Russia/Ukraine War

  

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 60^th 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.