I’ve been thinking for some time now that I should post something about the Ukraine war. But what? I know relatively little about Ukraine or its history with Russia over the past ten years. Though I’m certainly interested in foreign policy, international affairs, and war, I have no particular expertise in these areas. I’m just a concerned citizen, watching, helplessly, as people get slaughtered half way around the world.
But I can say this: This is the weirdest war I can remember. I marched against the war in Vietnam and served as a conscientious objector. That war was certainly in the news. Back then, however, the news was three national broadcast TV networks, and hardcopy newspapers. It was much more tightly controlled than today’s 24/7 web-fueled media environment. The same was pretty much the case for the Balkan wars of the 1990s. Then the US invaded Iraq after 9/11, pretty much the same. The web was now in heavy use, but we didn’t have social media. The same for Afghanistan and, though that war continued up until yesterday, it had pretty much receded into the background.
Things are different now. Here’s what Thomas Friedman wrote on April 3, 2022:
Almost six weeks into the war between Russia and Ukraine, I’m beginning to wonder if this conflict isn’t our first true world war — much more than World War I or World War II ever was. In this war, which I think of as World War Wired, virtually everyone on the planet can either observe the fighting at a granular level, participate in some way or be affected economically — no matter where they live.
While the battle on the ground that triggered World War Wired is ostensibly over who should control Ukraine, do not be fooled. This has quickly turned into “the big battle” between the two most dominant political systems in the world today: free-market, “rule-of-law democracy versus authoritarian kleptocracy,” the Swedish expert on the Russian economy Anders Aslund remarked to me.
That sounds about right to me. We’re all watching, and thinking...what?
Russia is being isolated from the world economy. Japan is facing an energy shortage as prices of liquified natural gas have gone up. Russia is cutting off natural gas supplies to Europe. Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov accuses “U.S. and its allies of pursuing a proxy war, and warned that their involvement could lead to nuclear war.” No, Toto, we are not in Kansas anymore.
* * * * *
I’m imagining an underground lair like the Bad Guys in those Bond movies have. A big table in the middle and high-tech gizmos all around. In the middle of the table we see a map of the world. Ukraine and its surrounds are lit up. The Bad Guys are discussing what to do next.
Who are the Bad Guys? Proxies – android duplicates perhaps, whole-brain uploads (or is it downloads?) – for the heads of state of the world’s nations, all of them: Ukraine, Russia, France, South Africa, Sri Lanka, USA, Guatemala, Japan, Chile, and so forth. As I say, all of them.
They saw tensions rising in the wake of America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan. What are we gonna’ do? these bots asked, what are we gonna’ do? They decided we needed another war. The Putin bot offered Ukraine, said they could mop it up quickly, It’ll divert people’s attention while we plot a more viable long-term solution. We can do this! The Biden bot agreed, as did the Xi Jinping bot, the Félix Tshisekedi bot, the Abdel Fattah el-Sisi bot, the Andry Rajoelina bot, the Prithvirajsing Roopun bot, the Jair Bolsonaro bot, the Willem-Alexander bot, the Carl XVI Gustaf bot, the Boris Johnson bot, and on and on, all the bots agreed.
And then things got out of hand. More and more people are dying. More will die. The bots don’t care. It’s no skin off any of their noses. ‘Cause they don’t have skin and noses. They’re just bots, bots run amuck in a James Bond movie. As long as we watch and don’t interfere with their power supply the bots don’t care.
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