women whom I respect.  

Here we are with lots of smart, “well-meaning” people around the table, trying to reach a peaceful solution that has  staying power, not a temporary Band-Aid, which is what we have had for at least the past seven years and which has not stopped the bleeding. 

My thoughts start with the people of Ukraine and the nation of Ukraine.  What is right for them?  How can this suffering be stopped?  The uncertainty reduced? My thoughts continue with asking what is in the interest of Russia, the Russian people, and the people in the West? You know what they all want more than anything? It is Peace ...Peace in their lives.

 

You ask yourself:  Who really needs Ukraine, other than Ukrainians?  Russia doesn't’t need it.  Yes, they need to be assured that there isn’t a competitive force like NATO there on their borders, threatening them.  They need to know that the relationship of Ukraine with Russia will be strong, economically, socially, as it has been for much of history.  But they don’t need the land; they don’t need the economic resources.  They need access to them, yes, just like they need access to resources in Germany and many other countries, but not in an exclusive sense. 

 

NATO doesn't’need Ukraine.  To the contrary, it’s the last thing it needs.  It can’t and wouldn't defend Ukraine.  Ukraine wouldn’t be ready for NATO even if it were right for them to join.  They have their own huge issues to deal with and they need support and not competition among contending nations to resolve them. 

The U.S. doesn't’ need Ukraine.  It’s thousands of miles from us.  We have virtually no dependency or relationship with it economically. And, heaven knows, we have an abundance of our own issues at this moment. 

 

The Russian people don’t want a war with Ukraine.  Yes, they are proud and patriotic and they want to see Russia be respected as a nation.  But the last thing the great majority of Russian people want is to see their soldiers mired in Ukraine, as they were for a decade in Afghanistan, and their economy, already challenged, torn further apart because of sanctions that would follow Russia’s incursion into Ukraine. 

 

There is a big issue, there is no hiding from it.  The majority of the people in the Donbas and Luhansk region have a strong and historically rooted cultural attachment to Russia.  If a plebiscite were held today,  they might well vote to join Russia.  But that doesn't’ have to happen to resolve the issue.  It isn't the right way to resolve it.

While not fully comparable, we have the example of French-speaking Quebec, where a different language and way of life is honored, including by providing certain identified decision-making rights and autonomy that accrue to that region.  Spain has lived, not comfortably admittedly, but without war with Catalonia which has its own language and cultural norms.

 

What has to happen for a solution to be reached?  I’m no diplomatic guru. What I suggest below is flawed and incomplete. But it seems to me, from everything I’ve learned, there are a few things to be considered.

 

Discussions to implement the Minsk II accord, this time with the participation of the U.S., need to resume. It seems to me the provisions of this accord include the key elements to achieve a lasting peaceful settlement. They need to provide for the right degree of autonomy for the Donbas and Luhansk regions. There  needs to be agreement that Ukraine will not be the site of armed forces for any nation other than Ukraine which pose or appear to pose a threat to a neighboring nation.  That is, NATO will not put weapons into Ukraine. At the same time, Russia will remove its troops and military equipment at its border with Ukraine and will not threaten its sovereignty in any other way. We resolved the Cuban Missile crisis in much this way and avoided what could have been WW III. The Soviet Union withdrew its missiles and troops. NATO withdrew its missiles from Turkey which the Soviet Union had seen as a dagger point at its heartland.

 

The attitude toward Ukraine should be:  “Live and let live.” 

 

Allow Ukraine to develop economic and diplomatic relationships with Russia and the West and whichever other countries they want to. 

 

To achieve an agreement of this type, there will need to be the creation of mutual trust and a commitment to achieve the common goal of a peaceful and independent Ukraine free of the impact of intervention by contending forces. This will not be easy. The last seven years of fruitless discussions show that. But the crisis in front of us demands we try. The alternatives are grossly unacceptable. 

 

I hope and pray this will be the outcome.  Anything else is crazy and counter to the interest of every party. 

 

There have been parallels drawn between our (the U.S.) being involved in Ukraine to our becoming involved in Vietnam.  The argument there is that what happens in Ukraine is not in our national interest any more than it was in our interest to embark on the ten-year war in Vietnam. I don’t agree with that analogy.  I think a peaceful resolution of this boiling issue is both in our interest and in the world’s interest.

 

In shades that make me shudder, however, I see in all this many elements which led up to World War I.  Conflagration in a small part of the world, in that case Serbia, leading to a catastrophic war which resulted in over 20 million deaths.  Countries went to war, one by one, which really didn’t want to go to war.  It all happened as dominoes fell. One thing followed another.

 

We dare not allow that to happen now. Especially in this nuclear age.

 

 "If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony is if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that too." 

Somerset Maugham, 1941. As relevant and poignant today as 80 years ago.  

To which I would append,

Freedom means freedom and opportunity for all. And with freedom --indeed  making freedom possible--comes responsibility.