Jon Wells: History rears its barbaric head with ‘little thug’ Putin’s war in Ukraine
In the summer of 1991, I worked for a newspaper in a small town where I incongruously mixed coverage of Cornfest" with columns about the end of the Cold War, my university studies still on the brain.
The Soviet Union was dissolving and its formerly captive republics declaring independence, including Ukraine.
In the musty bedroom of a house where I stayed, I eventually grinded through a densely intellectual book titled The End of History and the Last Man" by Francis Fukuyama.
He explored the idea of humanity nearing the end" of history, in the sense of history as a journey. Did seismic current events, with freedom blooming, suggest liberal democracy would be the universally embraced endgame?
In the spirit of what some called a new world order," Ukraine dismantled its Soviet-era nuclear missiles, and Russia gave assurances it would respect the new state's borders.
Three decades later, the strafing, raping, and alleged torture and genocide in the Russian invasion of Ukraine, spits in the face of such theorizing; history rearing its barbaric head yet again.
What sets apart the bloodletting in Ukraine from other international atrocities is the existential crisis: its potential as a tripwire to nuclear war between Russia and the West.
Most would prefer to compartmentalize it as an isolated tragedy in a far away land, but last month the secretary general of the U.N. said the prospect of nuclear conflict, once unthinkable, is now back within the realm of possibility."
Russia has an estimated 1,500 nuclear warheads deployed in a position to be fired from either land or sea, and the U.S. about 1,600.
It's been generations since nuclear fallout was widely feared, in the way that public anxiety has been focused since 9/11 on terrorism, climate change, and the pandemic.
In October 1962, during the hottest days of the Cold War, Hamilton schoolchildren were handed pamphlets to take home offering tips on how to survive a nuclear attack.
The fallout risk probably would develop 20 minutes after nuclear explosions in other areas, enough time to get all Hamilton students home," the school board's director was quoted in the Spectator.
This was during the Cuban Missile Crisis, when the Soviet Union was confronted by the U.S. over installing nuclear missiles 145 kilometres off the coast of Florida.
In April 1954, the Spectator published a concentric ring-style diagram to illustrate the impact of a hydrogren bomb on the city and communities within 80 kilometres.
In 1982, the fear of nuclear war was captured - and perhaps exacerbated - in the angst-inducing TV miniseries The Day After," that portrayed what nuclear winter" might be like in the Midwestern U.S.
On the eve of the Ukrainian invasion on Feb. 24, Russian President Vladimir Putin threatened consequences greater than any you have faced in your history" for any nation tempted to meddle in ongoing events."
He issued a warning last week of unpredictable consequences" of escalating U.S. military aid to Ukraine.
The diminutive dictator - five-foot-six on his toes, about the same height as Napoleon - is an egotist" and little thug," says John Colarusso, a McMaster University linguist and anthropologist; a polyglot who speaks 18 languages and advised the Clinton White House in the 1990s about Russian intentions in the Caucasus region.
Putin wants the old empire back, and like a king or ruler in the old days, he thinks his fate and the fate of his nation are one. It's a primitive thing ... old fashioned stuff, like going back to the Middle Ages and Renaissance."
Colarusso suggests such thinking is also reflected in Putin's ill-considered emphasis on old-school heavy artillery in the war. The lumbering Russian military has at the same time revealed its soldiers as plundering mobs of scared young men who don't give a damn ... In terms of discipline and training and code of conduct, they don't have what we would call a military."
And yet Putin is also simply the latest player in the long and brutal story of Russian imperialism, and what Colarusso calls an obsession with security and power and might."
A French diplomat once opined that if Russian ambition is not checked, its effects may be fatal to neighbouring powers."
He wasn't talking about Russia 2022 but rather Russia under the czar 260 years ago, in 1762.
Paradox has been Russia's distinguishing feature," wrote Henry Kissinger. Constantly at war and expanding in every direction, it nevertheless considered itself permanently threatened ... Psychologists can debate whether the reason was a deep-rooted sense of insecurity or congenital aggressiveness. For the victims of Russian expansion, the distinction has been academic."
Father William Makarenko, pastor at Ukraine Orthodox Cathedral of St. Vladimir on Barton Street East, is well aware of the history. He was born overseas in 1947 to Ukrainian parents.
Like members of his aging congregation, Makarenko has a long memory and a bleeding heart.
In 2008 he created a museum in a learning centre next door to the church, dedicated to remembering the Holodomor, the name given to the forced starvation of millions of Ukrainians by Soviet dictator Josef Stalin in 1932-33.
Ukraine has always been a thorn in the side of Russia," he says. It goes back at least to 1654 ... And in the 1800s Russia passed laws to forbid the Ukrainian language in education, and in our churches. We have been fighting back all this time."
As the war continues to rage, as a Christian, he says, he tries to keep peace in his heart. It is difficult.
Some mornings Makarenko hears his wife crying and asking why?" aloud, when she learns news of more bombings.
She has a 94-year old aunt in Kyiv who lacks the mobility to take cover when air raid sirens sound, who sits in her apartment praying to stay alive.
When people get bloodthirsty, logic leaves their minds and they become like animals," he says, and cites the 1995 genocide in Srebrenica as another example, when more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslims were systematically killed.
Who in their right mind butchers 8,000 people and puts them in mass graves? Only a person with no heart or conscience."
The rules of his church say Makarenko is not permitted to preach politics while sermonizing in the cathedral.
But he does offer his views to parishioners who join him for coffee after the service.
Makarenko shares a video with me over email, of a Ukrainian-Canadian lawyer on MSNBC calling for warplanes and surface-to-air missiles to help Ukraine defend itself against Russia, and who says it's better to die on your feet than live on your knees."
In church, Makarenko does not speak of the need for more weapons, or assert that what Putin is doing is evil, or that Putin is a bully who needs pushing back - even though he believes these things.
Instead, from the altar, in the shadow of the cross, he must take the spiritual road: asking God to protect Ukrainians and look over those who care for refugees.
He does not name names. Makarenko prays for God to soften the hearts" of those bringing death to Ukraine, and to grant them wisdom so they might see the truth.
Sure we get depressed, and angry," he says. But we ask God to hold people responsible for their actions, and for all free countries to be responsible for their actions, also. What do we say, when we say the Lord's Prayer? Let thy will be done.' At the end of the day, Jon, it's all we can do."
Jon Wells is a feature writer at The Spectator. jwells@thespec.com