Re: <nettime> The War to come ...

[Ted Byfield <tedbyfield@gmail.com>]

I read Streeck's essay when it first appeared, and my sense was that you could string together many of the points he makes and arrive at very different conclusions.

His historical analysis is strong, but at key points it hinges more on simplistic grievances than facts, or as close as we can get to them. For example, "It is true that historically, Russia always wanted to be part of Europe, and something like Asiaphobia is deeply anchored in its national identity": "It is true that" is the kind of rhetorical preface that often appears when a writer is saying something that maybe isn't as clear as they'd like. I seem to recall the USSR having some pretty specific ideas about what the terms of belonging to Europe should entail, like worker's revolutions and stuff.

There are lots of other examples like this in his essay, turns where his efforts to assess the situation fairly reveal a willingness to give ~Russia the benefit of the doubt but holds the opposition — Europe, the US, the EU, NATO, the world — to very different standards. For me, those shifting goalposts turn what could be a brilliant analysis into more of a generic 'anti-imperialist' screed.

There are structural reasons that make these different standards sensible, even necessary. 'The West' is much more heterogeneous and wooly entity than Russia, which has made its endless contention much more publicly accessible than Russia's: we don't see or hear everything, but we do see and hear a lot. Russia, in contrast, has been far more opaque, and the USSR before it even more so. That's not a criticism in itself, just an acknowledgment that a smaller bloc of adjacent countries with very different histories and norms of governance reveal much less about what they're thinking and doing.

This isn't abstract. There are entire libraries of mass-market books dedicated to analyzing Western aggression in gruesome detail, but as far as I know — and I know pretty far — there isn't an equivalent literature on Soviet and Russian adventurism. Again, there are structural reasons, like language: English is a lingua franca(?!), which makes the markets for these books (and the debates they contribute to) widely accessible on many levels; that's not true of Russia at all. We see more benign forms of this kind of divide everywhere.

Whatever the causes, the result (as much as hate this kind of verbal tic) is an informational asymmetry. It's difficult to piece together commensurate historical accounts. Debating 'the West' and its legacies of violence is possible; Russia's equivalents not so much. I don't think anyone can write a responsible high-level analysis without explicitly taking into account how difficult that asymmetry makes an even-handed analysis of the kind Streeck is aiming for.

(I can already hear the peanut gallery: I'm conflating the USSR and Russia, indulging in both-sidesism, etc. Sorry, no: I'm describing the regional / historical / linguistic conditions of *difference*, not advocating for sameness. And, if it weren't obvious, I'm not the author of the idea that this war has two 'sides.')

It seems there's a widespread problem in discussions of this war: 'Western' leftists have justifiable grievances about how the worlds they live in have developed, but they conflate their own grievances with Russia's — or, more accurately, with Putin's. This kind of enemy-of-my-enemy 'logic' is a catastrophe, imo.

When we're presented with astonishing spectacles like national and international finance authorities vigorously chasing down superyachts, there are a few ways we can respond. One is justifiable cynicism: "Oh, NOW you're going after them," "What about Western oligarch's yachts, hmmm?", "LOLOLO Bojo's Londongrad — still chasing Russian money!", and so on. That's totally justified. It's also comically embittered, the grumblings of terminally angry old men. What we need is a more dialectical response, like "Good start! Now let's talk about yachts that belong to Murdoch, Bezos, and all those Western oligarchs." Not a very high-level analysis, true, but it's different in one fundamental respect: it doesn't find satisfaction in affirming a tragic worldview.

That, ultimately, is my issue with Streeck's analysis: he doesn't just describe tragedy, he's committed to it as the alpha and omega of his analysis. Russia isn't a good guy, it just serves as a foil for Streeck's target, the West as bad guy. Weirder still, Streeck's rhetoric — and yours too, Wolfgang — presents 'the US propaganda machine' as a mirror of Russia's. Yes and no, imo. Either way, though, pre-blaming people who don't see eye-to-eye with you as pill-munching coppertops in the Matrix? If the western left is so hopelessly deluded, maybe people who think so should articulate a new pole. Feel free to lay out its fundamental principles and how they can be applied to create something better.

Russians, as in the people, have lived through crushing transformations that few in the West can even begin to imagine. There was NO guarantee whatsoever that would happen in the wake of the Soviet collapse, and I doubt that the US, faced with a similar collapse, would have managed to do so peacefully — as in not unleashing a full-scale nuclear conflict. The fact that Russia has, in the main, managed to preserve a functional society and remained a mostly legitimate member of the international order is itself a boggling achievement. It should have been acknowledged as such, in part because doing so would have had a much more positive effect.

There's a lot of truth to the argument that Russia's current dysfunctions stem from the brutality of how western political-economic vultures descended on the failed USSR and helped to create nightmares they dream of. That should never be forgotten; but — much as I said Streeck's points could be strung together with different conclusions — there are different ways of remembering it. Western leftists tacitly endorsing Russia's security-oligarchic state shouldn't be one of them, imo.

Cheers,
Ted

On 11 Mar 2022, at 12:18, w wrote:

> Could not agree more with Stefan's comment.  One more thing to
> consider, all the tax money the EU countries are pumping into this
> failed country are only a fraction of what the oligarchs are pumping
> out into their tax haven accounts.
>
> But it doesn't matter, the US propaganda machine has fully succeeded in
> painting everything and everybody into blue and yellow.
>
> The way the different realities are constructed reminds me a bit of The
> Matrix.  I suggest to refrain from taking any pills, be they red or
> blue (or yellow for that matter).
>
> Wolfgang Streek wrote an excellent essay on the "Fog of War."
>
> https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/fog-of-war
> Greetings from the Lower East Side,
>
> Wolfgang
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