Why the US must press for a ceasefire in Ukraine

The following is an opinion piece by John Matlock, Jr., who helped to end the Cold War as a diplomat to USSR in late 80s to 1991 when it ceased to exist. He joins a growing list of experienced voices alarmed by the reckless, perhaps unwinnable war unfolding and escalating almost by the week now.

Jack F. Matlock, Jr. is a career diplomat who served as the last U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union from 1987-1991, during which time the USSR and the Cold War ended. Prior to that he was Senior Director for European and Soviet Affairs on President Reagan’s National Security Council staff and was U.S. Ambassador to Czechoslovakia from 1981-1983. He was Kennan Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton,  and has written numerous articles and three books about the negotiations that ended the Cold War, the disintegration of the Soviet Union, and U.S. foreign policy following the end of the Cold War.

Why the US must press for a ceasefire in Ukraine

As a key player in Kyiv’s defense and the leader of sanctions against Russia, Washington is obligated to help find a way out.

October 17, 2022

Written by Jack F. Matlock, Jr.

 

Four recent events have put the war in Ukraine on a distinctly more dangerous course.

— The Russian annexation of four additional Ukrainian provinces blocks compromise solutions that were feasible earlier.

— The disabling attacks on both North Stream pipelines make it impossible in the near term to restore Russia as the principal energy supplier to Germany, even if the war in Ukraine should be miraculously ended.

— The Ukrainian attack on the bridge to Crimea gave Russia a pretext to escalate attacks on Ukrainian civilian targets.

— The Russian retaliatory attacks on civilian targets are certain to do more damage to Ukraine than Ukraine can do to Russia. 

The leaders of both Russia and Ukraine have set impossible goals. In fact, not a single participant in the war in Ukraine has espoused a goal that can restore peace in the area. Russia’s recent incorporation of four Ukrainian provinces into the Russian Federation will not be accepted by Russia’s neighbors or by most European powers.

Given the passions aroused by the war and its atrocities, Ukraine, even with NATO support, cannot create a stable, functioning state within all the borders it inherited in 1991. If Ukraine tries to regain these territories by force and is encouraged and empowered by the U.S. and NATO to do so, Russia (and not just President Putin) will very likely demolish Ukraine in retaliation. Reality trumps illusion whenever the two conflict.

And if war should stop with the destruction of Ukraine — Kyiv and Lviv leveled as Grozny once was — that would assume that escalation does not involve the use of nuclear weapons. If the Russian leader feels convinced that the U.S. and “Western” goal is to take him out, what is to prevent him taking out others as he goes?

What Went Wrong

It did not have to happen. When the Cold War ended (by negotiation, not by victory) and the USSR fragmented into 15 separate countries (because of pressures from the inside, not from without), Europe was suddenly whole and free, the goal of U.S. and NATO policy during the Cold War. If the future stability and prosperity of Europe were to be ensured, the principal task was to build a security system covering all the countries of Europe. 

But a succession of American presidents, from Clinton to Trump, chose instead to enlarge NATO, to trash arms control treaties that ended the Cold War, and to enlist former Soviet republics in a military alliance that excluded Russia. Benjamin Abelow summarized the portentous events in his insightful How the West Brought War to Ukraine. 

The war might have been prevented — probably would have been prevented — if Ukraine had been willing to abide by the Minsk agreement, recognize the Donbas as an autonomous entity within Ukraine, avoid NATO military advisors, and pledge not to enter NATO. Nevertheless, what was possible even as late as January 2022 may not be possible now. The Russian annexation of additional territory raises the stakes. But the longer the war continues the harder it is going to be to avoid the utter destruction of Ukraine.

America’s Security

We Americans can only admire the valiant resistance Ukrainians have mounted to the Russian invasion and should be proud that we have been able to support their defense. Everything possible should be done to make sure that Ukraine survives as an independent state. But that does not mean that Ukraine has to recover all the territory it inherited in 1991. In fact, given all the passions aroused by the war and what preceded it (the violent change of government in 2014 that many Russians considered a coup d’etat organized by the United States), the population in some areas is likely to resist a return to Kyiv’s control.

Some will argue that the United States has a moral obligation to support whatever the Ukrainian leaders demand since “they know best.” No, they do not know best what is in the security interests of the American people, and that should be the primary concern of any American government. They also, under the stress of war, may not be the best judges of their own ultimate security interests.

I was ambassador to the Soviet Union in 1990 when the Lithuanians declared their independence from the Soviet Union. The United States had never recognized the annexation of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia by the Soviet Union, so the Lithuanians requested immediate U.S. recognition of their independence. I had total sympathy with the Lithuanian aspirations but had to explain that it would be a mistake to do so until Lithuania was in fact free. Why? Because, in 1990, U.S. recognition would almost certainly have precipitated a Soviet crack-down which the U.S. could not counter without risking nuclear war. 

The Lithuanians, along with their Baltic neighbors, kept their demands for independence peaceful. The U.S. privately kept pressure on the Soviet Government to refrain from using force, and the USSR State Council recognized the independence of Lithuania and its two neighboring countries in September 1991, freeing them legally before the rest of the Soviet Union broke up. 

The issue with Ukraine and Russia of course is not recognition of independence but whether the U.S. should support the Ukrainian goal to restore its control over all the territory it received when the Soviet Union broke up. If pursuit of that goal precipitates the progressive destruction of Ukraine, it is obviously not in Ukraine’s interest.  

Effect on the World

The fighting in Ukraine continues and intensifies while the world is still struggling with the covid-19 pandemic and remains vulnerable to mutations and new pathogens, while global warming is producing ever more destructive effects. Meanwhile, migrations caused by famine, flood, war, and misgovernment are overwhelming the capacity of even the richest countries to absorb the afflicted. And to all of that one must add the threat of Armageddon, a nuclear holocaust — something no rational leader would risk. But rationality cannot be assumed in either domestic or international politics today.

Europe’s position will be severely tested during the upcoming winter as the result of drastically curtailed trade with Russia, particularly when it comes to energy. Increasingly, European publics are likely to blame the United States for policies that fuel inflation and bring on economic recession, especially as their currencies weaken against the dollar. The U.S. sanctions on Russia will be seen by many as self-serving attempts to dominate Western Europe.

A new iron curtain is now being imposed on Russia — this time by Western policy — even as the United States announces more measures to confront and “contain” an assertive China. This will result, inevitably, in more cooperation between Russia and China. Also, the increasing use of economic sanctions to achieve political purposes will encounter push-back with a greater volume of international trade conducted in national currencies other than the U.S. dollar. 

As Europe is weakened and more countries suffer from U.S. sanctions, coalitions to resist U.S. dominance will flourish. Geopolitical competition will take precedence over action to deal with common problems, even as international conflict intensifies them.

What all the parties to the conflict in Ukraine seem to have forgotten is that the future of mankind will not be determined by where international borders are drawn — these have never been static in history and doubtless will continue to change from time to time. The future of mankind will be determined by whether nations learn to settle their differences peacefully.  

Is There a Way to Stop the War?

There may not be, given the passions aroused by the conflict. Both Ukraine and Russia have lost enough blood that their populations are likely to oppose any effort to give the other side any portion of what it wants. Their presidents hate each other and see any concession as a personal defeat. But the more the war continues, the more Ukrainian lives will be lost, property destroyed, and the probability of a wider conflict increased.

The only practical way to stop the actual fighting would be to agree on a ceasefire. This is difficult for the Ukrainians since they are liberating some of the occupied territories, but the reality is that if the war continues Russia is capable of damaging Ukraine more than Ukraine can damage Russia without risking a wider war.

As principal arms supplier to Ukraine, the U.S. should encourage the Ukrainians to agree to a ceasefire. As the sponsor of the most punitive sanctions on Russia, the U.S. should use its leverage to induce Russia to agree to genuine negotiations during a ceasefire. 

Negotiations must be conducted in private to be successful, which would require a revival of U.S.-Russia diplomacy. Over the past few years, tit-for-tat expulsions have reduced both countries to skeleton diplomatic staffs. Nevertheless, if there is a will to talk and negotiate, ways can be found. So far, it is the will that seems to be lacking.

At present, none of the relevant parties to the conflict in Ukraine seem to be willing to stop fighting and enter into genuine negotiations to bring peace in Ukraine. Until this changes, the fighting stops, and serious negotiations get underway, the world is headed for an outcome where we all are losers.

Constructive Ukraine/Russia Talks in April Were Scuttled by US/NATO Alliance

 

Ukraine and Russia stood prepared to reach a negotiated settlement in April--it appears-- before Boris Johnson, representing the "collective West," scuttled it.

Alex Jordan,  a policy analyst at the Quincy Institute of Responsible Statecraft, has alerted journalists on Twitter that consummate national security insider, Fiona Hill, accidentally let slip  in her latest article for Foreign Affairs, some important details about the aborted talks to reach a negotiated settlement between Ukraine and Russia in April of 2022 in Turkey. She confirmed in a passing paragraph that  at that time (about 5 weeks into the war) Russia and Ukraine agreed on a tentative settlement, that-- had it been finalized-- would have stopped the war. Hill writes:

"According to multiple former senior U.S. officials we spoke with, in April 2022, Russian and Ukrainian negotiators appeared to have tentatively agreed on the outlines of a negotiated interim settlement: Russia would withdraw to its position on February 23, when it controlled part of the Donbas region and all of Crimea, and in exchange, Ukraine would promise not to seek NATO membership and instead receive security guarantees from a number of countries."  https://www.foreignaffairs.com/russian-federation/world-putin-wants-fiona-hill-angela-stent

 

Hill omits to mention the fact that then-PM Boris Johnson immediately flew to Kyiv to scuttle the negotiation that was in progress.  How do we know this? From Ukraine's own online newspaper, Ukrainska Pravda. An English-language summary of the article by Ukrainska Pravda in English states that the Russian side was ready to negotiate but "two things happened."

"The first thing was the revelation of the atrocities, rapes, murders, massacres, looting, indiscriminate bombings and hundreds and thousands of other war crimes committed by Russian troops in the temporarily occupied Ukrainian territories.

The second "obstacle"[sic] arrived in Kyiv on 9, April. [i.e. Boris Johnson]...According Ukrainska Pravda sources close to Zelenskyy, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Boris Johnson, who appeared in the capital almost without warning, brought two simple messages.

The first is that Putin is a war criminal, he should be pressured, not negotiated with.

And the second is that even if Ukraine is ready to sign some agreements on guarantees with Putin, they are not. [emph. added]

Johnson’s position was that the collective West,  [i.e. the US led coalition of EU, Britain and the US]which back in February had suggested Zelenskyy should surrender and flee, now felt that Putin was not really as powerful as they had previously imagined, and that here was a chance to 'press him.' 

Three days after Johnson left for Britain, Putin went public and said talks with Ukraine "had turned into a dead end". " (Original article in Ukrainian here: https://www.pravda.com.ua/articles/2022/05/5/7344096/  U. Pravda's English condensed version here: https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2022/05/5/7344206/

In Hill's account, there is a temporal ellipsis. She goes directly from noting the Russians being prepared to negotiate as summarized above in April directly to words spoken months later in July by feisty Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in an entirely different context. Hill writes:

But as Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stated in a July interview with his country’s state media, this compromise is no longer an option. Even giving Russia all of the Donbas is not enough. “Now the geography is different,” Lavrov asserted, in describing Russia’s short-term military aims. “It’s also Kherson and the Zaporizhzhya regions and a number of other territories.” The goal is not negotiation, but Ukrainian capitulation. [ibid]

 What is left out, of course, is the fact reported by the Ukrainian press that Boris Johnson, representing the "collective West" on which Ukraine depends for weapons and economic support had given Zelensky an ultimatum--" even if Ukraine is ready to sign some agreements on guarantees with Putin, they [the collective West] are not." By the time Lavrov made the statement quoted by Hill in July, Sec. of State Blinken and Sec. of Defense Lloyd Austin had already elaborated on Johnson's hastily delivered message when they visited Kyiv in late April. They referenced Johnson's visit, and announced a "new strategy." The New York Times' lead article covering the visit on April 24 states:

WASHINGTON — When Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III declared Monday at the end of a stealth visit to Ukraine that America’s goal is to see Russia so “weakened” that it would no longer have the power to invade a neighboring state, he was acknowledging a transformation of the conflict, from a battle over control of Ukraine to one that pits Washington more directly against Moscow. [emph. added]   https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/25/us/politics/ukraine-russia-us-dynamic.html

 

Even the generally supportive NYT, in the article noted that:

"Mr. Austin and others in the Biden administration are becoming more explicit about the future they see: years of continuous contest for power and influence with Moscow that in some ways resembles what President John F. Kennedy termed the “long twilight struggle” of the Cold War." [emph. added]

Sec. of State Blinken announced, writes David Sanger of NYT, that Putin had "'“already lost' in the struggle over Ukraine, reflect[ing] a decision made by the Biden administration and its closest allies, several officials said on Monday, to talk more openly and optimistically about the possibility of Ukrainian victory... [ibid]

The issue here is how to square the scuttling of negotiations, and the high pressure exerted on Zelensky to stop negotiations with the Russians with the official position of the US/NATO that we do not tell Ukraine whether to fight or pursue diplomacy,  or how to fight the war. We are allies and not war planners. 

 

As for the optimistic statements made in April, things look a bit different now. About 20% of the total area of Ukraine is controlled by Russia according to Zelensky. Much of that territory is some of the most valuable geo-politically and in terms of resources. About 7 million refugees are scattered throughout Europe, and many more internally displace persons live in abject misery within Ukraine.The unprecedented sanctions regime designed mainly in Washington has hurt the West more than it has damaged the Russian War Machine. The Wall St. Journal reported this week that "Moscow is raking in more revenue than ever with the help of new buyers, new traders and the world's seemingly insatiable demand for crude."https://www.wsj.com/articles/russia-confounds-the-west-by-recapturing-its-oil-riches-11661781928 Much of the world (including India, China, Singapore, Saudi Arabia et al.) are more than happy to buy Russian no matter what the "leaders of the free world" in Washington tell them to do. And this was predictable. Now it remains to be seen whether or not the citizens in European countries will continue to support a sanctions regime, and a protracted war against Russia,  if a cold winter and severe energy shortages cause immense suffering, stagflation and industrial shutdowns as many economists are predicting. In late July, the NYT reported that:

As Russia tightens its chokehold on supplies of natural gas, Europe is looking everywhere for energy to keep its economy running. Coal-fired power plants are being revived. Billions are being spent on terminals to bring in liquefied natural gas, much of it from shale fields in Texas. Officials and heads of state are flying to Qatar, Azerbaijan, Norway and Algeria to nail down energy deals.

Across Europe, fears are growing that a cutoff of Russian gas will force governments to ration fuel and businesses to close factories, moves that could put thousands of jobs at risk. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/30/business/europe-natural-gas.html

 

Somewhat awkwardly, Biden-- who called the Saudis "butchers" and "pariahs" during his campaign-- was photographed fist-bumping MBS-- a man with American blood on his hands-- during a visit during which he pleaded with the Saudis to ramp up production. They have. But according to this week's WSJ article (cited above), they also buy Russian crude and mix it with other oil to conceal its Russian source-- an increasingly common workaround seen in several countries. Biden who had condemned Venezuela's Pres. Maduro, eased restrictions on Venezuelan oil due to the emergency caused by the sanctions regime intended to paralyze Russia. All of this is exacerbating inflation in Europe, the US to say nothing of the global south which has suffered severe food shortages, in no small measure because of the conflict (both the Russian Black Sea Embargo and the sanctions regime as discussed in a previous post here). 

For all of this we are told that "Ukraine is winning." We are told that Europe will achieve energy independence and put the Russian energy dependency problem behind them. We are told all of this is not bringing us into an escalated conflict, perhaps involving nuclear nightmares. This even as UN Inspectors/IAEA try to delicately work their way into the the nuclear facility in Zaporizhzhia  after it explosions there, with Ukrainians operating the plant at gun point. https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-n-inspectors-head-to-ukraine-nuclear-plant-as-safety-fears-grow-11661764952

 

The consequences and costs of this war for Ukrainians, and also its global effects have been far more troubling than experts in Washington have maintained, and continue to maintain. It is probably too late for the negotiated settlement I once argued for in a post here. But it is troubling indeed to see evidence that the US/NATO powers gave Zelensky an ultimatum to stop talking to the Russians in April when there was still one last window of opportunity. We'll never know if it would have gone anywhere or not. But that's not the point here. It was never-- or so we were told-- up to the "Collective West," as Boris Johnson dubbed the US/NATO alliance.

Hannah Arendt on Truths, Facts and Lying in Politics

Note: This OP was posted on Dissident Politics, where it can be read along with responses and comments of readers: https://dispol.blogspot.com/2022/06/hannah-arendt-truth-facts-and-lying-in.html

 

In 1967, Hannah Arendt published an essay entitled Truth and Politics in The New Yorker (it later appeared with revisions in the book, Between The Past and The Future). Though originally written as a response to critics she felt had lied about her coverage of the Eichmann trials,  the thinking  catalyzed by these concerns led to ideas and insights of much more general import, and well worth evaluating today in an age where distinctions between facts, conspiracy theories and lies seem to swirl around us in a miasma of misinformation, shaping everything from policy and elections in gov't to media/social media to everyday interactions in our dangerously conflicted society. As we try to understand a world in which lies and truths appear to be interchangeable  categories ("alternative facts"), and where the most egregious lying imaginable in the public realm has the potential to wreck our system of government, possibly once and for all, the topic of the essay could not be more important. It is among Arendt's most thought-provoking essays from her late period, whether one agrees or takes exception to the conclusions she reaches. Here I summarize some of the main theses in the piece concisely and in the context of our own political situation in the US.

Arendt begins by stating that not all truths are alike in their nature and status. We may speak of scientific truths, moral truths,  religious truths, historical truths, psychological truths, and-- most importantly for this essay-- factual truths. She divides these various types of truth up into 2 categories: "factual truths" and "rational truths." The definitions are useful descriptions or heuristics rather than epistemic claims. AS Arendt puts it, "I shall use this distinction for the sake of convenience [emph added] without discussing its intrinsic legitimacy."(Truth and Politics: p. 2) The purpose of this convenient distinction is to compare and contrast the outcomes when rational truths vs. factual truths come into conflict with political authorities and power structures.

Rational truths include the accepted truths of mathematics, science, philosophy and religion, among others.. Factual truths are derived from observation and experience (e.g. historical records, eyewitness accounts,  etc.). The first claim she makes is that while rational truths and factual truths can both be lost or wiped out when they bump up against political powers, factual truths (i.e. knowledge of actual events, people, and actions such as those journalists cover) are far more vulnerable to erasure at the hands of political authorities than rational truths.

One can imagine, for example,  knowledge of basic arithmetic being lost, or for some reason  banned by fanatical anti-mathematical clerics or something. All the text books would be burned, like in Bradburry's  Farenheit 451. Yet it is certainly not impossible that later generations would devise systems like addition and subtraction for themselves based on their own rational capacities.  At more abstract levels the likelihood or reestablishing rational truths gets slimmer but is still possible. Imagine General Relativity, Copernican Heliocentrism, or Euclidean geometry being banned for whatever reason (as the Church banned Heliocentrism in the 17th C). Perhaps such knowledge would eventually perish like so many books reduced to dust. And yet, Arendt claims, it is at least imaginable that some of these truths would emerge from later inquiries because they are based on reasoning and ideas rather than fleeting and unique events in history that must be witnessed and recorded to exist at all.  Factual Truths (e.g. Stalin and Hitler made a pact in 1939; Nixon bombed Cambodia illegally during Vietnam; Trump lost the 2020 election and no investigation has since uncovered "fraud" as he and others claim occurred) are MUCH easier to stamp out, to obliterate from public discourse when they inconvenience those in power. They are based on records rather than reasoning. The question that arises here is "How are factual truths obliterated in modern societies?" According to Arendt, it happens by means of what she calls *organized lying.* The facts are "lied away," as she puts it. 

We are often prone to thinking that the biggest threat to facts is false belief/crackpot theory/bullshit and the like. But the biggest threat comes not from merely false belief but deliberate falsehood/lying.While the opposite of a true mathematical result is an "error," and the opposite of a presumed scientific truth is a "falsehood," the opposite of factual truths on the public record  is a "lie." This doesn't mean there are no innocent mistakes in the recording of facts, by, for example, journalists. But these failed efforts to record actualities accurately--errata-- are not fundamentally *opposed* to factual truths. Indeed they are accidents that occur while acting as a "truth-teller" or chronicler of facts. So unlike other domains of truth, the opposite of factual truth is the lie, and in particular "organized lying." What, then,  is the main danger of lying in politics?

 

 Often we fear that the danger of lies is that they can come to replace factual truth, or provide a substitute for the public record, which serves as an orienting consensus in an otherwise diverse society. The fear, these days, is expressed in terms of some "alternative facts" coming to replace actualities. This is not the ultimate threat, thinks Arendt.  There is a point beyond which lying becomes incompatible with social stability and common understandings necessary for survival and shared life. You can only get so far in establishing "alternate accounts" of the facts without utterly destabilizing the fabric of reality itself. Taken far enough, the content of lies (be it conspiracy theories or arbitrary misstatements that attack facts) result not in a substitute for the shared public realm of acknowledged facts, but in confusion, disorientation and conflict over what is real-- and over what is really happening. Thus the ultimate threat isn't the content of the lying itself (though this obviously has proximate importance) but rather it is the coordinated and concerted effort to undermine or obliterate facts that threaten those in power for one reason or another. Publicly acknowledged and shared factual truth constitutes a minimal basis for any overlapping consensus within which we can communicate at all. It is one of the main ingredients in the very fabric of social existence, and it can't be replaced by lies. The fantasies of organized lying  and factual truths can't function in equivalent ways. One reflects a reasonably accurate grasp of realities we cannot escape--i.e. the social, historical realities within which we must exist and act-- while the fantastic lies have no ground at all. Once the ground of truth is lost, just about anything goes. As Arendt puts it famously elsewhere, the result is that "Nothing is true and everything is possible." In Truth and Politics, she writes that, "[truth] is limited to those things that men cannot change at will...[adding] Conceptually, we may call truth what we cannot change; metaphorically, it is the ground we walk on and the sky that stretches above us."(T&P:p. 19)

Factual truths, then, function to check arbitrary power from destroying our access to shared reality. This leads to a discussion of the importance of those public institutions "established and supported by the powers that be, in which contrary to all political rules, truth and truthfulness have always constituted the highest criterion of speech and endeavor."(T&P:17) In this connection, she mentions the importance in modern open societies of the independent judiciary, research centers and universities, government archives, et al. What all such domains share is a commitment to impartiality.  "Whether these places of higher learning are in private or public hands"  she writes,  "is of no great importance; not only their integrity but their very existence depends on the good will of the government anyway...Very unwelcome truths have emerged from the universities, and very unwelcome judgments have been handed down from the bench time and time again." (T&P: p. 17). But we must not take these "refuges of truth" for granted, as they are, along with the free press, vulnerable to the whims of political power-- even in "open societies" ruled by constitutions. Without real journalism, as opposed to what we call "fake news,"  she remarks, "we should never find our bearings in an ever-changing world and, in the most literal sense, we would never know where we are." This is the desired outcome of organized lying. So political lying typically targets not just recorded truths in the public realm, but the institutions in which disinterested studies and impartial determinations are made. Universities, the free press and independent judiciaries are often the first casualties of organized political lying campaigns. Over the past decade, we've seen a disturbing trend along just such lines in Hungary, Poland and a few other countries in Europe. Trump's effort to "drain the swamp" is largely tantamount to erasing the institutional memory-system of our "bloated government departments." Attempts to neutralize agencies like the EPA by staffing it with opponents of environmentalism also belie the desire to "lie away" even important scientific truths we face in the age of global warming. The list goes on and on. Organized lying depends on the dismantling of as many centers of relatively impartial inquiry as possible, and again this reveals the true goal not as one of "replacing" a world anchored by generally accurate public understandings, but destroying that world in service to the caprice of the will to domination, and not the will to truth.  The manipulation of social reality allows those in power to get away with almost anything, and then make up rationalizations as they go along.

Take the example of "memory laws" in which history is turned into official doctrine. In Turkey, one can't say there was an Armenian Genocide. In Poland, one can't say there were collaborators in WW2. In China, Tiananmen Square never happened, and surviving witnesses are carefully monitored to this day. (Louissa Lim's book, The People's Republic of Amnesia: Tiananmen Revisited,  describes that sad affair). Thus, lying in politics relies heavily on creating "public enemies." Recall Trump said the NY Times is "an enemy of the people"-- and though many laughed at the time, he soon stopped taking any questions he didn't like in press conferences, saying only  three words instead, "That's fake news." Perhaps the most concise statement he made along these Arendtian lines is when he told an audience, "What you're seeing is not what's  happening." https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2018/07/24/donald-trump-what-youre-seeing-not-whats-happening-tapper-sot-vpx.cnn  So we see in modern authoritarian politics, as with the totalitarian states of the 20th century, an attempt not to replace truth with some other stable "alternate reality" as some fear, but to make it seem that factual truths are really just so many "opinions." You think Trump lost, but I have a "different opinion"--  an "alternative account." That's the sort of attitude toward facts operative in the domain of organized lying.. Of course, there are areas in which citizens disagree because they hold different opinions-- a hallmark of free society. But these are opinions ABOUT agreed facts, not just opinions about other  opinions of opinions, ad infinitum with no bottom line or basis for mediation. If the distinction between these is lost or blurred, the results are disastrous. We already see a world in which people who live in the same cities seem to be denizens of utterly different universes as far as their basic beliefs about the world and reality are concerned. Some of us are able to remember that not so long ago this was simply not the case.

Once factual truths are leveled out and treated like mere opinions, there is no longer a possibility for shared understandings of reality to serve as a legitimate basis for debating and discussing policies as responses to situations and problems that are agreed upon on the basis of public records, journalism, social science etc. Suppose we are debating responses to urban crime or unemployment. We can only disagree meaningfully and offer our opinions on the topic if we at least agree on statements of crime rates or unemployment. In some political speeches these are almost completely fudged in order to achieve some political goal which treats such facts as mere obstacles to power.  Then the description of society and its problems and needed policies no longer rests on shared knowledge but becomes malleable in the hands of those who fabricate and deceive in order to impose their will on society with impunity. This , for Arendt,  is the heart of the fascist project. She writes:

"The result of a consistent and total substitution of lies for factual truth is not that lies will now be accepted as truths, and truths defamed as lies, but that the sense by which we take our bearings in the real world-- and the categories of truth vs. falsehoods is among the mental means to this end-- is being destroyed." (TP: p. 16)

So the goal is to render populations susceptible to the arbitrary refashioning of the public stock of knowledge on which political acts and decisions are based. Power determines alleged facticity, and the possibility of critique, dissent or simply holding authorities to accounts based on accurate knowledge is short-circuited. Facts then become radically free . That is, the usual constraints of accuracy are entirely loosened so that authorities can say things one day and contradict them, or say they never said them at all the next day. They can rewrite history to subserve their own ends. They can categorize whole groups as "criminals," "traitors," or "public enemies" with no burden of objective evidence at all.

An example of this from the 1/6 hearings is found in an interview with former AG Barr. He recalls conversations with Trump in which the latter would say things like, "I have evidence from Pennsylvania, you have to do something about that." Barr would say, "We investigated that claim, Sir, it doesn't check, it's simply not true." Barr recalls that Trump seemed "totally unconcerned with the facts" as he would effortlessly switch to some other allegation as if he had not registered the FACT that the first claim was being dismissed as false. He would say something like "Well what about the evidence I gave you from Georgia?" Barr went on to say, "I thought, 'boy, he's really detached from reality if he believes this stuff.'" I'm not sure Barr understood that what he was so surprised to see was no different from the way Trump had dismissed photographic evidence regarding the size of the crowd at his inauguration in 2017, when he insisted it was "the biggest crowd ever...bigger than Obama's inaugural" etc. The press treated that like it was merely some character flaw, a narcissistic personality disorder, etc. Even if that part is true, it is less important for Arendt than the real goal of such unremitting lying on all matters great and small. The real aim is to eradicate the distinction between facts and lies. After a while, GOP stalwarts asked about Trump's endless stream of obvious lies just submitted to their validity. They accepted the lies by adopting a blase attitude towards them, thus according the fact/lie distinction little importance. In such a blase mode it was no longer difficult let the lies stand simply by NOT refuting or denying them. I remember Pence being asked about some obvious lies and accusatory statements made by Trump in a speech in an interview. Asked if he agreed with the content of the lies, Pence simply said, "I think it's just Trump being Trump." This elides the entire fact/lie distinction by stating a banal truism, a tautology to be precise. Soon enough, "It's just Trump being Trump" or similar stock phrases became the common currency of his enablers. Barr was surely among them. Did none of these people realize that they too had become "detached from reality" (as Barr put it recently)  simply by accepting this discourse of lies as legitimate? 

Arendt thinks that to some extent, those implicated in organized lying like this are self-deceived. This is not to say they deeply and sincerely believe any of these things. No, these aren't held as deep convictions. Rather, the perpetrators don't really care about the truth/lie distinction except in cases where they must cover their asses. (And if they take all of this a bridge to far, they may well fail even to do that and be caught off guard). As long as  they can get away with it, they focus not on the true/false distinction but the distinction between gaining and losing power and the ability to dominate others. To a large extent, they stop questioning themselves about what is true and false, except in cases where their own power hangs in the balance. Otherwise, while delivering a speech or message, they likely do not notice that they are lying. It has become a default mode of operating in most situations. Arendt likens this mentality to "Madison Avenue Advertising" culture. Here we can think of politicians who "believe their own propaganda" or "get high on their own supply." Apparently, for example, Rumsfeld and others in the Bush Administration really believed US invaders and occupiers would be "greeted as liberators." The poor planning that resulted landed them in a quagmire. They bought their own lies. It seems Putin similarly somehow believed his own propaganda about Ukranians embracing Russian invaders as liberators-- and planned a victory statement for Feb. 28, a mere 4 days after "special military operations" began. This self-deception-- which can be ones' undoing-- is an occupational hazard faced by the authoritarian or fascist leader accustomed to the flattery of yes-men rather than quality information.

Here I have only summarized a few of the arguments advanced by Arendt because they are especially relevant to our situation today. But for the sake of clarity, Arendt does recognize that the truth is much more than just a collection of recorded facts. The latter are the indispensable basis for other forms such as scientific and philosophical truths. When organized lying becomes pervasive,  telling the truth or reporting facts becomes a form of political action, says Arendt. The journalist who digs for truth in Russia or China may well end up on a hit-list and become a dissident or honored hero, where in a society that takes free press for granted, it seems that simply reporting facts is apolitical. But Arendt is also aware that the truths we live by also include principles, values, norms and stories that lend meaning to these facts. Storytellers, historians, philosophers, religious figures and others have always played an important role in establishing moral, social and political understandings such as those encoded in laws and principles undergirding society, culture, law and the political domain. The values, for example, of liberty and equality, are not recorded facts. But they have been part of the commonly understood "World" inhabited by those of us who live in liberal or social democracies. I did not think it was as important to discuss her thoughts on how such "rational truths"  function, since the prerequisite for them is still, as she said, the kind of knowledge we need simply to "literally know where we are." And it appears such knowledge is now endangered here.

References/related reading:

 

 -Hannah Arendt:  Truth and Politics  (Between The Past and The Future: Penguin press  1977 Ch.7 Truth and Politcs pp. 223-260 or available as free stand-alone essay online)

-Frederica Merenda:  Reading Arendt to Rethink Truth  ( Democracy and Fake News Routledge, 2021 article by Frederica  Merenda page 19-30)

Possible Questions:

-Do you agree with Arendt's claim that the ultimate goal of political lying is NOT to replace one stable truth with some alternative to it, but rather to destroy the distinction between factual truths and mere opinions so that those in power can stipulate what counts as true with no regard to consistency or stability at all? 

-If Arendt's account is correct, it would seem to follow that the relatively accountable and honest institutions she mentions  (free press, universities, various governmental departments that collect and disseminate information etc.) are of vital importance. But she doesn't not make any suggestions in this essay regarding how to safeguard the integrity of such institutions. Do you have any ideas about how to do that in the face of a politically motivated all-out assault on factual truth?

What is the plan to secure peace in Ukraine and Europe? Roundtable Discussion with Fareed Zakaria

Yesterday Fareed Zakaria was joined by David Milliband, Anne-Marie Slaughter and former diplomat, Kashore Mahbubani to discuss and attempt to answer the questions, in Zakaria's own terms, "What is the West's long game plan to secure peace in Ukraine and Europe?[And]What should it be?" I have included a link to the approx. 7 min. video up on the CNN's website, but have also selected excerpts from the discussion here. Note on names: AMS = Anne-Marie Slaughter; DM = David Milliband and Kishore Mahbubani. FZ is, of course, the host, Fareed Zakaria.

FZ: Anne-Marie, what should the long game be?

AMS: So the first part of that game has to be simply to stop the fighting. We're going to see the complete destruction of eastern and southern Ukraine. And if you look at what happened after 2014 when they took over part of eastern Ukraine and Crimea, it can just go forever, the fighting. So we have to stop the fighting.

Second, however, we actually need a geopolitical configuration that is not Russia and China, Europe and the United States, and the rest of the world. And if you look at what happened with the human rights vote, you saw India, Brazil, Mexico, South Africa, Egypt, Indonesia all abstained. That is not a good geopolitical configuration.

So the United States actually wants not to isolate Russia and push it closer to China for the long term. And then longest of all, the United States needs to think about what is a European security architecture that makes Europe actually whole and free and safe? I don't think we get there with Putin in power. But Putin's not going to be in power forever and we actually have to think about the next couple of decades where we can protect Ukraine but Russia is once again integrated into Europe.

 DM: I think Anne-Marie is absolutely right to herald or to point out that while the West is more united than it was before, the world is equally divided and the votes that she's referred to at the U.N. should be fundamental. I'm sure Kishore will come in on this. But from my point of view, the strategy has to be about more than a Europe whole and free, it has to be a world that has some rules to govern the way in which it's run. 

 FZ: Kishore, let's get to precisely this issue, why is it that, you know, when people think about democracy versus autocracy, the problem with that formulation, as David very well put it, is some of the world's largest democracies are at best sitting on the fence? India, Indonesia, Brazil, even Mexico. What do you think is going on from your perspective?

KM: Well, I think, as you know, when Russia invaded Ukraine, most of the world was horrified. It was terrible. And there was a great global consensus against it. But now I share the concerns of Anne-Marie and David that clearly the West, as you know, represents 12 percent of the world's population, 88 percent lives outside the West. 

And if the perception of the 88 percent has shifted in the last three months at all, and what they see now is on the one hand, and I agree with David, that the legal moral dimension here that Russia is wrong but the rest of the world can also see that this is a geopolitical game where the West is trying to weaken Russia and not really searching for peace in Russia. And that's why the rest of the world saying, OK, if that's going to be your game in Ukraine, if you want to weaken Russia, you want to weaken Putin, that's your agenda, that's not our agenda.

Our agenda is to create a better world of rules and predictability, and that's what the rest of the world will want to see, some kind of a fair idea of where are we going with all of these, you know, moves in Ukraine? What's the destination?

ZM: But, Kishore, it's Putin who doesn't want to negotiate and until the Russians feel that they are forced to the negotiating table, you're not going to get a peace deal. Zelenskyy has from day one offered to negotiate and has offered major concessions publicly, like Ukrainian neutrality and no NATO. It is Putin who is not doing it because it appears he wants greater control over Ukraine. What do you do then?  

MB: Well, you know, I was a diplomat for 33 years, Fareed, as you know. And in diplomacy it's not what people say publicly that is their position, it's what they're prepared to negotiate privately. And as you know, our good friend Henry Kissinger suggested a formula in 2013 in this "Washington Post" article* and I truly do believe that what Henry Kissinger proposed in 2014, of course it's got to be amended because we're in 2022, the basic outlines where Ukraine is free to choose its own destiny, free to join the European Union but not join  NATO clearly and explicitly,  and also work out some kind of compromise between the eastern and western sections of the country-- don't ban Russia from the country, for example. So there are ways and means of achieving a diplomatic settlement, and that's the tragedy of Ukraine. Because the outline of a settlement was given by Henry Kissinger 8 years ago.

 
ZF: David Miliband, you know, again, it feels to me like Zelenskyy has proposed variations of what Kishore is talking about.  

DM: I think you're right. Remember George Kennan said 50 or 60 years ago, Russia's tragedy is that it can only see Ukraine either as a vassel or an enemy**. And what he said then is actually Russia's crime today because what they've done is invade and they bring state. And the challenge that you're laying down I think is absolutely right, the Ukrainians are not the aggressors here.

The unspeakable scenes that we're seeing in Mariupol that I fear are going to be repeated in other parts of the east of the country, whether it's more besiegement to come. What we have here is a classic scissors effect, where the greater and greater misery within Ukraine is going to find ripple effects around the world because remember the impact on food prices, the impact on energy prices, the impact on -- at a time of a global debt crisis that's looming for too many emerging economies. Those are forces that have been unleashed by this invasion***.

But it's not an invasion that has been precipitated by any actions on the part of the Ukrainians. And that's why I come back down to this question, but the choice lies in Moscow. If it insists on seeing a vassal or enemy next door in Ukraine, it's a recipe for the kind of pulverization obliteration that's going on at the moment.

FZ:Anne-Marie, the point David was making about the agency of the Ukrainian people, they have a voice, they have a vote. Well, now you have the Swedes and Finns saying they want to be part of NATO. Not for sure but they seem to be moving along that track. What should NATO do in that circumstance?

AMS: NATO should take its time above all. There's a real opportunity here to think much more creatively about European security architectures and Western security architectures that do not simply expand NATO ever further to the Russian border, which honestly, it's not at all clear that NATO will accept, that the American people will accept; but more importantly you can have the United States, Canada, Germany, Britain, with a guarantee, a security guarantee for Finland and Sweden, for really the Nords.

You can think about a security architecture that works but then allows, again, over the course of decades for a far more flexible set of European security architectures that eventually would include Russia. Russia is part of Europe, right? Russia is part of Europe. If you think about Western literature, music, art, math, all of that, that is the Russian people.

And we're not going to have security in this century, nor are we going to be able to work on the global problems that menace all of us unless we can at least imagine a security architecture that includes Russia. This moment of possibility expansion of NATO should be a trigger for rethinking, not for simply, mildly expanding.

(The conversation then turns to the Marine Le Pen/Emmanuel Macron runoff that took place yesterday, and which Macron won).

****************************************************************************

Notes and Remarks:

* Kissinger's 2014 article on peace in Ukraine can be read here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/henry-kissinger-to-settle-the-ukraine-crisis-start-at-the-end/2014/03/05/46dad868-a496-11e3-8466-d34c451760b9_story.htm

**David Milliband here misquotes George Kennan, and takes the inexact quote out of its original context. As FAreed Zakaria writes of the original quote in a NYT article: "In 1944, having dinner with the Polish prime minister, who had received encouraging words of support from the Russians for the country’s independence, Kennan was sure that no matter what anyone said, the Poles would end up badly. “The jealous and intolerant eye of the Kremlin can distinguish, in the end, only vassals and enemies, and the neighbors of Russia, if they do not wish to be one, must reconcile themselves to being the other.” 

The "jealous and intolerant eye of the Kremlin" Kennan was referring to is, of course, that of Joseph Stalin who then had an iron grip on the Soviet State, and had shown this "jealousy and intolerance" in the then-recent Molotov-Ribbontrop Pact Stalin made with Hitler. In that pact (later broken by Hitler thus plunging the USSR into the 2nd World War) the two tyrants agreed to maintain peaceful relations with one another. The treaty also contained a "secret protocol" that carved German and Soviet spheres of influence up across Eastern Europe including Poland, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Finland and Bessarabia (where "Transnistria" in Moldova is today).  Kennan's "jealous and intolerant eye... seeing only vassals and enemies" in its neighborhood had nothing to do with post-Soviet Russia. When asked in a PBS interview if he agreed with Henry Kissinger's assessment of Russians as being "by historical nature expansionist and imperialistic," Kennan said, "No. That's a dangerous formulation, and a dangerous way of thinking," adding that "our differences in the Cold War were with the Soviet regime" and not Russian "National Character"  conceived in terms of an imperialistic stereotype. (see: https://www.scribd.com/audiobook/375659791/George-Kennan-At-A-Century-s-Ending )

It is not surprising that Milliband, a "third way" New Labour man and avid interventionist ala Tony Blair, would-- perhaps accidentally-- confuse Stalin's Kremlin of 1944 with Russia in the 20th and 21st centuries.

*** It is, of course, true that the Russian invasion of Ukraine has not only devastated the people and land of Ukraine, but as DM says, had an "impact on food prices [and] energy prices...at a time of a global debt crisis that's looming for too many emerging economies." What he doesn't mention is the manner in which those impacts are greatly amplified by an unprecedented sanctions regime whose effects are shouldered disproportionately by the so-called "Global South"-- basically the poorer countries. The Biden Admin has responded to their reluctance to get on board with the sanctions with moralistic  pressure and threats. In a speech just before the IMF and World Bank annual meetings in Washington last week, Treasury Sec.  Jessica Yellin warned all countries that any attempt to "undercut sanctions" would be met with "serious consequences." From the speech:

"Let me now say a few words to those countries that are currently sitting on the fence, perhaps seeing an opportunity to gain by preserving their relationship with Russia and backfilling the void left
by others. Such motivations are shortsighted,” she said at the Atlantic Council. “And let’s be clear, the unified coalition of sanctioning countries will not be indifferent to actions that undermine the sanctions we’ve put in place."  https://www.wsj.com/articles/yellen-warns-nations-staying-neutral-in-russias-war-with-ukraine-11649879113?mod=saved_content

Press Sec. Jen Psaki added the following: 

"In this moment where you have a dictator invading another country targeting civilians, you have to contemplate what side of history you want to be on. And that is true for any country around the world."(ibid) 

What none of these people address is the unmet needs (e.g. food, energy and medical supplies) that sanctions disrupt in these already significantly impoverished nations (if you use, say GDP per capita as an indicator). Yes, the war itself is will cause, as Zelensky warns, a global food crisis with humanitarian effects if the fighting doesn't stop-- if Ukranians can't sow and reap. But the sanctions augment such problems greatly. 

Just to take one of many examples-- one country in Africa, and not even the poorest one-- Egypt. Russia and Ukraine account for about 30% of the world's global wheat exports. Before the war, the 2 countries supplied more than 80% of Egypt's wheat needs, according to the USDA.  Not only has the war made agriculture in Ukraine all but impossible, but the sanctions have disrupted supply chains by cutting off access to affordable wheat from the Black Sea. To ship most of these commodities, they have to pass through Odessa and other  ports on the Black Sea that have been closed to commercial use since many European countries imposed sanctions on Russia over its invasion. In addition, the rise in oil prices caused by sanctions has driven shipping costs up. The inflation gets passed on to the people who want to buy bread in Egypt (and many other African countries that will are expected to undergo severe food shortages this summer). Zelensky has emphasized this consequence of the war (potential famines), but has not emphasized the role of sanctions in accentuating the problem. I understand why, and I understand the purpose of the sanctions regime. But the collateral damage of this economic warfare falls, as usual, disproportionately on the shoulders of poor nations rather than those like Switzerland, UK,  Canada , Japan and the like, who at least have a better chance of braving the coming storm of austerity due to sanctions.  
 

This is just one example of the collateral damage that will result in many countries from the prolonged use of unprecedented sanctions designed to force Putin "to the bargaining table." As, Zakaria and his guests acknowledge, there's no clear "long game plan" for a peace agreement even if the Russians were driven by sanctions to try diplomacy in earnest. Some political economists sympathetic to the emergency need to use sanctions to stop the fighting have proposed more precise ways of conducting this "economic warfare" that considers the kind of collateral damage I mention, and aims to minimize it. Right now sanctions are broad and sweeping and cause unpredictable and unintended consequences of great magnitude across the globe. Since it seems clear that this approach to warfare will be used not only in the months ahead, but in conflicts down the road in the world, there need to be rules, just as there are international legal standards for humanitarian treatment in military war. Here's  political economist, Kaushik Basu's preliminary sketch of such a framework https://www.livemint.com/opinion/online-views/the-new-art-of-economic-warfare-and-the-global-need-to-regulate-it-11648659394026.html  Basu was chief economist for the World Bank from 2012-16 and is a professor of International Studies and Economics at Cornell U.

Here is a link to FZ's discussion with the 3 guests at CNN:  https://www.cnn.com/videos/tv/2022/04/24/exp-gps-0424-panel-the-west-and-ukraine.cnn

Here is a link to the transcript of the show: https://transcripts.cnn.com/show/fzgps/date/2022-04-24/segment/01