3 THE DANGEROUS BALANCING ART BETWEEN FAIR NUANCE AND NAÏVE WEAKNESS
From crude consequence (subjective) to fine consequence (as a one-sided and preliminary attempt at objectivity).
Now that we, “responsibly”, have looked at the worst case scenarios (since it is impossible to peek directly into Putin’s mind), we must remind ourselves that worst case scenarios – statistically – is a minority phenomenon. They may occur (such as by the “historical incident” Hitler), but it is the minority phenomenon of the world overall; relatively less likely overall. For that reason, Europe should still – invest – in the option that the worst things Europeans may fear to be the truth about Putin and today’s Kremlin may – not – be true (if able doing so without being naively unprepared).
“He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you” (Nietzsche 1886, in Beyond Good and Evil, Part 4, #146)
“For the one who wants to be wise, it carries an affluent reward for a period to have empathized with the world of imagination of thoroughly evil and tainted human beings. This [world of imagination] is a falsum, as is also its opposite, but for entire epochs of time these possessed dominion and their roots have propagated all the way into our world. To understand us, we must understand them. To elevate higher, we must elevate up and past them.” (Nietzsche, 1878, in Human, All Too Human, Part 1, #56)
If worst case possibilities are true despite of the investment in opposite and better options, the investment will be in vain – obviously. In the finance world, however, unsecured investments are sometimes made, if the potential gain is high enough. We should not forgive ourselves for not making this investment without being a 100% sure it will fail, not if the other result is not merely the lack of any profit, but could go as far as to nuclear war. The suspense between the worst and the best case scenarios is here big enough to warrant an unsecured investment.
Before the Ukraine war, today’s Kremlin was open for a partially disarmed, independent Ukraine with no chance of NATO-membership, but with a chance of EU membership. That degree of Russian willingness to co-exist with the EU is something we could/should still try to work hard to restore, because that same openness of the Kremlin may no longer be taken for granted because of how they explain our indirect involvement in the Ukraine war over three years as “war-mongering”.
We must therefore try and work with Russia to come to a mutual understanding of “how things could go so terribly wrong” even though – both – sides are, in fact, “humanistic at core”. If the approach is to have any chance of succeeding, it requires that both sides make an honest, whole-hearted effort at this. We cannot hope for that, however, if we are not willing to start with ourselves, but expecting in stead that Russia starts. We will then be waiting in vain. We must make the first effort in accordance with the famous quote “be the change you wish to see”, because we are able to do so.
“We often commit the mistanke to make a direction, a party or an epoch to our vivid enemy, because we only get to see the outer side, the stunted growth or the ‘lacks of virtue‘ that sticks to everything with necessity. It would, however, be better actively to seek out the strong, good sides. This requires a powerful gaze and a better will, to see what is ‘becoming‘ and foster the incomplete in its incompleteness, than to see through it in its incompletion and reject it.” (Nietzsche, 1878, in Human, All too Human, part 1, 9th Main Section, #587)
“The one who really wants to learn knowing something new, does well to absorb this new thing with all possible love. Furthermore, to turn the gaze away from everything about the new thing that seems animous, objectionable and false – yes, forget it, so that one gives – for instance – the author of a book the biggest ‘head start‘ and just like in a running competition, yearns with a beating heart, that this one reaches the goal. With such a method, namely, one probes into the heart of the new thing, all the way into its ‘pivotal point‘. That means, exactly, learning to know it. If one has come thus far, then the mind will make its restrictions retrospectively. The overestimation; the temporary suspension of the pendulum of criticism, was namely but a trick to lure out the soul of an issue.” (Nietzsche, 1878, in Human, All too Human, part 1, 9th Main Section, #621)
This is what will be attempted further down under this heading, pertaining to how we in Europe perceive Russia’s self-narrative surrounding the Ukraine war. Before we do that, however, we should for reasons of clarity and transparency formulate explicitly how – we – have perceived and attributed the Ukraine war thus far.
The “crude consequence” (referring to Nietzsche) of the European West goes approximately like this: The Ukraine war is a Russian offensive/non-defensive war fully stripped of just cause as according to international law. Russia, an ancient nation, but also a formerly short lived popular democracy now turned a new dictatorship, unprovokedly attacked a popular democracy (a country with government for and by the people) like our own (cf. the Ukraine). Putin as a dictatorial state leader is solely responsible, not the Russian people. Hence, it is a good idea to indict him (as the singly responsible individual) through the ICC, but not to condemn Russia as a nation or its people.
Furthermore, the same crude consequence among Europeans goes on approximately like this: The situation surrounding the Ukraine War can be compared to that surrounding Hitler’s annexation of the former Sudet region of today’s Czech republic with reference to the German speaking population which lived there back then, a partial annexation that Hitler followed up with a full annexation of the Czechs’ land in its entirety only a short time later, then the outbreak of WWII after him subsequently attacking Poland. If we do not prevent Russian victory in the Ukraine, not only the Ukraine in its entirety, but any one of us can be the next victim of the same type of Russian, territorial expansion.
Not only the Russians, but also the Europeans, have the historical horror-template of Hitler ingrained in the back of their minds, letting worst case scenarios come to mind easily. They remember how that history started with how a young, inexperienced democracy (then Germany) had fallen to become a dictatorship.
It seems to lie in human nature both to be a degree (varyingly) ego-centric, and to reason self-servingly (more so when under dire pressure). The Russian – people – deserves, however, that we subtract our own, until now unacknowledged contributions to the ill dynamics that have led to increased tension over decades, even with Putin as head of the Kremlin. Otherwise, Putin can stand in an image domestically in Russia of being in his right to justify his course to all Russians through the way in which the West (including the European part of the West) never admits its mistakes and its co-responsibilities.
Peace, now as a means for – potentially saving the future – might possibly be achieved only by “giving something” while not cowardly betraying our claim of full national autonomy for all single nation that are sovereign according to international law. This may seem like something nearly impossible, and is at the very least like balancing on the edge of a razor blade. We do not want to stand in history just like British prime minister Chamberlain who, preceeding Churchill, appeased Hitler with condonance of his actions in the Czechs’ land for an utterly futile hope of “peace in our time”. Even if we don’t care for our personal reputations, there is another reason for us not to want to get branded as “traitors”, not even by popular judgements of fallible “crude consequence”: That would rob us of any domestic impact.
It might be right to admit to Russia, not the general or the specific (pertaining to the Ukraine) right to annex in violation of international law, but having more merit to the arguments they have given as their reason for this specific act of annexation than what for instance former NATO-boss Jens Stoltenberg deemed just / responsible during his time in office. He never publically subtracted the West’s unacknowledged contributions to ill dynamics.
Let us take a look at our Western contributions to the ill dynamics, remembering the above two Nietzsche-quotes under this heading as pertaining to the Russian perspecive. If we hereby overestimate the merit of the Russian narrative, suspending our own criticism, then speaking with Nietzsche, we have at least learned to know the Russian subjectivity more intimately; its relative degree merit, and our minds may still make restrictions retrospectively:
- We have not sufficiently acknowledged that post-Sovjet national borders – were – arbitrary (they were drawn based on the interests of criminal marxist revolutionaries who held power only because of the illegal and violent overthrow of 1917) and that – possibly – the states sharing those borders now should therefore not with certainty / doubtlessly be obliged by international law if that in effect means condoning of consequences of a criminal revolution that are historically unjust and/or still entail national security implications for the pertinent nations.
The USA would probably not let the outside world decide on the topic of North American borders if they were the ones who had finally overcome a marxist (revolutionary communist) regime that had partitioned US territories to Canada and Mexico during the course of a historically short-lived pan-north-American, marxist empire.
Saying this is not the same as condoning of war as the solution to problems, but we might want to subtract our contribution to the ill dynamics in our own weighting of how hardliner-like and risk-taking we are chosing to act given that war has become a fact.
- During the Sovjet era, the Sovjet republic of the Ukraine was simply given a big, mainly Russian speaking geographic area that was never part of any non-Russian, independent state before the marxists commited their criminal revolution in 1917. Possibly, this was done to reduce Russian dominance within the Sovjet Union.
The Ukraine that has existed as an independent state since 1991 has thus not been what western Europe now holds as its own “ideal” for European state formations; not a real “nation state”. In stead, it has been a state of dual nationality, yet named only as the Ukraine, not as it possibly should; Ukraine-Russia.
This history is fundamentally different from how the former Sudet-region of today’s Czech republic got its dual nationality. There, German speaking people had been able, as part of what the Germans called “eastward settlement” (“Ostsiedlung”), to move in since the middle ages only because there had existed a multi-national empire that politically was fully controlled by its dominant, nationally German counterpart (the HRE) to a land first held by the czechs‘ forebears.
- Russian speaking “Ukraineans” never wanted Ukrainean NATO-membership unless Russia itself did, but risked having to become a part of NATO because of a majority pro it due to the more numerable, Ukrainean speaking population of the post-Sovjetic Ukraine. The Russian speaking population of the Ukraine could then become obliged to fight a future war against “mother Russia”. The Russian speaking population of the post-1991 Ukraine has a more ancient claim to their geographical home region than english speaking Texans to Texas, but that consideration apart, it is a bit like if Texas as part of Mexico due to a marxist empire now fallen should become part of a latin-American military alliance liable to fight the USA at some point in the future.
The Russian speaking population of the post 1991 Ukraine – can – be interpreted to have been victims of “weak quality of democratic practice”, with “majority dictactorship” used against one of the two nations-groups (against the Russian speaking one) that the Ukraine consisted of in the question of ukrainean NATO membership. “Majority dictatorship” has been seen as a fallicy within Western democracies, and attempted weeded out there. For instance, social democratic parties no longer fight for the prohibition of private schools as part of their honorable motive to defend a strong public one. In the Ukraine, the historically Russian speaking population was not sufficiently well respected individually for wanting a stronger affiliation with Russia due to sensations of historical Russian-national identity, and at the very least not to be unvoluntary parts of any anti-Russian affiliation.
Such majority dictatorship may give rise to questions within Russia about what portion of the Ukraine’s sovereignty as an autonomous nation should be ascribed to the fairly recently established and inexperienced, popularly democratic decision making mechanisms.
“The people has not given itself the universal right to vote. Everywhere where this now applies, it is received and preliminary accepted. A law that decides that a majority has the final decision concerning the wellbeing of all, cannot be built on the same basis given by this to begin with. It needs a much broader foundation.” (Nietzsche, 1880, in Human, All Too Human, Part 3, #276)
- NATO – did – expand towards Russia even after the cold war enemy communism had fallen, which for Russia – might – have been felt to reveal an overlasting Western animosity / “bear-challenge”. Russia was objected to an “either-you-are-with-us-or-you-are-against-us-attutude” (in the place of intersubjectivity) after the young democracy of Russia presented some conditions of their own if they were to become NATO-members.
Suddenly, as a seeming consequence of Russia‘s own conditions related to the prospect of their NATO-membership, rocket shield plans against Iran and North-Korea – in Poland (!) – came onto the American-driven agenda. US President Bush jr. stated something in the vein of “Russia don’t have any right to meddle in NATO-membership talks for the Ukraine”.
As Bush jr. wanted to build the rocket shield against “North Korea and Iran” – in Poland, Russia thought, in stead, that this was a threat to the safety principle of “mutually assured annihilation” and feared the USA would build the superior technological capacity to potentially be able destroy Russia with nuclear weapons non-mutually. That would only be safe for Russia with a sane American commander in chief. Russia does not see reasons to trust blindly or naively, however, that there may never in all future come an “American Napoleon” or an “American Hitler”, even though the Americans might trust it can never happen. That rocket shield of Bush jr.’s turned out to be technologically premature back then, but the futile ambition of it let Russia learn some lessons.
- The USA – did – wage wars after the cold war far off from home that others in the world could interpret as offensive wars, for instance after the administration of Bush jr. lied (or “presented counterfactual evidence”) to the UN to justify Iraq war II on february 5th 2003.
This – can – have heightened mistrust and fears also in Russia. They may have thought that they too could become object of a similar “treatment” in a more distant future, for instance if the Ukraine became a military front of NATO. An American President could then lie (or “present counterfactual evidence”) to wage a war against them, with the initial frontline being a formerly intra-Sovjetic border with historically Russian speaking land areas on both sides of it.
- American parts – did – try to influence Russian government by and for the people (democracy) with money influx to singled out, Russian political parties in the 1990s. The USA would never have tolerated the same happening in the other direction. The USA’s democratic party receiving massive funding from China or Germany would cause the democratic party to be perceived as un-American and untrustworthy to the Americans. It could even set off legal processes to disqualify them from participation in democratic election. The West, however, has attempted to define Russia, for Russia (since 1991). It has been experienced as a meddling in internal affairs.
If we want to tell the Russians when we worry about what happens inside of Russia, we would – at the very least – have had to abstain from meddling untimely in affairs internal to Russian democracy shortly after 1991. That is, in the time before the West started criticizing Russia for “undemocratic developments”. Those undemocratic developments might have been a reaction to the very Western meddling, at the very least hypothetically. Not admitting that hypothetical possibility is the same as not subtracting our own contributions to the ill dynamics. Not developments in Russia, but Western (American) actions, were initially in violation of Russian democracy.
- After 1991, the USA – has – in effect operated with double standards to Russia’s disadvantage in geopolitical and international law matters. One central example is the way the USA does not acknowledge the UN sanctioned Hague international war criminals tribunal’s (the ICC’s) jurisdiction over any American citizen (the USA reserves themselves the right to invade Hague in the Netherlands to prevent it), but they still supported that same tribunal’s indictment of Putin.
This – might – have led Russia to rightfully think that today’s international order is not universally just, but a means for the USA to affirm its power by the means of a a system of international law given moral connotations (the West claims that ethics/morals constitutes the base of the largely western influenced international law) while the USA itself stands above it.
The ICC shall be above Russia, but the USA shall be above the ICC. That is the nature, not of international law, but of international order. International order stands above international law. International law may even be used as a means or as a tool in the interest of international order, something which robs international law of even the attempted moral connotations.
If international order stands above international law and may use international law as a means or as a tool even trying to use the argument that these laws reflect morals whereas the international order using such tools stands above it (guided more – maybe – by self-interest), what does that then say about the validity of the Ukraine’s borders as such regulated by – international law?
Trump introduced sanctions against the ICC in early februar of 2025. He seems not to want an order based on international agreements, equality and a shared human rationality, but once again that the strongest establish what international right at all is, more like was the case in much older historical times. Speaking with Nietzsche, it is not so much a fully barbaric or a-moral “right of the strongest” as it is “the strongest establishing what is right”, giving its system of power legal and even moral connotations – for others.
One may say that Trump is at least consequent. President Biden supported an indictment against Putin by the ICC while he held on to a zero-tolerance policy first established by Bush jr. for the scenario of Americans being tried by the ICC. The degree to which that attitude can be seen as a “power play” by Biden using the ICC as a lever (cf. the USA is above the ICC, and the ICC is above Russia) and not just an unintended effect of Biden not fighting “the Hague invasion act” domestically, Trump is at any rate more “square” about his opposition to the ICC, like Putin. The two of them don’t want it.
The ICC should be changed into an instrument being valid only for citizens of countries that has recognized it, to avoid all such troubles. Our fight for the ICC will then be changed into a different kind of fight, namely one that a perpetually growing number of nations ratify it.
- Another important example of Western double standards is Kosovo’s so called “final solution”, where Kosovo as an anciently historic part of the Serb nation’s modern state was allowed to secede due to a non-serb regional majority there pro it at a single point in time. This too happened while Bush jr. was President in the USA, although President Clinton was US the President that had signed off a NATO mission to stop what the West perceived and still perceive as an attempt at ethnic cleancing.
As pertains to the so called “final solution”, NATO (of which Serbia is not a member) stood in Kosovo by authority of the UN and that ensured (by ignoring Russia’s voice) that the post-dictatorial, democratic Serbia was powerless to enforce a prevention of Kosovo’s cesession in defence of its territorial integrity such as historically defined.
This happened although Milosevic who was the leader accused of attempting ethnic cleansing had been a dictator and the Serb people had lacked any co-responsibility for his actions towards albanean-speakers in Kosovo. The USA would never acknowledge the right of any military alliance of which they themselves were not members (or one of which they were, for that sake) to do the same thing to them.
The forebears of the Albanian speakers in Kosovo had originally been allowed to move there during Osman (the historic form of present NATO-member Turkey’s statehood) imperialist rule. Today, Serbs feel unwelcome and unsafe in Kosovo and move away from their ancient land to present day Serbia. The need for the UN sanctioned NATO presence seems to be indefinate, lest there will at some point be no Serbs left who need needing protection.
The Russians could ask themselves: “Could, in a possible future where the Ukraine has become a NATO member, the same thing happen to Russian speaking populations in the Ukraine on their ancient soil?”; that they feel unwelcome in the country never aptly named as Ukraine-Russia and all move to present day Russia?
As a related side note, why should we internationally forbid “Republica Srpska” a political fight for independence from Bosnia, if it takes place peacefully and without foreign influence. If the Ticino or Romagne regions fought for independence from Switzerland, we would most likely consider that affairs internal to Switzerland, if it would go on peacefully and free of foreign influence. It is allready a long time now, since the Bosnia war.
- NATO today – does – include nearly all of Russia’s historic enemies (enemies that Russia historically fought defensive, righteous and anti-empirialist wars against) in one and the same military alliance. Those historic enemies are Turkey (the Osman empire), France (Napoleon) and Germany (Hitler), as well as the cold wars enemy the USA if even cold “wars” are counted. Why should Russia not feel “ganged up” against?
Maybe no surprise, that Russia – may – think that a free Ukraine which is a NATO member is not safe enough for them. As already mentioned, they have no guarantee that there may never come an “American Napoleon” or an “American Hitler”. Russian-speakers with a clearly Russian, national identity-sensation may become obliged to fight “mother Russia” if involuntarily part of NATO due to “majority dictatorship” within popular democracy in a former Sovjet republic that as of now does not live up to the European’s very own favored ideal of the “nation state”.
That is, countries in Europe should possibly (maybe even probably) be more trusting that the Kremlin either mainly or supplementary has had a national defence motive for the Ukraine war. Anything else is likely to keep the lines between Russia and us hardened. A national security motive is one of the few things that intelligibly may explain why it has happened.
This was an act of suspending criticism, now make any – necessary – restrictions!
Above were listed the maybe most crucial points, but even further reflections may be valuable, at least for us who live in countries in Europe – in order to raise our consciousness. Would the European council in 1996 have demanded of the USA that they abolish the death penalty to have a seat in it, if the USA had been geographically situated in Europe? Russia and the USA apparently have as a common trait that they sense the death penalty for the most hideous crimes as being in line with the concept of “justice”. Western Europe should see the following: Russia actually abolished death penalty (!), seemingly based on a wish to view themselves as a part of Europe. Medvedev and Putin, are (or were, originally) disappointed that this goal shipwrecked. However, they lay the responsibility of the shipwreck on the West. Russian death penalty was reinstated.
Russia may sense it as though they are attempted softened by soft “EU power”. Such softening after the end of the cold war, however, may gradually and increasingly have come to be viewed as attempts at “domestication”. The EU puts forth softening, but subtly also submissive conditions. Behind the soft EU power, however, stands “hard power” from a nation that itself practices the death penalty, the USA. Russia may have come gradually to view Europe as “allready domesticated” by the USA without even realizing it themselves, as the USA’s extended interest sphere.
Europeans would rather explain it differently, with inherent cultural differences between the USA and Europe. The idea that the death penalty violates life understood as an absolute human right, and that exemplifying the opposite of this right through the death penalty will send signals of double standards, does not seem imported to Europe from the USA. No matter how; Russia may see a “bad cop” in the USA and a “good cop” in the EU. Both taken together as combined is being sensed as a threat towards Russia’s as well as Russian speaking population pockets’ autonomy and equanimity. It may be provoking to Russia that European leaders relate to Russia in a manner that Russia suspects they’d not dare without the USA in their back. If we did so without the USA in our back it could, paradoxically, be a little bit less provoking to the Russians.
Either more or less unwittingly since 1991, the West has communicated to Russia: “You can only be autonomous by being autonomous in the manner I norm for you”. Such “over-autonomy” is in reality an alpha-like threat to the other parts autonomy. It is in fact exactly that which we do not want Russia to tell its smaller neighbors.
At best, it is an unjust and unwarranted attempt at paternalism, at worst it is a more serious threat to national autonomy. This may trigger the reaction “I can’t be autonomous with the pressure that their understanding of morality exert on me” (ill or “wrongful” frame conditions of pressure under which a party is to either keep or change its opinion – not entirely freely).
The West has criticized affairs internal to the Russian state with a persistency that have left Russia sensing that the Western cultural block has claimed ownership of the “international roads” and claim the right to stop, stand still on them, and look in windows; Russias window. Russia has never been “culturally primed” as a part of fully voluntary normality to such a “democratic custum”, which in the lack of it as normality can only be taken as a question mark put up by the own nation’s right to autonomy.
The European West, suffering from short term memory and seeing the situation more subjectively the higher the tension and sense of threat (something one may suspect is also true in Russia), may lack self-insight to be able to subtract their own unacknowledged contributions to the ill dynamics that has led to escalating tension over decades and now finally war.
After the Sovjet Union disintegrated, the Russians still had left the CIS (the commonwealth of independent states) including Belarus and the Ukraine, but the West didn’t even – seem (seem to the Russians) – to wish for them to keep that. Russians – may – sense that as something disturbingly all-consumptive and fundamentally unsympathic.
Many western Europeans view that topic differently, more in terms of the Ukrainean people’s own choice of approaching the West (“we” didn’t force it), but Russia nonetheless perceives being succesively robbed of heritage. If “Western democracy” is the reason that is supposed to “be right”, then that gives “Western democracy” (our type of government) a bad name in Russia. The way oligarchs got power and wealth in Russia after the end of the cold war may also have destroyed Russians’ faith in “Western democracy”. They were predatory capitalists perceived by many Russians to rob the people – rising fast from nothing through slyness in tacticry, not hard honest and intelligent work, and frequently taking the wealth abroad, as an example of what “Western democracy” in practice is. Under Putin, the fate of the oligarchs seems to have been made dependent on their political cooperation.
Pertaining to international and geo-strategic matters, Russians might think: Accepting the non-right to a “backyard”; a sphere of expanded influence, will only let us stand there as naivist dummies relative to powers of inconsequential double standards. In other words, it is not a 100% sure that the Kremlin of today wants to act like a territorially expansive “bear”. Europeans, however, must keep feeling free to – feel – a 99% sure of it. That, however, should no longer inform our formal approach as states towards Russia, not if what we want to opt strongly for is a “best case scenario”. That could cause wars that Russia deems necessary to protect national security, like self-fulfilling prophecies.
Seen from the opposite, western European perspective, however, it also seems today as though a subset of Russians would sense that not only Russian-speaking people of the post 1991 Ukraine are “real Russians”, but that even the Ukrainean-speaking population of the post 1991 Ukraine is “really” Russians who have “misunderstood” their own national identity.
Furthermore, that this Russian, subjective sensation should “trump” that same Ukrainean-speaking populations own sensation that they have an own, separate national identity; Ukrainean. If there actually is such a Russian attitude, them Europeans will fear that Russia has an expansivist (“bear-like”) mentality and does not respect the principle of the nation state upon which “European peace” has largely rested for the last 80 years.
If the Ukraine is annexed by Russia in its entirety, then the rest of Europe would be given reasons to fear that an “easily planted ownership sensation” on the part of Russia may translate into future threats to other European countries, at the very least any Slavic speaking and / or post-Sovjetic ones. European trust of Russia will then suffer even more severe damages. Such a development would seem to threaten to topple “the nation state principle” as the “predominant or ideal norm” for Europe, although that very principle’s predominance has arguably contributed strongly to the historical level of peace that western Europe has enjoyed since 1945. The nation state principle is not synonymous with international law, but has largely coincided with it (as the main rule, but with exceptions such as Switzerland and Belgium) within Europe after 1945.
We have even heard a Russian argument that the Ukraine war is a domestic matter because the Sovjet union was never legally dissolved. The Russian President Boris Jeltsin declared – Russia – independent of the Sovjet union. Gorbatchev, not Jeltsin who forced Gorbatchev into house arrest, could have led a process to legally dissolve the Sovjet Union – or chosen not to do so. Is a Russia that originally declared its independence from the Sovjet Union today thus the heir and manager of a not legally dissolved Sovjetic jurisdiction? Could Kazakhstan say the same thing, threatening to resolve disputes with other, former Sovjet republics with the use of power on such a basis? After declaring themselves independent, Russia did recognize the independence of other, former Sovjet states. Moreover, other pro-Russian argumentation (like that above) hangs from different hook alltogether, namely that the Sovjet Union was an illegal (criminally revolutionary) regime. Westerners may easily suspect the Sovjetic jurisdiction argument to be a vicarious argument for sentiments in Russia of wanting to win back areas the Russian empire had before the communist revolution. For us, however, the Zar empire in its maximal extension was, like the word “empire” even suggests or implies, imperialistic. Europe had luck the Zars focused the most on the eastern and southern directions.
This is one way of viewing history, but there may be other ways. We in countries of western Europe must remember that the Russian military strength was solely responsible for the liberation not only of Poland and other countries further west from Hitler’s inhumane quest, but of the Ukraineans too. Russians of today may have asked: “Is that legacy so little important to you (you = Ukraineans) that you would rather entrap your huge Russian speaking minority in the NATO-alliance of the cold war enemy to our (the Russian state’s) increased risk and disadvantage than staying within the CIS?”.
Claiming the right to be autonomous without having to show due thankfulness can be interpreted as unethical, and according to 18th century German philosopher Immanuel Kant, whose heritage the Russians in Kaliningrad now administer, autonomy is a status you can be granted only as a truthful mirror of your mastery of autonomy in the sense of reason-based ethical consequence as a potential that distinguishes humans from animals.
Hence, even with reference to Immanuel Kant, who remains a respected philosopher also in the West, the Russians could mean that Ukraineans not showing thankfulness do not deserve autonomy if their granted autonomy would simultaneously take the form of a threat to Russia. That differs from classic, Anglo-Saxon philosophers, whose proponents would certainly ask “who are objectively to judge about such a purported ability to consequence based ethical autonomy in each single case – the long deceased Kant?”.
As to the Ukraineans, the way a majority of the people in western Europe honestly see it, the Ukraineans are presently trying to defend borders they were given passively because the USSR collapsed from within; that is without any act of Ukrainean conquest. They do not sense that their country has done something wrong. They voluntarily agreed without arguing about it, that Russia should inherent the entire nucelear arsenal of the USSR.
Pertaining to majority dictatorship to the Russian speaking population’s disadvantage within the Ukrainean democracy: Well functioning and center-balanced democracy founded soundly in enlightenment era ideals tries to avert the problem of majority dictatorship. Majority dictatorship seems to become an increasing problem the further out on both flanks of the political spectrum you come, before those flanks’ extremist end points of actual dictatorism. Marxism was originally envisaged as a majority dictatorship, but Marx held revolution and a passing state of dictatorship after it as necessary to bring about the initial change. Due to the never dying risk that the majority would want something different than Marxist majority dictatorship, however, the transitory actual dictatorship turned out impossible to end and the Marxism we saw throughout the cold was was dictatorial. On the other hand, some far right dictators of history were originally elected democratically, but used the vote of a majority of the people at one specific point in time, first as a self-serving argument to override the rest of the population according to a majority dictatorial principle; only subsequently in line with true dictatorism also to override anyone having voted for them who’d subsequently rather have changed their minds, hence denying the people the democratic right to correct their country’s course by firing them in the next election.
From a Western perspective, however, it seems that the Ukraine, rather than having been led solely by political radicalists after 1991, may mainly have suffered from a degree of “the stupidity of crudeness” from 1991 onward. In other words, that tendencies to majority dictatorship may be due to inexperience with popular democracy and the implementation of too crude democratic desicion making mechanisms. “Majority rule” is one immediate and intuitive understanding of the word “democracy”, and it may have been taken too literary and too simplistically as such in the Ukraine and its young democracy. The West has seen the Ukraine as a “toddler democracy” (that is why EU membership negotiations for the Ukraine were repeatedly postponed pending reforms and anti-corruption measures), Russia has seen it as radicalist and even treacherous.
Something we who live in countries in Europe have overlooked?
Even within the frame of Russian rationality, it may seem for many in western Europe as though a human life would be less worth to the present Russian government than to our present governments. We get to hear that young male Russians (potential, future fathers) of today grow up being indoctrinated that they have a “death-sacrifice-duty” to the nation, and in the choice of releasing war in the Ukraine, this duty must already now be practiced. Through this, foreigners die as well. Human life (Russian lives; potentially our foreign lives too) – seems – less worth to the Kremlin, to our subjective, Western minds. To us in western Europe, Russia now seems more important to the Kremlin than Russians, to put it bluntly. Possibly a bit dumbly, we can think of other historical templates for the same – like by asking: What made Nazism contemptable and condemnable, other than its inhumanity finding a distinctly anti-Russian expression? If this way of thinking and asking questions expresses but a blunt Western oversimplification / misinterpretation equalling partisan argumentation, then the following quote is less relevant:
“There, one demands and gives obedience without resistance. One commands, but avoids to pursuade. There, the punishments are few, but these few are hard and quickly go to the utmost, most terrible. There, treason counts as the most terrible crime, even criticism of bad conditions is dared only by the bravest. There, a human life is little worth and ambition takes the form that it brings lives in danger. The one who hears this will at once say: It is a mirror of a barbarian society that hovers in danger, our modern armed forces.” (Nietzsche, 1880, in Human All Too Human, Part 3, #279)
There does exists a not impossible, maximally charitable interpretation of today’s Kremlin that seems to have been overlooked in the West (including western Europe). That charitable interpretation goes approximately as follows:
Russia may have – sensed – as though being in a perpetual state of emergency since the collapse of the Sovjet Union, due to the traumatization of the societal collapse, the transitory military defencelessness back then, but also due to the sum of all the point of the foregoing heading (where the West has an often unacknowledged co-responsibility after 1991).
This, however, is a state of emergency never declared. Since Russia has very short tradition with popular democracy and how states of emergency are handled within constitutionally democratic frameworks, they might have seen it within the power-holders’ authority to handle it “silently” the way they deem apt. It may have given consequences in Russia that we would see also in our countries if a state of emergency was actually declared.
If at war or in grave states of emergency, also our Western nations would passingly be unrecognizable as democracies based on the standard ” modus operandi” of a democracy in its residual state. That could be part of why Trump, bluntly incompetent, called Zelenskij a dictator. At full scale war we would, passingly, become dictatorships – but the people would know why and accept it – as a passing and necessary condition inherent to the danger that must be avoided through a state of emergency declared by the correct level of government through due constitutional processes, above all in times of full scale war with another country.
Many westerners may feel it as a “conviction”, or even as “truth”, that such a benevolent interpretation of today’s Kremlin is wrong.
“Convictions are greater enemies of truth, than lies.” (Nietzsche, 1878, in Human, all too human, part 1, 9th Main Section, #483)
“‘Truth‘ is more fateful/fatal than error and ignorance, because ‘truth‘ undermines powers that work for enlightenment and acknowledgement.” (Nietzsche, posthumously 1901: The Will to Power, book 2, III-2)
Say, that there was a fourth branch of power, not the free media often nicknamed as it in the West, but an actual fourth branch which could intervene and declare a state of emergency in Western countries if and when they were threatened from the inside because of structural fragilities allowing opportunistic power seekers to expand their own powers beyond what the constitutions intend.
Such interventions could take place to forestall civil war in situations where no political party trusts others to respect the constitution if they naively do so. Because of how our constitutions let governments declare a state of emergency in the case of war, Western democracies don’t need such a fourth branch of power for the scenario of war, but hypothetically, it could be pertinent for the scenario of civil war.
An antiquated, not forward looking variant of such a fourth power could be if the british monarch would have somewhat more power than what is the case today. If that monarch had more power (not necessarily much more, but somewhat more) than the present day British monarch, he or she could declare a state of emergency, take over the role as “commander in chief” (the supreme commander of the military). That is, as long as that this is granted by the constitution under specifically defined conditions. That could prevent the role of “commander in chief” to fall into the hands of partisan politicians within the executive branch of power fighting outside of constitutional boundaries against others whom they – claim – also do it, both sides however lacking the universal popular mandate the multiparty legislative assembly does.
The legislative branch of government within democracy is the only branch that always represents the people’s collective will in a universal manner. That is why countries in Europe prefer to be parliamentary democracies. The legislative body is seen as the backbone of our democracies. Threefold governmental power within such parliamentary democracy means that the legislative body must agree on a party or a coalition of parties to execute government.
To the extent that Americans may think this makes the threefold division of power hollow, it does not to any further extent than does the nomination of supreme court judges by the US President. The executive branch of government still functions independently of the legislative, but is weaker than in the US democracy. This is the European, but different meaning of “reducing government”. There is no separate popular election for the executive branch of power where “the winner takes it all” regardless of what potentially half the people thinks or no matter how “far wing” the winner is.
Whether democracy is parliamentary or presidential, to some extent the executive branch of government is still always a serial-unipartisan, digital system of “0s” and “1s” that the popular electorate can alternate and correct (as long as democracy still stands). Since any branch of governmental power being as broadly representative as the legislative would be an ineffectual executive, we tolerate this, but the insurance policy against risks implied by potential misuses within the serial-unipartisan form of executive government could be to entertain the thought of a fourth branch of latent power prescribed to use its power only if democracy is in danger of “moving fully off track”.
With an optimally charitable interpretation, Putin could be – thought – to have viewed himself, not as one who wanted to threaten the threefold power of his country’s young, democratic constitution of 1993, but as one who acted in the self-perceived capacity of something comparable to a fourth branch of state power, necessary for reasons of national security. He may have seen that some Russian political parties were influenced from abroad, something which would cause a huge outcry if it happened in America, especially if there were simultaneous strategic risks related to those very same, foreign powers. Maybe Putin thought that he could not allow animous foreign interests (an expansive NATO of self-serving interest and double standards) to attain the position of “commander in chief” as an act of either witting or unwitting treason on the part of some Russian politicians, to the grave future danger to Russian national security.
Since such a fourth branch of power did not exist in Russia despite the perception of a precarious, danger to national security, something akin to it had to be fought into existence and then keep a strong control until the threat to national security had been besieged for good. Securing the future, national security of the nation was viewed as more important than abiding by the very young and very untested constitution, because without a secured future for the nation, the constitution could become worthless.
If all parties abide by the constitution, civil war should be impossible. If civil war threatened, however, there would inherently be a grave and mutual distrust of each party as to whether the political opponents abide by the constitution. The sensation in Western democracies would then be that without a future democracy in which one’s own voice will be equal, the constitution will be worthless in the future – anyway. Thus, abiding by it now during conflict as the sole party doing so will put oneself at sole disadvantage. In such a situation the British, for instance, could actually turn happy (at least in retrospect) that they have never come to abolish an “old-times practice” where the only person military officers swear their alliegance to, is the King or the Queen.
Worded a bit too paternalistically for our own freedom-ideological sensitivities, such an imaginatory situation would cause democracy to need “a parent branch of government”, because popular responsibility to wield a democratic constitution proved premature. Within democracy, such a fourth branch of governmental power would need to hope for its own redundancy, understanding itself purely as an insurance measure. The idea of such a 4th branch may nonetheless sound unsound to our Western ears. Wouldn’t there then be a need for yet another governmental branch that could check and balance even the 4th branch, preventing power misuse on its part? That objection would be the Western response, and it has validity, at least – for our countries. As a thought experiment, it could be investigated whether the fourth branch of government may be answerable to the legislators and the judiciary, but not the executive branch – and wise versa – like a double triangle of powers.
The danger perceived in Russia from the 1990s onward may have been a combination of the NATO-banner fronting what Russia perceived as the USA’s cause and American or Western influence upon democratic processes in Russia internally, both converging as a potentially fatal threat to Russian autonomy. This threat entailed both an increased long term threat of war and an increased long term threat of civil war, maybe both of those dangers combined in the thinkably worst case. We Westerners are still allowed to think that such a Russian threat perception was exaggerated. Do we have the right to judge about it, however? Do we sense a 100% sureness that we are right – or only a 99%?
Western europeans will have “much to mean” about this “radical” suggestion of a maximally charitable intepretation fo today’s Kremlin. A seeming fact is that any territory annexed by today’s Russia will see their population lose the right of democratic participation if they had it before. That alone is for us enough to justify solidaric co-defence of any / all nations which today‘s Kremlin could attack with the seeming intent of annexation. “Freedom is being threatened”. Even that, however – could – (even if there is only 1% chance for it) be a perception having arisen due to the Russian state functioning somewhat according to an undeclared state og emergency (in which case it loses the characteristics of democracy as seen in its residual state) – and true for as long as that undeclared state of emergency needs to last.
We also see an anti-Western rhetoric and mentality spread from the political top to the Russian population, that we tend to assess as “radical” or “semi-extremist” in our ears. That causes many Westerners not to embrace a maximally charitable interpretation of today’s Kremlin. For us, Russia is the party that has chosen a deadly, uprooting and risk-tolerating solution to well enough real problems we have underestimated facing the European continent – not we.
This fact, however, may be part of our “crude consequence”, if we take all points from the former heading sufficiently into account. This may partially be explained with reference to the sense of emergency going along with an undeclared state of emergency. A sense of emergency will always cause “we-them thinking” and entail a risk of so called “groupthink” internally. There might also be levels of suspiciousness in Russia that make them assess danger differently. Suspiciousness is not the same as evil. If you are shut out and “ganged up against” it must not even be paranoid, but might be un-naively vigilant. We should not come to the conclusion that the Kremlin took the right course of action attacking the Ukraine, but we should be insightful.
For a few years, the bilateral relations between Russia and Norway seemed quite good, possibly in part because norwegians showed solidarity by aiding Russian fishing wessels in trouble at far sea and because Norway spoke to Russia in a carefully respectful tone after Russian military exercises in the north sea caused disturbances for the norwegian oil industry. Russia even gave up disputed claims in the arctic ocean for a predictable and safe dividing line, as a compromise. Medevedev joked sympathically in Oslo, 2011 (before Euro-Russian relations cooled off) that the Russians “have long tradition for conspiracies”. Maybe some of these have later become “a life of their own”, we can’t know for sure.
If correctly or falsely reported, Western media have noted that there is now talk in Russia that western Europeans – hate – Russians. That is untrue; if correctly reported, it is a construction of a “dangerous truth”. Almost no western Europeans hate Russians, but it is true that not few hedge an aversion towards todays Kremlin. Maybe we who live in countries in Europe need to understand it better; there is a threshold within each culture of “hard moral”, where friendliness, softness, and too overt emphasis on nuance can be mistaken as something false, weakly and slyly challenging of “natural authority”; something that is thus legitimate to “manipulate back”. Angela Merkel has told a story where Putin, knowing in advance of her phobic-like fear of dogs, had let loose a dog in the room during their mutual meeting. From the opposite (our) side of the table, Putin’s choice of action here resembles an expression of an unwarranted “positioning need”. Russians of Putin’s mentality could call this a “sissy argument”, but at any rate, it in effect precludes authentic intersubjectivity at the state level, if that should still be seen mutually between Russia and western Europe as an advantage.
Maybe we miss out on some higher order interpretation of the events we witness, but it may seem to us as though it is we versus them. We – “the Russia of our conception” against all Russians and/or foreigners who think or sense differently. The right to decide for ourselves whether to think/sense the same or differently, however, is what we in western Europe deem worth fighting for. We don’t see Merkel’s phobic fear reaction as weakness. She would only be weak if she let her fear reactions decide her choices. We see her as human and her humanity at the level of state leadership as desirable.
Putin may – in effect – function much like a dictator as of today, but based on the above, there is at the very least a slim and hypothetical chance that he has not wanted to do so to the same extent, something we may grasp only if we make a strong, wholehearted effort to use what Nietzsche called “fine grained consequence”.
It is hard to see how much someone exaggerates the truth if another part denies the same truth. Both Russia and Europe deny some truths exaggerated by the other. Russia may (although the final word about it must remain intersubjectively defined) has possibly exaggerated the basis for Russian rights in the eastern Ukraine (cf. even Russia priorly acknowledged the Ukraine’s borders), while Europe has denied the same basis altogether. If we take the scenario of an undeclared state of emergency duly into account, Europe may have exaggerated Russia’s departure from a path of democracy as described in their own young constitution of 1993, whereas Russia has denied it alltogether (cf. in not explaining the reasons to their own population, they have not admitted it to be true even “in effect”).
If there is as much as a theoretical chance that the maximally charitable interpretation either already is correct, or that it may become correct given a realistic prospect for improvement of international relations and security, it would be an ultimate tragedy never to have taken it into account beforehand, if the worst case scenario of a new world war should one day come to be reality.
Importantly, if we in our discourse with the Kremlin do not open for the scenario that the maximally charitable interpretation may have been the right one all along, we might just – thereby – close a window of mere possibility that it may become true. Thus, our “wiser attitude” is not to be too self assured and not to operate with “truths”.
News broadcast on the 18. Of February 2025 reveals that the Kremlin has said in preliminary peace discussions with the USA, that they still acknowledge the right of a free Ukraine to become a EU member in the future. A point that is easy to overlook, is that the Kremlin here reveals a perception of the EU as possible to “live neighborly” with, provided that a mutually safe peace arrangement is settled.
That may actually be a bit surprising, given how Russian media transmission has portrayed this war as a Western proxy war with the countries of the EU as war mongerers. Does that mean that the very highest placed heads within the Kremlin sees the situation “a little bit” more like Europeans do than they state publically?
Does it mean they do so, but haven’t granted themselves the liberty to admit it publically, that this war would not have taken place without the global role of the USA through NATO, and even that the reaction of smaller, hence vulnerable, European countries witnessing the big war in their neighborhood is – almost understandable (cf. not like a freight train feeding a war the landscape wants to end after all) – yet nevertheless now a problem that must be dealt with?
We shouldn’t ask Russia to confirm or disconfirm this. We should just keep it in the back of our minds. The Kremlin’s continued openness to Ukrainean EU-membership is also not the right place to feel “moved”, given the realities of war, but this Russian openness is not self-evident and may preliminary seem not to be in line with worst case scenarios about the Kremlin of present day. Actually, it can justify a small and conditional hope that a European peace solution for the Ukraine would be something Russia could be conditionally open for. At least, that it is still worth the try.