Well, that was an emotional week and now it is a Monday to start at a new season and new thoughts. Except it is actually back to the traditional problems that had been wrapped in an intense swirl of memories, sadness, commitment and a hint of joy that it all continues.
Now it is back to work, right? Perhaps it is time to consider what exactly that is. We hae been working on it down at the Fire Ring. Imagine this, for a moment. We are now a half year into a curious quotation on the art of war. In order to frame it properly, we have changed the way we depict it to accommodate new sensibilities. Once simple words display the change. “Equity” and “Kharkov” are two that leap out of the swirl on this new day of a new week. Even mention of them brings confusion. “Kharkiv” is the current name for Ukraine’s second largest metropolitan area.
It is, or was, a major cultural, scientific, educational, transport and industrial center. We learned of it primarily as an objective in the large major regional war, a target of forces devoted to two oddly similar but fiercely opposed systems of governance. We naturally were taught the terms in the most recent conflict, though with the old spelling- “Kharkov”- we could insert vast swarms of Mongols on horseback and indomitable lines of stalwart Slavs to a place now filled with majestic cathedrals and design bureaus now routinely blasted with artillery in a new conflict.
We could insert the other term- “equity”- at any point in the discussion, since the term that sounds a bit like “equality” could refer to the birthright of Russian-speaking residents whose grandparents swore allegiance to a Czar to the east. But whose “equality” with those swearing allegiance in another direction is under question in a region of conflict.
What is of particular relevance this new week is the very nature of the discussion. There is a group of the Old Salts who first learned the geography of Ukraine in the context of Panzer movements. Later, as adults, they participated in a version of the Balkan wars in Serbia. There was some interesting nuance and context to that one. We were protecting the rights of an oppressed religious minority. It was one with which we had previous fairly dramatic differences, but which we defended on the grounds of justice.
We even left the older terms of reference behind since they still lived in the space between our ears. Or at least the entities- both old and new- we had described with different words assumed the manifestation of both. Earlier this year a reinvigorated Russia decided to conduct what they called a “Special Military Operation” to protect Russian equities. The words used to construct that simple sentence contain the seeds of confusion, since like the Salts, many interpret “Russian” and “Soviet” as variations of the same theme with significant variation. The latter term carried the strong memory of an invincible force allied with our own against unspeakable evil. And then it became an opponent in a much longer struggle for the future.
Within the struggle was a respect for capability and professional conduct in a spectrum that could include unimaginable (and frequently imagined) horror.
So that is the context for the latest unpleasantness. In that one, of course, the one term- “Russian” gets confused with an older one more familiar. “Soviet.” In that term, we expected the special operation to be over swiftly with the fall of a place we knew as “Kiev” and the swift integration into a place with an old name replacing the one that survived almost as long as the reign of a recent and revered monarch who lived in a different direction.
So that accounts for part of the confusion. Reports to start this new week are that the Ukrainians are driving east through Kharkiv, and the Russian resistance is crumbling. That reporting conflicts with our biased expectations, molded by life experience and belied by the impact of change and time.
We also start this new week on the verge of new history that reflects the weakness of the former superpowers, ours and theirs, in a conflict that reflects something quite new in which the old order has melted into a new swirl. That is one in which the former junior partners in the developing world are now in position to dictate new developments. Imagine an Indian subcontinent with more than a billion citizens. Imagine that is not poor or in some indeterminate developmental phase, but a powerful nation producing a food surplus and vast technical centers concerned about your car warranty. Imagine a Russia independent in energy resources on whom the old Europe, once center of global affairs, now begs for kilowatts of kindness.
Based on confirmation bias and a global war against terrorism, we are only now waking to the new world we helped create. We have donated the armaments from other old conflicts to the resolution of a newer one that will leave us with the old arsenals empty, manpower unable to fill the order of battle, desperately concerned about which of the host of new words must be used to describe something simple and binary.
It seems this new week contains some challenge, as the question of which direction armed forces are moving. We took a poll at the Fire Ring. We are in favor of adopting some new words we might use to more accurately reflect the new words of a new week.
Copyright 2022 Vic Socotra
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