Americans and Russians who acquiesce in evil
This is a Preview of the Saturday article for paid subscribers. The entire article will be available to unpaid subscribers on Sunday.
The mass shooting of grade school students and teachers in Uvalde, Texas set me to thinking about the Russian officials and citizens who won't stand up to oppose the evil their soldiers are doing in Ukraine, targeting innocent civilians and civilian infrastructure as they commit horrendous war crimes, systematic crimes against humanity, and genocide.
Over the years, they have acquiesced in accepting the lies and distortions of Russian state propaganda. While directly challenging the authorities was something only a relatively few had the courage to do, in demonstrations where some 10,000 to 20,000 citizens were arrested, many others had or have an inkling about what is really going on in Ukraine. They could have made the effort to find out the truth of what was going on, but passivity in the face of evil seemed to be the easier choice.
Now, as they learn of the over 20,000 Russian soldiers who will not be returning from Ukraine, or who will be returning in body bags or caskets, they can seek or face the truth, or simply acquiesce in their government's lies.
The latter choice is understandable. Not everyone can insist on finding and confronting the truth. Under an authoritarian regime, it is not at all easy to resist evil when it is backed by the power of the state.
In the United States, citizens have much greater freedom of action to oppose the state or actions of officials who fail to stand up and take action against evil.
Part One: Major article
Americans and Russians who acquiesce in evil
From The Trenchant Observer, May 27, 2022
The mass shooting of grade school students and teachers in Uvalde, Texas set me to thinking about the Russian officials and citizens who won't stand up to oppose the evil their soldiers are doing in Ukraine, targeting innocent civilians and civilian infrastructure as they commit horrendous war crimes, systematic crimes against humanity, and genocide.
Over the years, they have acquiesced in accepting the lies and distortions of Russian state propaganda. While directly challenging the authorities was something only a relatively few had the courage to do, in demonstrations where some 10,000 to 20,000 citizens were arrested, many others had or have an inkling about what is really going on in Ukraine. They could have made the effort to find out the truth of what was going on, but passivity in the face of evil seemed to be the easier choice.
Now, as they learn of the over 20,000 Russian soldiers who will not be returning from Ukraine, or will be returning in body bags or caskets, they can seek or face the truth, or simply acquiesce in their government's lies.
The latter choice is understandable. Not everyone can insist on finding and confronting the truth. Under an authoritarian regime, it is not at all easy to resist evil when it is backed by the power of the state.
In the United States, citizens have much greater freedom of action to oppose the state or actions of officials who fail to stand up and take action against evil.
American citizens have much greater access to independent sources of information, and if they make the effort they can ascertain the facts regarding most situations. Often, however, they simply acquiesce in accepting the truth of the propaganda a particular party or news organization may be putting out.
While citizens in the United States have the power to hold their elected officials to account when they fail to act to oppose evil, they don't always use it.
It may be easier to simply acquiesce in accepting as true statements and beliefs based more on ideology than on facts. It takes an effort to try to ascertain the facts of a given situation on your own. It may be far easier to simply accept the widespread beliefs of your tribe.
So, both Russians and Americans may acquiesce in the commission of evil by their government officials and legislators, even if it is far easier and less risky for Americans to refuse to do so.
The mass killing of grade school children in Uvalde shows us the face of evil, the face not only of the shooter but also the face of all the elected members of Congress who are unwilling to stand up to the evil and pass legislation to defeat it, or at least greatly diminish its potential impact on our lives and those of our children.
Americans are revulsed at each mass shooting, as undoubtedly many Russians are revulsed by the war crimes their sons are committing in their name.
Both mass shootings and war crimes are the fruit of evil, of evil leaders who take their country and their soldiers into a war of aggression, who direct the mass slaughter of civilians and the destruction of cities, or of legislators who fail to pass laws to regulate the sale and use of weapons used for mass killings.
In Russia, officials are compromised, whether by position, money, or power, or simply by fear of losing their position in the governing elite if they oppose the evil the state is committing.
In the United States, legislators are compromised, whether by position, money, or power, or simply by fear of losing the next election. They will not back gun control laws which are favored by the great majority of the population, whether because of political contributions from the National Rifle Association (NRA) and others, or because of fear the gun lobby will support opponents in primary or general elections, and will mobilize forces that will cost them the next election.
In both Russia and the United States, it often takes courage to stand up to and oppose established interests and powers-that-be. In the U.S., that would be the courage of elected officials to pass effective gun control legislation. For citizens, the courage required would simply be to organize and to vote to defeat those who enable evil to maintain its grip on our lives.
Every legislator who opposes effective gun regulation should be thrown out of office.
Those who fail to confront evil acquiesce in the evil actions that result. They enable evil, and become accomplices to evil.
Whether an 18 year-old Russian boy sent off to war to die by evil leaders in an evil cause, or an eight year-old boy or girl gunned down in a school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, they are both victims of evil.
They are victims of the evil leaders who sent them off to war in Ukraine, or who failed to pass legislation to protect their lives from a school shooter in Uvalde, Texas.
They are both also victims of the citizens who acquiesced, in one way or another, in the evil in the systems that produced or allowed these evil acts.
Part Two
Insights and Analysis
Weekly section for Saturday newsletter
Major Stories and Developments
The MLRS rocket system transfer to Ukraine and President Biden’s Op-ed in the New York Times
President Joe Biden published a Op-ed in the New York Times on May 31 in which he laid out his thinking on the U.S. approach to the war in Ukraine. In The Trenchant Observer, we take issue with his refusal to give Ukraine weapons with the capability of striking targets inside of Russia, and his spelling out of a policy of not crossing Vladimir Putin’s “red lines”in this regard. Seemingly ignorant of the the international law of self-defense, Biden is restricting Ukraine’s right to to use U.S.-supplied weapons, here MLRS rocket systems, to defend itself against missiles launched from Russian territory.
Biden stated,
So long as the United States or our allies are not attacked, we will not be directly engaged in this conflict, either by sending American troops to fight in Ukraine or by attacking Russian forces. We are not encouraging or enabling Ukraine to strike beyond its borders. We do not want to prolong the war just to inflict pain on Russia.
Biden’s approach appears to reveal his abject fear of provoking Putin and his threats of nuclear war. It also concedes “escalation dominance” to Putin by telling him what NATO and the U.S. will or will not do. On the positive side, Biden asserted that the U.S. would stay the course in supporting Ukraine, that no settlement would be reached without Ukraine at the table, and that the U.S. would not pressure Ukraine to make territorial concessions in negotiations with Russia.
This last point constitutes a clear rejection, at least for the moment, of Henry Kissinger’s recent proposal at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland that Ukraine should make territorial concessions in exchange for peace in negotiations with Russia, and that the U.S. should pressure them to do so.
Ukraine appears to be losing the Battle in the Donbas
On June 2 we wrote an article in The Trenchant Observer pointing out that Russia seems to be winning the battle for the Donbas as it brings to bear an overwhelming superiority in weapons and control of the airspace, citing articles in the New York Times and in the Der Spiegel by military experts.
Putin’s health
Also on June 2, a number of stories broke in the British press and in the Irish Mirror regarding Putin’s health, reportedly based on a classified U.S. intelligence report at the end of May.
The intelligence report was said to have concluded that Vladimir Putin was suffering from a very aggressive and advanced cancer. A background briefing on the report may have been held on May 29.
The stories seemed to originate in the Daily Mirror in the U.K. and the Irish Mirror in Ireland. A story by William Arkin was simultaneously published in the Irish Mirror and Newsweek. Newsweek seems to be the only leading news organization in the U.S. to go with the story, though papers such as the New York Post also published articles.
This news is consistent with earlier statements by Christopher Steele, a former MI6 spy and official, and Sir Richard Dearlove, a former head of MI6.
One has the sense that the story was breaking in the U.K. and Ireland on June 2, as further details were revealed during the course of the day, including reports that Putin was suffering from pancreatic cancer.
This is a huge story.
So how can we explain the failure of major U.S. and foreign newspapers to pick it up and run with it?
The Observer’s guess is that the reporters for the Irish Mirror attended a background briefing by intelligence officials which was supposed to be off the record and not for attribution, but that they then revealed information about their sources’ institutional affililiations that would allow them to be identified.
If this surmise is correct, leading newspapers may be treating the story like a hot potato because they don’t want to be seen as breaking the ground rules of the background briefing.
What seems clear us that the Biden administration wanted to leak details about Putin’s health, though not for attribution.
Whether these were the same officials who earlier leaked information on intelligence sharing with the Ukrainians is unknown, but would not come as a surprise.
Apparently there are officials in the White House who are more interested in fighting the war with Russia by leaks in the press than they are in getting heavy weapons to the front in the Donbas at the earliest possible moment.
The bottom line is that there seems to be some substance to the revelations,
What will constitute “victory” in Ukraine?
Excerpts from The Trenchant Observer, June 3, 2022
George F. Will in an Op-ed in the Washington Post on June 3 reports on the stakes in the Russian war against Ukraine, and stresses the critical importance of decisiveness. Tentative responses to, e.g., continuing the supply of weapons, are not conducive to victory.
Unfortunately, he also tosses off a series of judgments which require scrutiny and close attention to details he may not have considered. He writes, for example,
Victory should have two elements.
One is that combat ends with Russia diminished — more militarily vulnerable, economically ramshackle and internationally disdained than it was when its aggression began. This has been achieved, but the achievement must be preserved
Regarding the second element, and preserving the achievement of the first, he asserts,
Never mind war reparations; war-crime prosecutions; the return of Ukrainian territory previously annexed by Russia, such as Crimea; or even the end of Russian mischief in Ukrainian regions with large Russian-speaking populations. What matters in preventing Scholz’s “victor’s peace” is restoration of the (albeit untidy) geographic status quo of Feb. 24.
We disagree.
Will wants to prevent Scholz's "victor's peace", whatever he thinks that is.
And to achieve that goal, what matters for Will is the restoration of the geographic status quo ante on February 24.
Will has swallowed Henry Kissinger's bait--his proposal of territorial concessions in exchange for peace--"hook, line, and sinker".
Scholz's "victor's peace" is not detailed in Will's article. It seems to be a peace that upholds international law and the U.N. Charter, which neither Kissinger nor Will mentions.
How should Ukraine and the West define victory?
Certainly not as Will does.
We should not set as our goals that Russia be weak, economically and militarily, and that it be held in ever greater disdain by the other nations of the world. Those are not goals of victory but effects of Russian behavior.
Nor should we set as a goal of victory a restoration of the status quo ante before February 24.
Our war aims should be simple: The withdrawal of Russian forces from Ukraine. A cessation of Russia's "threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence" of Ukraine, i.e., compliance with Article 2 paragraph 4 of the U.N. Charter.
Ukraine and the West cannot accept the invasion and annexation of the Crimea, secured through the illegal use of force, though Ukraine's proposal of a 15-year period to resolve the status of the Crimea seems to be eminently reasonable.
As for the Donetsk and Luhansk provinces in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, a return to the borders before Russia recognized the People's Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk is essential. The final status of these regions could perhaps be postponed for future resolution. That, after all, was the goal of the Minsk II negotiations, which Russia abruptly ended by its recognition of the People's Republics.
Will's reference to "Russian mischief" in Russian-speaking areas of the country is obscene.
Such "mischief" has included the wanton killing of thousands of civilians and the destruction of large parts of Kharkiv, the destruction of much of the Donbas, the obliteration of Mariupol, and the subjugation of the Ukrainian population to brutal totalitarian rule by Russians in areas they occupy, such as Kherson.
By this Kissingerian logic, the individual human beings in Ukraine can be ignored in deference to the requirements of great power politics.
International law, including the international law of human rights and international humanitarian law, reject that proposition.
We should never lose sight of the fact that what we are fighting for in Ukraine is not just a cessation of Russia's aggression and barbaric crimes against humanity, but also a vindication of international law and the primacy of the United Nations Charter.
That vindication should be our ultimate war aim. When achieved, it will constitute "victory" in the Ukraine war.
That victory will not be the victory of Ukraine or Russia, but rather the victory of all humanity.
More details regarding these developments can be found on The Trenchant Observer, at www.trenchantobserver.com