People forget how deep-seated is the hatred between the races of the Caucasus. Even if a ceasefire were enforced today on the battlefield, the ethnic divisions and bitter resentments of the past would remain, and sooner or later they'd break loose again.
As an illustration, here's a joke posted on MeWe by Michael Z. Williamson. It's an old one, that I've read several times in the past, but the emotions it expresses are very real. Click the image for a larger view.
One laughs when reading it . . . but that truly is how strongly the hatred continues between many Russians and many Poles. Don't forget, the western provinces of Ukraine used to be the eastern provinces of Poland until the Soviet Union allied with Hitler to dismember that country in 1939/1940. Ethnic Poles were "cleansed" back into Poland, and Ukrainian and Russian newcomers were settled on the land that had once been theirs. After the carnage of World War II finally died down, there weren't many on either side who could rebuild what had been there before, because all sides had genocided the heck out of each other as a matter of policy.
I saw the same thing in Africa on numerous occasions. I'm sure many of you recall the Rwanda genocide of 1994, or the many conflicts making up the Congolese civil war over the past half-century or so. Most recently, Nigeria saw ethnic and religious conflict flare up over the Christmas period. The root causes and ethnic hatreds on display there mirror and echo those in eastern Europe, and are every bit as bloody.
I don't hold out much hope for a rapid, peaceful settlement in Ukraine. Too much blood has been shed.
Peter
26 comments:
Well, I'll give you a better joke. A Polish partisan is running through a WWII battlefield and suddenly sees a German soldier and a Soviet soldier, both dazed, sitting together in a shell crater. Who will he kill first ? The German, because duty goes before the pleasure.
On a more serious note, the Polish-Russian conflict goes back to sixtenth century AD. And it will persist until the Russian state changes its offer to Poland from the default "Russian boot on Polish face" to something more palatable to Polish people. And regarding hatred it is s bit strange with us Poles. We do not hate the individual RUssians because they are Russians. We only hate them when they turn out to be Russian imperialists. We sometimes pity the Russian nation for their bad government. When it turns out that the Russian nation supports the Russian government and its policy after all, we then detest them. We do hate the Russian state and the Russian government.
As to the genociding, we were on the receiving end. First by Soviets 1937-1938. Then by Germans 1939-1945. Then by Ukrainians 1943-1944 (Volhynia massacre). Then from 1945 to 1950 the Soviets again with their Polish communist puppets added to the carnage a few tens of thousands more of Polish patriots. What does burden us is the reaction to the Volhynia massacre (few thousands Ukrainians killed, after the war forceful re-settlement of many thousands more) and the forceful resettlement of Germans from the current Western Poland, as this former German land was granted to Poland by the USA, GB and USSR after WWII.
"Ukraine" and Russia have been goin gat it since the Middle Ages... My question is, why all the sudden interest in "Ukraine" by the United States? ...I bet Traitor Joe would know...
The fighting and troubles in that area go back at least a thousand years before WWII. You had the Teutonic Knights, the Polish Kingdom, the Ukrainian-Lithuanian Kingdom, the Russian Empire, and the Soviet Union. The German and French armies are also in the mix along with the previous mentioned various bad actors. An excellant read is 'God's Playground' the author 'name I have forgotten.
Neither the Ukrainians nor the Russians have the demographics to recover from this war. Neither side can win, they all lose. One side or the other may claim a territorial victory, but within a decade the people living there will be Ukrainian or Russian in name only. If even that.
I first heard that joke back in 1980. It still holds true.
I think that the war will end with Russia having 1/2 of the Ukraine and Poland taking back the west half.
Culture is the single most enduring thing about humans and it transcends many generations. The US is willing to fight Russia to the last Ukrainian (or so it seems at the moment) and so are the Ukrainians.
Holodomor. The Soviets took all the food and left the Ukraine to starve. Ukraine sees Putin as the spiritual successor of Stalin. They will die on their feet this time, instead.
People who think Ukraine will fight to the last man are delusional. Past is not prologue in this case. They have lost roughly half their population to death or exfil, the peace will favor the Russians as it was always going to. This is a made up war by our government, the Ukrainians know it, a shame we don't.
Not my circus, not my monkeys.
it appears that almost everybody is forgetting the Pale of Settlement and who and what "ethnicity" resided therein.
Humans. We're a nasty species, always looking for any excuse to kill other humans. It won't stop until Jesus Himself comes back and makes us stop.
A friend of mine I met while at College was born and raised Kiev. He lives down in NC right now with his family and he told me when we met thirty years ago, "Do not attempt to understand the ethnic hatreds in my part of the world. You will lose your mind attempting to parse them."
Sadly, most people, especially in America refuse to acknowledge that civilization is merely a veneer. Peel that back and we are just as savage, amoral and violent as we were a millenia or more in the past. And it takes very little to crack that veneer.
Add in a long history of conflict and the hatreds run very deep. Even in America which does not have many centuries of antagonism hatred and violence comes easily.
We pretend to be civilized. We are not. And the current relatively peaceful times we live in are in fact an aberration. Can we grow out of this inherent violent mentality? Don't know. If we don't we are now at the technological point where we can exterminate the entire species along with many other truly innocent ones.
Hi Peter
Somewhat O/T but "tribal hates"
About 1987 I got a paperback (in SA IIRC) that was written by an overseas airline pilot who had been stationed there.
It was the first I had seen that opened up on how some 500 years of European meddling had not altered the basic "Who hates whose guts" at the tribal level in Africa.
Like a lot of books it was loaned and didn't "boomerang" so I have the memory but not the reference.
While intrapersonal violence is cheap and easy (check out any blue City police reports) WAR IS EXPENSIVE.
The machete massacres of Christians recently in Africa is non-news. Is it war?
When the USA stops funding both the CONgress (spelling intentional) Critters kickbacks and Ukraine's WAR, it will stop.
That I fear will happen shortly after the funding for Bread and Circuses (Cheap TV and EBT) and the final chimp out of the US Dollar turning into the Peso (or worse the Zimbabwe Dollar).
I think Tweell has the right of it!
There has to be an excuse for the billions of 'military aid" and other aid, gift, graft, and theft. If a few hundred thousand Ukranians have to die for that, well, you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.
But of course, there is never an omlet, no matter how many eggs are broken.
John in Indy
Yes...Tweel is correct, the Ukrainian people remember Stalin's gift from a century ago. Problem for Ukraine is population. They will run out of bodies to send to battle long before Russia does. That's what will likely decide this conflict.
As the old political commentary song went, "Welll, the White folks hate the Black folks, and the Black folks hate the White folks, and the Hindus hate the Moslems, and everybody hates the Jews! That's why it's, National Brotherhood Week!!!" Can't recall the performer's name, but it was late 60's satire music...
I don't care if their senseless fighting continues for another couple of centuries, so long as the US isn't paying for any of it and stays the hell out of it. We really don't have a dog in this fight.
it will go on until there is no more money to be made from it, or brandon dies. it has been discovered that ukraine has 13% of the world deposits of lithium, large amounts of cobalt and many other rare elements needed in the tec/green energy boondogle, in addition to gas reserves. this war was dreamed up and kicked off by hillry with obamy and brandon's help with the sole purpose of controlling those assets and making billions. it lasted this long on culture but that culture was ginned up and misled into believing the war was for them. that culture is nearly wiped out now. brandon et al will take their money and turn their backs soon. putin won the minute he called their bluff.
Tom Lehrer - National Brotherhood Week
@JohninMd, That was/is Tom Lehrer, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIlJ8ZCs4jY
He recently put all his songs in the public domain.
As always follow the money, resources, etc...
I'm not sure how much we meddled in Ukraine pre Obama but it was explicitly clear that the US overthrew the existing government in Ukraine under Obama to a pro-US government. There is a lot of explicit documentation from investigative journalists showing who did what to whom. It was us using the CIA to manipulate the election. Obama again tried doing the same thing to Netanyahu in Israel during his tenure using the CIA but failed in that instance. That one was even talked about on major media during it. I guess they don't even try to hide they are doing this sort of thing now.
Hilary was deep in bed with the people who fight over mineral resources. Given the big donations to the Clinton Foundation coincidental with her signing off on the transfer of a lot of our uranium deposits to a Russian owned company through a cutout. So I would bet that she was instrumental in actions in Ukraine back then also or at least an instigator.
This simply looks like a cabal of the Hilary camp, Obama, Biden, and whoever is pulling their strings to create a situation in which that wealth comes to them. Russia (who is not the good guy) is doing the same from their side. No good guys here, us or them.
This reminds me of a Chinese curse or saying. Paraphrased it sort of goes "Riches are a curse not a blessing to the man who doesn't have the power to protect them." Ukraine is cursed by riches and geography to be the punching bag of the powerful in the world. I am having trouble thinking of any conflict in the last 25 years and probably much longer that doesn't resemble this. Everything in the Middle East was a theft of resources from there and our taxpayers' wallets were funneled to the powerful. Isn't it nice to have the US and it's military to meddle and steal.
Sigh I served many years ago and I thank god it was during a small period of peace so my conscious is not damaged more than it is. I was young, from a military tradition, and patriotic. I still recommend military service to a few young people as it is a powerful lever to move someone from abject hopeless poverty to having decent skills and job opportunities. However, I only recommend non-combat technical roles so that they can walk out in 4 years directly into a good job. Mostly I discourage military service for most now if it is based on any sort of patriotism and not hard pragmatism.
Sadly I was "queen of battle" and that left no good job other than some sort of law enforcement job and even back then I couldn't see doing that. Now I thank god that I didn't slide into law enforcement. With my training, I would have slid into SWAT or one of the federal enforcement agencies. Some of the people I worked with back then did that and I cringe at the stories they are so proud of telling of what they did. During their law enforcement careers. Truly the 4th and 5th Amendments are dead.
Politicians and their pals in the MIC were getting richer off Ukraine until Hamas attacked Israel. Now the shift to the Middle East where citizen support gives them a facade of legitimacy.
Ukraine has already lost ~1.2 million men to the war. That's roughly 10% of their men dead on the field. They're now drafting 17 to 70 year old men, along with young women, and throwing them into the meat grinder with little to no training.
Europe is essentially out of available artillery shells to feed them, and production is not meeting demand.
The war cannot continue indefinitely.
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