The offensive with which the Russian invasion of Ukraine began on February 24, 2022, would have ended the matter had the attack not petered out within days. Was it poor planning by the Russian command, or pure brilliance by the Ukrainian defence? Either way the result has been four and a half years of mutual unremitting slaughter, to which the two sides now seem to be locked in to the last man standing.
When that last man is standing alone amidst the rubble, he might be asking, What was it all for? Every war certainly seems to be for something. And some wars are. But this one, I suspect, isn’t going to be one of them. Whatever Putin wanted, he’s not going to get it. But now he can’t stop because to stop is to lose. And so now what it’s all for is just not losing. The Ukrainians could stop, and settle for becoming a vestigial vassal nation. But the rest of Europe can’t let them, because then Putin would have been given leave to pick the Baltics off one by one. And so there we have it. One of those forever wars.
Or maybe not. Putin is not a young man. And it’s Putin who’s been bristling over the disintegration of the Soviet Union. So when he goes, no more than a decade hence, maybe more pragmatic minds will prevail. In the meantime the great surprise – and it’s going to be grist for legend – has been Zelenskyy, an everyone-thought-was-a nobody, a nobody who didn’t seek, but has humbly endured, the greatness thrust upon him. Heroes run into burning buildings. They’re seldom people who just played their assigned part on the right side of history. Zelenskyy will be one of those.
Not to be outdone – because in his mind he never is – there’s another forever war. It started on February 28, 2026 and is being waged from the comfort of his golf club by a man-child who is not a hero, and will not be honoured for having served on the right side of history.
It started with the murder of Iran’s leadership. I say ‘murder’ not because it was illegal. Illegal by whose law? I say murder because it was a wrongful killing. And it was wrongful because it was culpably stupid. It was stupid because, not unlike the ginger bread man, the orange man’s taunt is, “Kill me if you can!”. Well, until, not unlike the ginger bread man, someone does. It’s the hubris of the water boarder who thinks we don’t have to worry about the enemy treating our prisoners of war in kind because we’re dropping our Daisy Cutters from fifty thousand feet. Well yes, some war criminals die in their beds. But some don’t.
Trump’s war is much like Putin’s. Whatever he wanted he’s not going to get it. Instead of thwarting the nuclear ambition Iran had long since abandoned, he’s given it reason to resurrect it. And to do so with all possible dispatch. Instead of weakening its so-called proxies – every side calls the other side terrorists – he’s showed the Houthis the way to new opportunities. Instead of degrading Iran’s military capacity he’s driven it to invent a whole new kind of warfare. Surely the bombing and the blockade would turn the people against their evil regime. Well, as America learned in Indochina, cluster bombs and starvation is probably not the way to win hearts and minds. But now Trump can’t pull out any more than Putin can. Ever watch how dogs fuck?
The term ‘forever war’ is rhetoric. All wars – with the possible exception of the war over Palestine – end, eventually. The ripple effects, like the price of gas, is an inconvenience. Things get rebuilt, including the lives not lost. The tragedy is the lives that are lost. Each, conscript or civilian, thought he’d have a future. Well, apparently not. Some tragedies can’t be avoided without courting something worse. But by that measure neither Putin’s war nor Trump’s qualify. I’m not even sure that Netanyahu’s does.
When I used to teach the Philosophy of War, in the course outline I warned, “If you’re taking this course because you’d love to show off your Gurkha knife collection, don’t. Take this course, that is. If you’re taking this course because you’re wondering why we can’t all just love one another, don’t. In this course we’re going to neither celebrate war nor lament it. We’re just going to understand it.” So to say, as I just have, that some wars are dumb, is not to say they’re senseless. In fact when people do dumb things – and we all do – it’s always for a reason. It’s just not always a good reason.
Categories: Editorials, Everything You Wanted to Know About What's Going On in the World But Were Afraid to Ask, Social and Political Philosophy
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