Wars are easier to understand after they’re over and historians write books about them. It’s hard to get a clear picture of a war in progress, because of censorship, limited access to the battlefield, and less than objective news coverage.
What all wars have in common, though, is destruction, death, and civilian suffering. You could count on that the moment the shooting started.
To understand the Ukraine war, a bit of historical background is useful. Simply put, Ukraine was a Russian colony during the Soviet era that gained independence when the Soviet Union dissolved, while Russia was weak, and now a revived Russia under Putin’s dictatorship wants its former colony back.
We can wring our hands, but Putin can say with a straight face that Europeans also fought colonial wars. For example, France in Algeria and Indochina. From his point of view, it’s hypocritical for them to criticize him for that. Of course, this doesn’t make any of it right.
Reporting of this war by the Western press is laced with other hypocrisies. Putin is flattening cities? So did we in World War 2. Our B-17s and B-29s killed far more civilians than his airstrikes and shelling in Ukraine; the U.S. dropped A-bombs and firebombed Tokyo and Dresden.
I saw a news story that Russian troops confiscated 14 tons of food and humanitarian aid intended for Ukrainian civilians. Well, what about it? Sherman plundered Georgia on his march to the sea.
American and NATO officials have warned Putin of “consequences” if he uses chemical weapons in Ukraine. He’s probably thinking, “These guys dropped napalm on villages in Vietnam.”
Ukraine is accusing Russian troops of taking Ukrainian “hostages” to Russia. Germany used Russians as slave labor in World War 2.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not defending any of this, and least of all Putin. His invasion of Ukraine is indefensible, and we should do everything we can to help the Ukrainians.
And Putin has no grounds to complain about what the Ukrainians do. A headline today in BBC says, “Russia accuses Ukraine of attacking oil depot” in Russia. Well, I should hope so. It’s about time Ukraine took the war to Russia, and oil depots are legitimate military targets. If Ukraine bombed Russian cities, they wouldn’t be doing anything Russia isn’t doing to their cities.
War is a dirty business. Why does anyone expect it to be civilized? Haven’t we learned by now what war is? All this stuff happens in wars.
People trying to see through the fog of this war are wondering how and when it will end. I’m pretty sure Putin isn’t willing to lose (although people who lose wars usually don’t have a choice about it), so I don’t expect negotiations to go anywhere. More likely, he’ll escalate his efforts to pound the Ukrainians into submission, and many more people on both sides will die.
When it’s over, it will have been useless, and all those people will have died in vain. Some wars reshape history, but this won’t be one of them. It’s just another colonial war — unless it blows up into World War 3, or flickers down into a strategic defeat for Russia and Putin. Right now, it seems like it could go either way.
Photo: Mainz, Germany, 1945
