It really is ironic, isn’t it? Here we are, having ploughed our way through a couple of petrol ‘shocks,’ a cyclone or two, and a global pandemic, to feel we can begin to relax a little, and what happens? Death and destruction have alighted on our global doorstep, that’s what!
So, Russia attacks neighbouring Ukraine, to save them from themselves no less, and both countries lose... Sons, daughters, husbands, wives, mothers, fathers, houses, homes, and jobs, while we, watching on powerlessly, are immediately plunged into global uncertainty... yet again.
All of us want, and need, this madness to stop! Well... most of us.
It is ironic perhaps... because a similar set of circumstances to those which caused the First and Second World Wars, and for which Nato and the United Nations were specifically created to ensure never happened again... is happening again. Make no mistake, this is not a conflict based on ideological, territorial, or political need. It must have more the obvious dimension, and only the naïve or ultra-simplistic should see it as a European battleground... it has already gone global, far quicker than the pandemic, and potentially with horrendously greater consequences.
It's ironic that Moscow is using the Neo-Nazi threat of the Ukraine as their justification for its most recent incursion, as much of the world has similar right leanings, even Russia itself. We just don’t talk about it. The right loves its hard-as-nails, no compromise, in-your-face reputation, its propensity for violence and control, its dogmatic refusal to knuckle under, its ability to hide, and survive, with its ‘ShutzStaffel,’ mantra less than a heartbeat away.
It’s ironic too, that the revered Russian author and activist, Yevgeny Yevtushenko, saw the danger of too much power being in one man’s hands in his homeland, may have had an eye on his future, and our today, when he asked wryly, “Why is it that right-wing so-and-so’s stand shoulder to shoulder, while the liberals are always arguing with each other?” He recognised that the extreme right flourishes on, and thrives in, subjugation and adversity, hiding in the shadows, ubiquitous in conflict, yet it is even more threatening from that blackest edge of darkness.
Ironically though, while the far right is being signposted as the reason for the conflict, I cannot help feeling it’s a red herring. I guess if it looks like a fish, and smells like a fish, it must be a... well maybe I’m just naturally suspicious, but the political right has never been far from much of Europe’s thinking and culture, and the Russian leadership must surely understand this is one bear that they really, I mean really, do not want to poke. So, what’s the play here?
After all, there is an exasperating irony in the way that while global sanctions may well be reducing the oligarchs to their last trillions that they will never spend anyway, global gas and fuel price rises are hurting the ordinary ‘man-in-the-street,’ and that’s not the way it should be, is it? Sanctions should hurt those that they are inflicted upon, but once again the superpower politicians, wanting to be seen as politically indignant, maintain their own wealth and position. It’s very, very, Shakespearean.
The fragrance lingers though, and while global oil producers must feel the wheel has turned full circle, unease is emerging that a courtship is emerging from the conflict as those oil producers show signs of impending nuptials as Russia garners support from unlikely quarters. Trita Parsi, of the Iranian American Council, spoke this week of nations pursuing their own interests, and questioning whether we should not all be doing the same? And that makes me so uneasy.
I cannot help feeling there is so very much more to this conflict with its Shakespearean machinations, as “Something smells rotten...” and not in Denmark. I hope I’m wrong, yet I fear the worst, and to quote the bard, “Sweet are the uses of adversity which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, wears yet a precious jewel in his head.”
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