When the war between Russia and Ukraine began in 2022, a surprisingly large number of people became experts overnight in geography, history, warfare and geo-politics. Moreover, the understandable but flawed human instinct to take sides almost immediately made its appearance, the dominant narrative in Western Europe being: Russia: aggressor—guilty, bad; Ukraine: victim of aggression—innocent, good. This attitude to the conflict had the merit of being simple and morally self-congratulatory but few other merits.
While I deprecated, and still deprecate, the outbreak of hostilities between the two states, with its inevitable accompanying deaths, injuries and devastation and while I sympathise with the suffering of the innocent, I was of the view in 2022, the very unpopular view, that this conflict was no more of immediate concern to us in Ireland than those in many other places around the world. This is still my view and it is still unpopular.
The use of war for secular missionary purposes was deprecated long ago by Sydney Smith when he wrote to Lady Grey, the wife of the UK Prime Minister, ‘For God’s sake, do not drag me into another war! I am worn down, and worn out, with crusading and defending Europe, and protecting mankind; I must think a little of myself. I am sorry for the Spaniards—I am sorry for the Greeks—I deplore the fate of the Jews; the people of the Sandwich Islands are groaning under the most detestable tyranny; Bagdad is oppressed—I do not like the present state of the Delta—Thibet is not comfortable. Am I to fight for all these people? The world is bursting with sin and sorrow. Am I to be champion of the Decalogue, and to be eternally raising fleets and armies to make all men good and happy? We have just done saving Europe, and I am afraid the consequence will be that we shall cut each other’s throats. No war, dear Lady Grey!—no eloquence; but apathy, selfishness, common sense, arithmetic! I beseech you, secure Lord Grey’s sword and pistols, as the housekeeper did Don Quixote’s armour. If there is another war, life will not be worth having. I will go to war with the King of Denmark if he is impertinent to you, or does any injury to Howick; but for no other cause.’
Are we now, after almost four years, moving towards an end to this war? It seems so, but events are moving at an incredible pace, and the attitudes of the various parties to this conflict, Russia and Ukraine, obviously, but also the EU, the USA, the UK and NATO will play a part in whatever transpires.
It would, however, be naïve to think that everyone is in favour of peace, only the necessary means to its achievement needing to be discovered. There have always been those for whom war is considered to be the health of the state and I think it is fair to say that there are those, especially in the EU, whose attitude to the conflict is astonishingly and recklessly bellicose.
In addition, there is often a discrepancy between the avowed aims of war and other less than reputable reasons for it are sometimes evident even to the military mind. A famous (or notorious) attack on war as a ‘racket’ was made in 1935 by the decorated Marine General, Smedley Darlington Butler, a racket being defined by him as ‘something conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many.’ The principal beneficiaries of war, according to Butler, were the ‘Munitions makers. Ship builders. Manufacturers. Meat packers. Speculators.’
In making this claim, Butler anticipated by some twenty-six years, the substance of Dwight Eisenhower’s warnings in his ‘Farewell Address’ of the dangers presented by what he termed ‘the military-industrial complex’.
Both military men, however, while clearly perceiving the close connection between the interests of the military and the interests of industry and commerce, were conspicuously blind to the connecting link between them which is, of course, the state. The fear engendered by war and the threat of war has always provided cover for the erosion of civil liberties by the state. People who have been made afraid are often willing to surrender their liberties in return for security. This was clearly demonstrated during the recent Covid episode.
Who wants peace between Russia and the Ukraine? I would suggest that most ordinary people in those two countries and in the rest of Europe do, but their leaders, who, typically are not suffering the ravages of war, perhaps not so much, among those leaders, the vociferous ‘no surrender’ brigade in the EU who are conspicuously not fighting on the battlefront. But there comes a time when one must say—enough: enough deaths, enough injuries, enough devastation.
It has been said that the first casualty in war is truth, and one such casualty, but by no means the only or indeed the first one, is the claim by European Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen that Ukraine’s borders cannot be changed by force. Why not? Borders between polities have changed constantly throughout history, and force has often, if not always, been the operative factor. Even in our recent history, we witnessed the spectacle of NATO, sometimes seen as the military arm of the EU, influencing borders in the former Yugoslavia in 1999 by means of a bombing campaign that killed thousands of innocent people, destroyed civilian infrastructure and devastated the economy.
To think as von de Leyen does is to succumb to the fallacy of presentism which is a frame of mind that holds not just that things are the way they are—which is obviously true if not always capable of being clearly delineated—but that things are the way they are and the way they must be. A little knowledge of history will dispel the illusion of presentism.
Boundaries between polities are not fixed by divine edict. Natural boundaries—rivers, lakes, mountains, can give rise to de facto political borders, but borders are, for the most part, based on agreements and conventions, often as the result of a post-war settlement. The current states in Eastern Europe are the product of the dissolution, post-World War I, of the Austro-Hungarian, Russian and Ottoman Empires. From Austro-Hungary we got Austria, Czechoslovakia (subsequently divided into Czechia and Slovakia), Hungary and Yugoslavia; from the Russian Empire, we got Poland, Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. The German Empire shrunk to Germany and the Ottoman Empire to Turkey. After WWII, not only did borders change again, but there was large-scale movement of populations, often involuntary, sometimes amounting to a kind of ethnic cleansing, giving rise to much suffering. [see the YouTube videos, links below]
Borders, then, are not, and never have been, sacrosanct.
There is obviously much more that can be said about all this and a lot of it will be said over the coming weeks and months. One topic that I believe needs to be seriously debated in Ireland is whether we should maintain our neutrality, a neutrality compromised to some extent by our Government’s participation in the EU’s support of Ukraine, and, if so, how.
My own view on this, for what it’s worth—and this may well be another unpopular view—is that our neutrality should be maintained but that it should be an armed neutrality, modelled, to the extent that it is possible, on the example of Switzerland. But the articulation and defence of that topic is a matter for another day.
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Look at these YouTube videos for a visual representation of the kinds of border changes that have taken place in the last millennium and post WWI and WWII;
1000 years of border changes
Europe Border changes (extended)
World War 1 and border changes
Post WWII and after changes
Specific border changes post WWII
For the specific story of Ukraine’s border, see this: