Putin and Hitler; Ukraine and Czechoslovakia

The destruction caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine has generated images that have often been compared to those from World War II battles.  Pictures of destroyed towns and villages cause cognitive dissonance as we ask ourselves how this could be happening today.  Hasn’t the world made progress nearly a century after that previous carnage?  If one considers the geopolitical state of the world in the late 1930s and now, there are disturbing similarities.  Europe is threatened by a fascist state believing it has the right to expand its borders.  Asia is troubled by a rising power with the will and the resources to dominate the area economically, politically, and militarily.  A comparison between current China and twentieth-century Japan is a bit of a stretch at the moment, but a comparison between Putin and Hitler seems spot on.  If one can consider China to have most of the characteristics of a fascist state, then once again it is the western democracies against fascists.  Timothy Snyder considers these issues in an article for Foreign Affairs: Ukraine Holds the Future.

As Tony Judt lay dying from ALS, he participated with Timothy Snyder in a long series of conversations about the history of the twentieth century and what we of this century should have learned from that era.  Judt feared that we of this era had forgotten that past prematurely and could suffer as a result.  Snyder turned those conversations into the book Thinking the Twentieth Century with Judt as main author.  Snyder agrees that now we have not been living as though a democratic society was a precious thing that could be taken away from us.  We had forgotten that Franklin Roosevelt was receiving advice from well-known political experts suggesting that the only way our democracy could compete with the likes of Germany and Japan was if he assumed dictatorial powers.  Fortunately, he didn’t listen to them.  The ultimate lesson of World War II was that if you were not willing to fight and die for your way of life, you could lose it.

Our great mistake was assuming that the fall of the Soviet Union indicated the final victory of representative democracy over all other forms of government.  It had been proved, we thought, that democracy was inevitable if we just gave other countries a chance to observe how well it was working.

“At that point, as Russia and Ukraine emerged as independent states, a perverse faith was lodged in ‘the end of history,’ the lack of alternatives to democracy, and the nature of capitalism. Many Americans had lost the natural fear of oligarchy and empire (their own or others’) and forgotten the organic connection of democracy to ethical commitment and physical courage. Late twentieth-century talk of democracy conflated the correct moral claim that the people should rule with the incorrect factual claim that democracy is the natural state of affairs or the inevitable condition of a favored nation. This misunderstanding made democracies vulnerable, whether old or new.”

“The current Russian regime is one consequence of the mistaken belief that democracy happens naturally and that all opinions are equally valid. If this were true, then Russia would indeed be a democracy, as Putin claims. The war in Ukraine is a test of whether a tyranny that claims to be a democracy can triumph and thereby spread its logical and ethical vacuum.”

The history of the last century made it clear that democracy could be overtaken by oligarchs and autocrats.  It must be guarded continually with valor and ethical principles.

“Those who took democracy for granted were sleepwalking toward tyranny. The Ukrainian resistance is the wake-up call.” 

“The history of twentieth-century democracy offers a reminder of what happens when this challenge is not met. Like the period after 1991, the period after 1918 saw the rise and fall of democracy. Today, the turning point (one way or the other) is likely Ukraine; in interwar Europe, it was Czechoslovakia. Like Ukraine in 2022, Czechoslovakia in 1938 was an imperfect multilingual republic in a tough neighborhood. In 1938 and 1939, after European powers chose to appease Nazi Germany at Munich, Hitler’s regime suppressed Czechoslovak democracy through intimidation, unresisted invasion, partition, and annexation. What actually happened in Czechoslovakia was similar to what Russia seems to have planned for Ukraine.  Putin’s rhetoric resembles Hitler’s to the point of plagiarism: both claimed that a neighboring democracy was somehow tyrannical, both appealed to imaginary violations of minority rights as a reason to invade, both argued that a neighboring nation did not really exist and that its state was illegitimate.”

“In 1938, Czechoslovakia had decent armed forces, the best arms industry in Europe, and natural defenses improved by fortifications. Nazi Germany might not have bested Czechoslovakia in an open war and certainly would not have done so quickly and easily. Yet Czechoslovakia’s allies abandoned it, and its leaders fatefully chose exile over resistance. The defeat was, in a crucial sense, a moral one. And it enabled the physical transformation of a continent by war, creating some of the preconditions for the Holocaust of European Jews.”

Thus far Ukraine’s allies have not deserted it, and its leaders have stood fast and encouraged its people to fight back.  It has fought Putin’s army to at least a standstill.  But continued and intense support must continue for the indefinite future.  Putin, as did Hitler, made it clear that the country being invaded would be the first of a series of invasions.  Allies chose to appease Hitler and convinced him they were weak.  World War II immediately followed.  Ukraine’s allies must see Putin defeated.  Autocrats in Russia and across the globe are watching closely for signs of weakness and lack of resolve.  A Ukraine loss could begin the unraveling of the international order, starting with a discredited NATO and a feckless European Union.

Snyder provides this summary of what is at stake.

“A Ukrainian victory would confirm the principle of self-rule, allow the integration of Europe to proceed, and empower people of goodwill to return reinvigorated to other global challenges. A Russian victory, by contrast, would extend genocidal policies in Ukraine, subordinate Europeans, and render any vision of a geopolitical European Union obsolete. Should Russia continue its illegal blockade of the Black Sea, it could starve Africans and Asians, who depend on Ukrainian grain, precipitating a durable international crisis that will make it all but impossible to deal with common threats such as climate change. A Russian victory would strengthen fascists and other tyrants, as well as nihilists who see politics as nothing more than a spectacle designed by oligarchs to distract ordinary citizens from the destruction of the world. This war, in other words, is about establishing principles for the twenty-first century. It is about policies of mass death and about the meaning of life in politics. It is about the possibility of a democratic future.” 

Putin is this century’s Hitler.  We must get this right!

  

Animals and Culture and Us

 Humans have long basked in the misconception that they are unique among nature’s creations, possessing levels of reasoning and culture that are not possible for any other species.  While humans are in fact unique, so are all other species.  Recent research continues to diminish the degree to which humans can view themselves as exceptional.  Carl Safina discusses such matters in his book Becoming Wild: How Animal CulturesRaise Families, Create Beauty, and Achieve Peace.  We tend to think of animals as being born with inherent behavioral characteristics that greatly determine their future lives.  In other words, they are merely “wild animals.”  Safina’s intention is to demonstrate that what we consider “wild animals” are species whose young are born into specific societies with specific cultures.  Becoming “wild” can require years of learning and practice before an animal can survive within its culture.  Rather than living preprogrammed lives, groups or societies of a given species will adapt their culture to best optimize their lives within whatever environment they reside.  That view can be applied to humans—ancient or current—as well.

Culture is usually thought of as a human construct.  Consider this human-focused definition from Wikipedia.

“Culture is an umbrella term which encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities, and habits of the individuals in these groups.”

However, many animal species develop those same characteristics.  Safina provides a more relevant definition of culture. 

“Culture comprises knowledge and skills that travel from individual to individual and from generation to generation.  It is learned socially.  Individuals pick it up from other individuals.  It is knowledge that doesn’t come from instinct alone.  It’s not inherited in genes.  What is learned and shared: that is culture.  Our understanding of living diversity is only just beginning to recognize that what is learned and shared is often crucial to survival.” 

Safina introduces the reader to the cultures of whales, particularly sperm whales, to demonstrate how familial relationships are crucial to survival; cultures of birds, particularly scarlet macaws, to demonstrate how cultural features lead to the evolution of physical appearance (beauty); and cultures of chimpanzees to demonstrate how cultural features work to limit antisocial behavior and enforce long-term community peace.  What is striking is the length of time required for an animal to learn what it needs to learn to become what we would refer to as a “wild animal.”

 It has long been claimed that chimpanzees provide the nearest genetic relative to humans.  And there are definitely characteristics of chimpanzee and human societies that are similar leading to focus on violent tendencies that are shared.  However, there is another near neighbor that diverged from the chimpanzee and human lines and arrived at an entirely different culture and society than either.  That would be the bonobos which have become now to be considered not a species of chimpanzee, but a separate species.  Some experts have begun to argue that bonobos are physically and socially our closest relative.  Chimpanzees are known for their male dominance and violent tendencies.  Bonobos are known for female dominant societies, the absence of violence, and their lust for sexual interactions.  Comparisons with humans is complicated.  What we are interested in here is the maturation process required to become a “wild” specimen.  Chimpanzees will be discussed.

“Pregnancy lasts eight months.  Because the infant’s head is small relative to a human baby’s, and the chimpanzee’s pelvis is not specialized for upright walking, birth is merely uncomfortable, not difficult.  Into her own waiting hands, the mother delivers.  She bites the umbilicus, then expels the placenta.  She either eats the placenta—sometimes sharing it—or discards it under some leaves.  The newborn, helpless as a human, will for the first couple of months be held inseparably to the mother’s body.  Exploration, play, and socialization—carefully monitored by Mama—will begin at about three months.  The young nurse for about five years, stay with their mothers for the first decade, become independent of their mother when they can match the pace of adult travel, at about ten years old, and begin to act independently at around fifteen years.”

Chimps and humans both require many years to attain adulthood.  Before schools were established for human children, both needed that time to learn what they needed to learn by observing others.  In the early years, that learning process is supervised entirely by mother chimps, mostly by human mothers.  The very young learn by observing, chimpanzees of all ages learn by observing.

“What must a chimp learn by watching other chimps?  Put it this way: they must learn everything—starting with whom they are, defined by with whom they belong.  Almost never has a captive chimpanzee successfully returned to nature.  Chimpanzees raised by humans are as unprepared to cope with—or be accepted into—free-living social situations as we would be if we were released into an indigenous territory in the Amazon rainforest.  Released apes usually starve or get killed.  Their long childhood, like ours, is for learning how to become who they will be.  They must learn how to be normal.  Theirs is a wild life that isn’t what we thought it was.; it’s a cultured existence.”

Besides the obvious needs to know how and where to find food, and how to protect themselves from predators, Chimps will have complex social interactions to navigate.  Chimps live in groups of a few to several dozen individuals, a size which means every individual is known and will have a position in society.  Both male and female adults will have sorted themselves into ranks in which highest are well-known and must be accorded the appropriate amount of respect. Young chimps, like young humans, begin as curious, friendly individuals.  They must learn how to socialize with this group in situations where mistakes could wreck one’s status for life or lead to a savage beating.  Observing and learning the appropriate social moves is a life-long task.

“We aren’t ‘like apes.’  We are like chimpanzees.  Chimpanzees are obsessed with dominance and status within their group; we are obsessed with dominance and status within our group.  Chimpanzees oppress within their group; we oppress within our group.  Chimpanzee males may turn on their friends and beat their mates; human males may turn on their friends and beat their mates.  Chimpanzees and males are the only two ape species stuck dealing with familiar males as dangerous.  A gender that frequently creates lethal violence within our own communities makes chimpanzees and humans simply bizarre among group-living animals.  Chimpanzees don’t create a safe space; they create a stressful, tension-bound, politically encumbered social world for themselves to inhabit.  Which is what we do.  This behavioral package exists only in chimpanzees and humans.”

Understanding the peculiarities of animal societies often illustrates that animal behavior and human behavior are not that different.  Consider the development of language as a means to define group membership.  Humans certainly have done that and continue to do that.  Animals that produce sounds use that capability to create identifications that allow them to distinguish between group members and nonmembers.  And like humans, these animals will use these differences to discriminate against nonmembers.

“For a long time cultural separation was believed to be ‘uniquely human.’  But we’ve now learned that humans are not the only creatures that use signals to determine group identities, reaffirm membership, reinforce differences, and cause distancing.”

“The Pacific Northwest’s so-called northern- and southern-resident orca communities’ only humanly discernable differences are their vocal dialects.  Both communities of orcas specialize in hunting salmon, and no apparent physical or genetic differences characterize membership between those two communities.  They seem to share everything—including a disdain for the community that is not theirs.  Orca communities avoid mixing for purely cultural reasons.  Their self-segregation of stable cultural groups was until recently considered so exceptional that researchers said it has ‘no parallel outside humans’.”

However, recent research has discovered that such self-segregation is quite common in the animal kingdom.

“Sperm whales, pilot whales, orcas (killer whales), and various dolphins can tell by sound which pods they might warmly greet—and which they must avoid.  Elephants know which families they like and which they prefer to avoid.  Elephants, primates, and other species know who’s in their group and who is an outsider.  Thousands of species of birds recognize their mates and neighboring territory holders, and vigorously repel other intruders.  Apes’ responses when meeting other groups range from murderously violent (chimpanzees) to frisky and frolicking (bonobos).”

One of Safina’s most intriguing observations is that cultural separation can lead to a single species diverging into multiple species.  Clearly, separation itself can create separate gene pools which will drift apart.  Bonobos and chimpanzees provide one of many examples.  All breeds of dogs are thought to have a common ancestor: the grey wolf.  The way in which gene pools become isolated is by eliminating intermixing by breeding.  Physical separation can clearly prevent sexual interactions.  It appears cultural factors can also eliminate cross breeding.

“At this point in our explorations, two clarifying points need our extra attention.  One is a question: Why do males so often compete and females do the choosing?  It’s largely because many kinds of males are mainly selling sperm, and sperm is cheap.  Sex is a buyer’s market.  Females, who hold more precious goods, get to browse and choose.  This general truism holds even for many birds in which males provide parental care, a role of greatly added value compared to mere hit-and-run fertilization.  Females benefit from pairing with high-status males in either case, because the female investment in eggs and young is much greater and, therefore, riskier than male investment in sperm.  So females require that males bring quality to the negotiating arena.”

“The second point is the real big one.  Animals are often attracted to what they see other animals attracted to.  This means that what an animal sees as attractive is also subject to cultural influence and social learning.  If that seems subtle, don’t be fooled.  It’s the big show-stopping dance number, with implications that reverberate across Life, through time, and to the far horizons.”

According to the above logic, males should gain the option of choosing mates provided they bring sufficient value to the negotiation.  Humans seem to have arrived at a culture in which that happens. 

“In humans, both sexes’ bodies advertise maturity; both sexes are vain and careful about their looks and are usually choosy about long-term mates.  Male humans are selling not just fertilization but the potential for reliable decades-long childcare and long-term bonding, making the best of them more valuable, putting them in a bargaining position to do some of the choosing.  The result is that men are in competition with men and women are competitive with women.”

In human cultures (some cultures at least), attractiveness is a dominant factor in mate selection.  But attractiveness is a cultural-specific quantity that changes over time and from one culture to another.  We have observed the tendency for animals to exhibit tribalism, or self-segregation: preferring to interact with their own group and avoiding other groups.  If this cultural avoidance of interaction extends to sexual interactions, then the gene pools become isolated and can evolve in different directions—perhaps even leading to new species.

Hardly any analysis of the polarized politics in the US omits references to tribalism or tribal behavior.  We seem to be undergoing a “Big Sort” where politics provides the tribal characteristic.  The urban-rural divide continues to grow.  Surveys suggest that the likelihood of marriage between members of the two parties is diminished.  We are animals exhibiting animal behavior, but animal tribes often have violent interactions.  Can this end well?

Can we learn anything from our nearest animal relatives the chimpanzees and bonobos?  Chimps will violently defend their territory against intruders, and occasionally use violence to raid another group’s territory, but the interactions seem more like the result of economic issues than that of visceral hatred.  The violence could not become genocidal because the neighboring groups maintain a shared culture which dictates that in their male-dominated world females will eventually leave their birth group and migrate to another group.  This interchange mixes the gene pools and avoids in-breeding for small groups.  It also helps keep the group culture from drifting away from the norm.  Bonobos have a different solution.  They avoid any tension that might occur in group interactions by throwing a party.  Or to be more exact, they have an orgy.  Let’s have sex and worry about problems later.

Well, perhaps those examples aren’t very helpful.  But we must come up with some mechanism to keep our two political cultures from drifting farther apart.

 

What Does the Future Hold for Putin and Russia?

As this is being written, Russia continues its war against Ukraine.  It appears to be maintaining a significant cash flow from the sale of its natural resources, mainly oil and natural gas.  It appears to have made an ally of China and has escaped sanctions by many of the world’s governments.  Yet it is losing some of its best customers under the sanctions imposed by Europe and the US.  This is hurting its economy, though perhaps not yet as much as was hoped.  What appears to be the most serious problem for Putin as he executes his war with Ukraine is the quality of his army.  It was clear in 2014 when Russia grabbed parts of Ukraine that it would be coming back for more.  This interim stage gave Ukraine and its army time to prepare, while giving Russia time to stockpile enormous amounts of munitions.  What Russia couldn’t stockpile was the necessary manpower to wage a serious war with a competent opponent.  One wonders if the country has any generals left.  About a dozen are believed to have been killed in battle, and perhaps more than that have been fired or demoted.  Putin seems unwilling, or unable, to dare a general mobilization to fill his ranks as they are depleted in the fighting.  Reports indicate that he has had to recruit mercenaries from within Russia and from other countries: people who will sign a short-term contract for money.  Reports also indicate that these new recruits are provided little time for training before being thrown into battle.

Ukraine has about a third the population of Russia.  That is enough people to support a sizeable army.  And, as Russia should know, when a country is fighting for its life, the dedication of the recruits is going to be quite high.  If Ukraine can continue to gain needed hardware from Europe and the US, it could be more than a match for Russia.

What is it about Russia that has caused it so much trouble with manpower?  Russia has never developed a healthy society buttressed by a healthy economy that provided opportunities for its general citizens.  It has been cursed by a combination of highly hierarchical social traditions and a wealth of natural resources.  Under the Tsars, wealth was controlled by the Tsar and a collection of princes and counts along with religious leaders.  Everyone else serviced the estates of the nobility or performed manual labor as serfs.  Putin has essentially reproduced much of this system with himself having Tsarist powers and an array of wealthy oligarchs to support his power.  The focus of the economy is on taking advantage of natural resources rather than developing a balanced economy in which Russian products of all kinds compete in a global marketplace.  The focus on products such as oil and natural gas that are massive with large cash flows, provides perfect opportunities to capture wealth and hide it.  Putin used this cash flow to prepare for war and support a passive society with cheap energy and other social benefits.  Meanwhile, his collection of billionaires and their companies had considerable leeway in diverting capital out of Russia. 

One reason for using paid contractors as soldiers is that the typical Moscow young man would have no interest, nor any motivation, to go to war in Ukraine.  But those stranded in the far distant outposts of Russia’s extraction economy might view it as a means of escape from the isolation and drudgery.  Putin is further limited by a falling population that is easily convinced to leave when the going gets tough.  This source, Russian fertility rates fall to record lows on the back of a deteriorating economy and sanctions pressure, provides some perspective.

“Russia has one of the lowest fertility rates in the world of 1.58 births per woman, which is also below the replacement rate of 2.1 births per woman. Russia also has one of the oldest populations in the world with an average age of 40.3 years, according to demographers.”

“In the last decade Russia has made up for the demographic shortfall in its natural population by attracting significant numbers of economic migrants, mostly from Central Asia. However, the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic of recent years coupled with a deep devaluation of the ruble in 2014 and again in 2020 has made Russia less attractive as a work destination and the number of migrants has fallen significantly, worsening the demographic problems.” 

“Russian emigration is also a problem. While emigration was low during the boom years of the noughties, it started to explode in 2012 after Putin began his third term as president. More recently, since the start of the war in Ukraine in February an estimated 1mn Russians have left the country and emigration is anticipated to stay high as the economic situation continues to deteriorate.” 

Russian society is blighted by a tradition of corruption.  It is disillusioning to the bright, well-educated young people the country can produce, and inefficient in running a war.  Putin can allocate large sums to his military, but it is not clear that he can guarantee that much of it is not stolen as it filters down to the actual soldiers.  Tales of lack of food and other provision for his troops are what one might expect with an organized kleptocracy.

Whatever the short-term evolution of this conflict, the longer-term effects of global warming will ultimately determine Russia’s fate.

Most of the world has begun to realize that climate change is a real phenomenon that must be anticipated and planned for.  Russia, as a major provider of natural resources, will be greatly affected.  Some analysts go so far as to predict that Russia’s geography will allow it to benefit from a warming climate.  Thane Gustafson has been following Russian developments for many years.  He was moved to devote an entire volume to the effect of climate change on Russia’s economy and government.  It is titled Klimat: Russia in the Age of Climate Change and it does not bode well for the future.  Gustafson published before the Russian invasion of Ukraine so there is no reference to the war and the current sanctions placed on Russia, but his take on the effect of climate change should still hold true.

The author’s goal is to predict Russia’s state as it reaches the year 2050.

“On present trends, despite the plethora of political pledges, the world will have missed its targets for greenhouse emissions by a wide margin.  Instead of ‘zero carbon,’ annual CO2 emissions will have grown from todays 35 billion tons to over 50 billion.  The world will have warmed, not by the 1.5 or 2 degrees Celsius that it has risen since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, but perhaps by 3 to 5 degrees, particularly at Earth’s northern latitudes, where most of Russia is located.”

Gustafson’s analysis seems to be based on global climate remaining within the 1.5-to-2-degree range, at least until 2050.  However, the temperature rise experienced in Russia will be greater.

“Temperatures are rising 2.5 times faster in Russia than in the rest of the world.  Between 1998 and 2018, there was a 300 percent increase in what Russia statistics call dangerous weather events.  These include floods and fire, but the greatest threat is drought, combined with increasingly violent rains.”

Will Russia see what is coming and respond accordingly?  Will it join the world community and contribute to the effort to limit greenhouse gas emissions?  Russia, like many other nations, has leaders whose opinions are tainted by their economic circumstances.  If your income is from selling oil, you will figure out a way for climate change to not be a threat.  Consider Vladimir Putin.

“He continues to downplay the negative consequences of climate change for Russia…It was only in 2019 that Putin acknowledged for the first time that the global role of oil might begin to decline in favor of gas and renewables, but he did not see that happening soon…he continues to see a strong future for hydrocarbons in the form of gas, and especially LNG (liquid natural gas).”

“Some may argue, especially in Russia…that in some respects climate change could even be beneficial for Russia.  I argue that such a view is profoundly mistaken.  The internal impact of climate change will be primarily negative.  Any internal benefits it may bring to Russia will be overwhelmed by the impact on Russia of the energy transition in the rest of the world.”

One of the successes of the Putin era has been the growth of Russia’s agricultural exports.  It is occasionally viewed as an area that would benefit from a warmer climate.  Instead, Gustafson argues that Russia will have to work hard just to maintain its agricultural productivity.  It uses the same practices as the rest of the world and is beset currently by the problems of soil acidification and soil erosion.  A warmer climate might help for a while, but there is no more soil left that can be brought into production.  Seventy percent of Russian terrain consists of useless permafrost.

“As one moves out of the present agricultural land area, soils are generally poorer, thinner, and more acidic.  To the north and east, even though permafrost will melt, the resulting exposed soil is infertile.  Permafrost is not actually soil, but a mixture of sand and ice, and it has not had the long accumulation of humus that results from plant life or the action of underground organisms.  A recent government survey of the state of Russian soils concludes flatly, ‘Russia has very limited resources of soil suitable for agriculture.  Climate change will not increase this area.  In other words, there is no potential for further expansion of agricultural land in the country’.”

Russia is locked in a position from which there appears to be little chance for recovery.  Its economy, and its society, is based on the continuation of income from selling gas and oil to external users.  As its customers make the inevitable switch to renewable energy, Russia will have no Plan B 

“Russia’s entire political and economic system rests on the formal and informal distribution of ‘rents’—payments, especially those from fossil fuels, many through multiple channels that bypass the formal budget.  These include the direct social costs covered by the producers themselves…the hidden subsidy provided to gas consumers in the form of low domestic prices, and the cost of padded construction contracts awarded to favored interests, as well as the steady leakage of profits abroad by various ‘informal’ channels.  As the best reserves are produced and production costs go up, and export revenues decline, the flow of available rents will decline throughout the system, with potentially destabilizing consequences, both economically and politically.”

“Even now, high global commodity prices have not been sufficient to keep the Russian economy growing at more than a snail’s pace over the past decade.  As time goes on, the state will have fewer means available to cope with the consequences.  This will be a major change, in view of the leading role the state has always played throughout Russian history, and particularly in the past century, in both the Soviet and the post-Soviet eras.  This in turn will lead to a number of further consequences.”

Putin may dream of a greater Russian empire dominating the Eurasian land mass, but the Russian future begins to look more like just a replay of the fall of the Soviet system: another poorly constructed system unable to change with the times.