The Russia/Ukraine War vs WWI and WWII
What's the Same, What's Different
Thomas J McCabe
©April 2022
Introduction
There is symmetry
everywhere. You just have to look. There is a symmetry to our generation. At
age 18 we were exiting the shadow of nuclear threat; approaching age 81 we are
now entering another shadow of a nuclear threat.
We were born into the days
of bomb shelters, black drapes, and taught to duck and cover under our desks.
What lies ahead now?
We graduated in 1960 and
thought we had also graduated from the bomb-threat years. We thought the threat
of nuclear war was past history – yet now, in our super-senior years, with the invasion of Ukraine
by a nuclear super-power, the ominous dark shadow that hovered over us as
teenagers looms dark and foreboding again.
Writing about our dark
shadows can be cathartic – it turns a foreboding ghostly grey into the concrete
black and white of a printed page. So here is my attempt to set out on paper
some thoughts about this worrisome moment in history.
History is written by the
victors, their post-war version of history. This is not history. I offer it rather
as a foundational perspective that can frame what we are witnessing today with
references to certain similarities and differences between this conflict and
its two large 20th-century antecedents — World
Wars I and II.
Similarities
It is of course far beyond
the compass of this paper to dissect all sources of conflict giving rise to the
wars we are comparing. Each though can fairly be said to be a war of empires.
Empires don't go peacefully
into history. Historians argue empires don’t fade without a war. WWI pitted the
British Empire and the Russian Empire against the German Empire, the Austrian
Hungarian Empire, and the Ottoman Empire. The Austrian Hungarian Empire was on
its last legs. Likewise, the Ottoman Empire was in a death rattle, and the
Russian Empire was about to have its 1917 revolution; the German Empire fell in
1918.
In WWII, the warring
parties realigned themselves into Allied and Axis forces, the latter attempting
to reassert and expand the hegemony of Germany over Russia and the entirety of
Europe. It was a war of and the demise of Colonial Empires. The Allies’ Briton
and France were the existing colonial powers, and the Axis’ Germany and Italy
wanted to be colonial powers.
The fading empires of WWI
and vanquished Germany in WWII launched the 20th-century global wars to restore their former imperial glory, their empires. Now, history repeats
itself once again. Putin has often stated that the dissolution of the USSR in
the early 90s was the biggest calamity in Russian history and there is no doubt
that his foray into Ukraine is a major step in trying to reconstitute Russia’s
dominance over the former Soviet republics.
Just as those earlier wars
had global implications, what we are witnessing in Europe today spills far
beyond the Ukrainian borders. Like the two World Wars, the Russian invasion of
Ukraine has split much of the world into warring factions. The world’s most
powerful empire, the United States, is being challenged by an erstwhile Russian
empire, trying to reclaim its mojo, as the insurgent empire, China, plays both
sides against each other. Bigger than the war of empires, this is a war of
continents and an epic clash of ideologies. It is in that sense that we now
turn to consider what I see as certain major differences between the two World
Wars and the ongoing war in Ukraine.
Differences
As I see it, the
Russian-Ukrainian war implicates five key issues of unprecedented existential
importance. The first challenges the viability of democratic governance, the
second threatens the accessibility of objective truth, the third blatant war
crimes, the fourth cyberwarfare, and the fifth imperiling the very survival of the
planet.
1.
Democracy
At Gettysburg in 1863, in
the context of the Civil War, President Lincoln asked whether a nation that is
dedicated to liberty and equality, in other words, a democratic nation, can
long endure. We are now witnessing another war where that same question can
still be asked. It is not just the Russian-Ukrainian war itself that raises the
question, it is the war’s context that is the broader problem: the global drift
into authoritarianism that threatens democracies all over the world. It is
gratifying to see western democracies waking from their slumber to come
together in support of Ukraine and in defense of their own values of
government.
2.
Truth
It is often said that “the
first casualty of war is truth.” Throughout history, nations, including the US,
have used censorship, propaganda, and misinformation as important weapons of
war.
Today, though, the battle for truth
is playing out with weapons of communication that were non-existent in prior
global wars. Round-the-clock TV coverage brings the gruesome realities of war
into our living rooms in real-time. The emergence of President Zelenskyy of
Ukraine gives voice and personality to the world to see the Russian atrocities
and the resolve of the Ukrainian people.
Zelenskyy is now a world leader,
and with our instantaneous TV coverage, gives voice to the world to hear the
truth of what’s going on.
But authoritarian states, like Russia and China, unfettered by free speech constraints, are hiding the truth from their populations. They are, in addition, using all the tools of social media to spread a false narrative of both the origin and execution of the war.
Is this shield of ignorance impenetrable? There is anecdotal evidence of VPNs and thousands of hacker volunteers working to present the obvious facts through the Russian and Chinese blackouts. Will this have an impact, could it swing world opinion, does it make China and Russia lose prestige? Will their own populations rebel given their steady stream of lies?
A larger, more penetrating
question — one that goes well beyond the context of this or any war — is
whether it’s even possible in this day and age to arrive at a generally
accepted consensus of objective truth.
Some years ago, one would have thought the conclusion was obvious. World War I was supposed to be the end of
history in a philosophical and epistemological sense. The age of spiritualism
was replaced by the so-called scientific method: Believing only what is observable
with scientific experiments. Belief was replaced by cold hard facts.
Likewise, the preeminence
of the Internet and global sharing of ideas and technology were originally
thought to be agents of truth rather than the dispensers of lies and
distortions. However, given the recent rise of autocrats, including Donald
Trump, the truth has become a sacrificial lamb. We now have a substantial
percentage of the Republican party believing in a huge lie – that the election
was stolen. It's unimaginable that they all believe this, but the bottom line
is that they ignore the truth without penalty.
Likewise,
autocrats that control the press can spin reality to its 180° opposite without
penalty. Incredibly, they get away with it, worse yet they garner support.
In the hands of global distortionists, we are supposed to close our eyes and believe propaganda that is totally detached from reality. Maybe this is another end of history, the end of reality, and the beginning of geopolitical spin theatrics. It’s OK to espouse a totally debunked distortion of reality – there’s no price to pay. The repetition of lies works, even the Internet platforms like Facebook and Twitter won’t take a stand and they propagate the lies at the speed of light. Welcome to the world of misinformation.
Is there no cost for such a blatant abuse of
the truth?
In this age of
disinformation, the incongruities are striking. Cadets and midshipmen get
expelled from our military academies for lying, scientists that falsely claim
to produce nuclear fusion are ostracized and lose their jobs, a neuroscientist
that creates a designer baby is expelled from professional societies and
invokes the scorn of the whole world.
Yet, at the same time 40%
of our second political party claims a falsehood they know is a lie – – it's
aptly named the big lie. However, this age of disinformation gives them license
and dulls our sense of outrage. When politicians get caught, as they
often do, there is no price to pay. The age of misinformation is now an axiom
of our new history, incredibly contemporary with global access to the
Internet which gives everybody access to what we thought was the truth.
3. War Crimes
After WWII, an article of faith of the civilized world was to never let an event like Holocaust happen again. The supposed lesson tragically learned with Hitler was not to confront him right away after he took the Sudetenland. We are letting this happen again –– right in front of our eyes and with no deniability. What does that say for us citizens of the world and for the world order? It is not for the US to unilaterally take on Russia in Ukraine – but it does eat your soul to passively witness a bully murdering innocent civilians in real-time.
In WWI and WWII neither
side directly and immediately attacked the population, avoiding the enemy's
military. This seems to me to be an order of magnitude beyond just attacking a
defenseless country. The Russians do not want to engage in a military war with
Ukraine, they want to bomb the citizens into oblivion. Isn't there a global
ethical standard that this violates? Where’s our credibility as an advanced
civilization if we sit by and just watch?
4. Cyberwarfare
The Gutenberg press had a
profound effect on geopolitics. The European literacy rate went from 30% to 47%
and a new world of global information was born. Along with it was born a
literary form of geopolitical warfare – analogous to what we see with the
internet today.
From ‘Tatiana Debbagi
Baranova , « Print Wars in Europe during the Sixteenth
Century », Encyclopédie d'histoire numérique de Europe: “The
politicization of religious conflicts promoted the production and diffusion of
texts that justified uprisings against authorities, explained the actions of
these authorities, and formulated political theories. The publication campaigns
organized by genuine specialists in writing became an indispensable element for
any kind of mobilization”.
Why? Because there was a new
medium of communication. Because pamphlets would inform the population – – some
could read it, others had it read to them. A new world of geopolitics was
formed, and a new literary medium reshaped much of civilization. For example,
the Gutenberg press was a major influence on the Reformation and the splitting
of the Catholic Church. A new form of mass communication that shaped a new
literary and geopolitical landscape.
Analogously, the Internet
has done a similar thing. Knowledge is now available all over the world and
most people have access to it. A host of international businesses have arisen
that didn't exist before the internet. More to the point, the Internet has
given rise to a new form of international war – cyberwar. Mother Russia,
affected our 2020 elections, tries to destabilize the French government and
plays havoc with NATO nations. China likewise is in an Internet war with the
whole world – – especially the United States. China’s cyber focus is
commercial, it has a full-out program to steal our trade secrets, and it’s
succeeding.
It looks like cyberwar is
here to stay; all major countries engage in it. I spent the first 13 years of
my career at the National Security Agency and I now mentor entrepreneurs
associated with the University of Maryland. Most entrepreneurs work in
cybersecurity. Cyber is a new form of warfare, we have been in a cyberwar with
both Russia and China before the Russian/Ukrainian war
5. Nuclear weapons
This seems like the renewal of the nuclear threat we all lived under 60 years ago, revisiting the age of nuclear anxiety. To my knowledge, it's the first time a major power explicitly threatened the geopolitical world order with the use of nuclear weapons. NATO and the US hesitate to get involved because bully Putin may use his nukes. So, do we let him take Ukraine, followed by Poland, followed by Romania? How about Estonia?
Where
do we draw the line?
Hitler didn't have a
nuclear weapon. And we let that bully Hitler run his course when he should have
been confronted earlier – before he gathered momentum. The blitzkrieg was
nothing to speak of until the invasion of France. It wasn't the overwhelming
military might of Germany that swung the day, it was their tactical knowledge
and experience that made them successful. The Nazis gained momentum and the
advantage in the Sudetenland and Poland while the Allies sat back and watched.
Sound familiar?
So now in this age of
nuclear weapons where we draw the line. If Russia can threaten and annex
neighboring countries with the threat of a nuclear weapon, why doesn't North
Korea take over South Korea? Why doesn't China take over Taiwan?
The US created the nuclear
age and now Putin holds the world hostage with nuclear Russian Roulette.
Appeasement will not work. However, the Biden administration is getting it right - it reformulated the US policy to defeat the Russian army so they cannot engage in another Ukraine-like war. This seems like the appropriate nuance. Putin’s threat of a nuclear war may backfire; the Russian economy is already being nuked by sanctions.
Conclusion
There is no conclusion.
Only a fortuneteller would suggest we reserve a morgue or get a 30-year
mortgage. We don't know.
Likewise, our parents in
the 1950s didn't know how their nuclear age was going to end. They owned it,
buried their doubts, and shielded our innocence.
There’s no shielding from our
reality now. Anyone with a cell phone can
hear every threat and see every explosion in all its brutal destruction in real-time, 24 x 7.
With that sobering thought,
I am grateful for the decades of peace and prosperity we shared and pray for
our future.
Epilog
Why do I write this?
We had a 60th
class reunion to share stories. Something seemed incomplete, dangling, our
stories seemed unanchored. Something we share seemed suspended. Yes, that's the
word, suspended. Our life stories are solitary and suspended - dangling in ether,
in mid-air, unanchored.
Yet our life stories have two
common touchpoints, they are anchored to the twin towers of two nuclear ages.
Our life stories now form a span, moored to two nuclear ages – – which frame
what we share.
Perspective and framework are
one of the few gifts of old age. It takes decades of experience to see a
distance in the rearview mirror – – we share that.
Maybe these thoughts and perspectives can help the younger generation now in power.
Acknowledgments
Bernie Casey helped edit and organize this material. His
insights and enthusiasm helped me finish the project. Several conversations
with Chuck O'Connor stimulated many of these thoughts - Chuck teaches a course
and has authored a book about the cultural changes resulting from World War I.
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