Published March 9, 2022
IN the city of Kyiv in Ukraine, the Russian invasion continues. Inside the cellars of the city’s homes, grandmothers describe their memories of World War II. History appears to be repeating itself. They fled underground to bomb shelters during that catastrophic period and they are fleeing to bomb shelters once again now. The idea that the world had had enough of war, or that the tentacles of armed conflict could not infiltrate the cobbled streets of Europe, has been proven false. War has come to Europe again and just like previously a strongman, one who could well prove to be as bloodthirsty and ruthless as any wartime dictator, is leading the charge.
The eruption of war tests theories about the world order. Francis Fukuyama, the historian who wrote the famous essay The End of History? in 1989, led everyone, the people of Europe especially, to believe that humanity was evolving beyond ideology. Liberal democracy, it was assumed, had created universal respect for democracy, for territorial sovereignty, the rule of law and so on. The idea that the developed countries would again stoop to wage a territorial war, fought on actual land, seemed quite out of place. But the days that have passed since the Russians invaded Ukraine have proved this argument to be an erroneous one.
Not only is Europe at war but the war is quite specifically about territorial control. If that were not enough, Putin’s threats of “consequences you have never encountered in your history” sounds terrifyingly like Europe’s last war. If the agenda of the Russian president is to wipe out Ukrainian existence, the only way to survive is to escape somewhere else, giving up altogether the rights to the homeland.
Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilisations fares much better. In his work, Huntington saw Ukraine as an enduring problem. In his view, Ukraine was a ‘cleft’ country representing two distinct portions, the Eastern portion belonging ethnically and culturally to Russia and the Western portion whose identity fits far better with the Eastern Europeans. This war, barring some miraculous intervention, could very likely lead to a Huntingtonian partition where the eastern half of the country goes to Russia and some sliver of the western portion is left ‘independent’ and can continue to identify with Europe. If you subscribe to this idea, then the war in Ukraine is part of the world dividing on civilisational lines.
The eruption of war tests theories about the world order.
The idea that Putin is only after Ukraine would likely be reassuring to the Western Europeans. It would mean that unlike Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich, Putin merely has regional plans. Worried about losing control over his sphere of influence and the encroachment of Nato states ever closer to his borders, he has set off on a quest to quell the threat once and for all. It would also mean that once he has regained control over his sphere of influence, he will order the nuclear-armed Russian army back to its barracks and all will be well again in Europe.
The present, however, is always haunted by the past. It is only around eight decades ago that the Europeans made similar calculations about Hitler’s intentions. Sudetenland, a resource-rich part of then Czechoslovakia, was inhabited by three million German speakers. Claiming that the Germans living there were being persecuted by the Czech authorities, Hitler demanded Sudetenland. To appease him, an agreement was signed by countries other than Czechoslovakia, leading to the region’s annexation by Hitler in 1938.
Hitler was entirely aware that the Allies were desperate to avoid a large conflict — as Putin is about Nato. The infamous Munich Agreement promised just this to Europe, that Germany could have Sudentenland and war would be averted. Six months of peace followed, which gave Hitler just enough time to regroup and then take over the rest of Czechoslovakia. In 1939, he moved on to Poland and then onwards still as the war raged on.
It is the unpreparedness of their ancestors that haunts the Europeans today. It is why so many are wondering if they too, like their ancestors, are waiting too long, not fleeing when they can. Hundreds of thousands of European Jews died because of their incredulity at what Hitler was doing. They never thought they would be suddenly stripped of their cosmopolitan lives, their bars and cafes, their urbane ways. Speaking to a German journalist in Berlin, I learned that even as far as that country is, next door to Poland, many are buying supplies and storing them just in case war does come to their door. Others are coming up with exit plans, talking beforehand of the point at which they will pack up and leave for the United States or Latin America or anywhere else except Europe.
The future is undecided. It is quite likely that the events that will determine its course are still taking place. Outside Europe, in South Asia, the unfortunate theatre of the last war, there was never any fanciful faith in the idea that humanity had ‘overcome’ war. Pakistan and more acutely Afghanistan are both scarred by Nato’s expeditions. Their history and their future will bear those scars for decades to come. Those, I suppose, are the grisly realities of the world’s unfortunate, those who are expected to be dealing with hardships, with refugees, with a lack of medical facilities as well as crashing currencies. Ukrainians are the new victims of the megalomania and egotism of hegemons. Superpowers and almost-superpowers should turn to those who have been bearing the scars of conflict, the death blows of lost homelands, for pointers. As it happens, it is not the bygone ghosts of old Europe that can be most instructive in handling this miserable moment, but the living ghosts of conflicts just past.
The writer is an attorney teaching constitutional law and political philosophy.
rafia.zakaria@gmail.com
Published in Dawn, March 9th, 2022
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