Today we are all Ukrainians...except those with guns to our heads

Anyone who thinks or believes that every person in a family plays a part in the generation/birth of the culture in which that family exists, is living and breathing under a rock. The culture, too, of the international geopolitical ‘family’ is a culmination and a composite of all of the players, the nations, which form the primary influences moving, nudging, shoving and dominating that culture.

As by far the largest manufacturer of military weapons in the world, with the largest military budget, by far, of any country in the world, the United States has attempted to ‘protect’ itself by inflating hard power, military might, and diplomatic muscle, backed by iron and steel and technologically advanced chips and algorithms, without necessarily issuing a declaration of policy, that has become manifest in the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

To have given up their nuclear weapons, for the promise and commitment of economic and political support from Russia, another hollow piece of rhetoric, is now proving to have been a predictable and perhaps catastrophic, if honourable and ethical and modest and moderate piece of political business.

Writing in The Hindu, on February 22, 2022, in a piece entitled, “Explainedd/ When ad how did Ukraine give up its nuclear arsenal?” Priyali Prakash writes this:

Ukraine was the country with the third-largest stockpile of nuclear weapons when the Soviet Union collapsed. As Ukraine battles powerful Russian armed forces, leaders of the country have expressed regrets about giving up their nuclear weapons which they believe might have held off an invasion of their territory by Russian President Vladimir Putin….At the time of U.S.S.R. dissolution, Ukraine had an estimated 1,900strategic warheads, 176 intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM) and 44 strategic bombers, according to the Arms Control Association of the U.S. …The Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, (Start) was a bilateral treaty signed by former U.S. President George H.W. Bush and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991. It limited the number of ICBM’s and nuclear warheads that the countries could possess. The treaty obligated the successor states (of the Soviet Union: Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus) to join the Nuclear NPT at the earliest and the nuclear weapons were to remain under the control of a ‘single unified authority ‘ until then….After extensive political manoeuvring, Ukraine ratified Start in February 1994 when it signed the Trilateral Statement along with the U.S. and Russia. Ukraine committed to full disarmament in exchange for economic compensation and security assurances….Ukraine transferred it last nuclear warhead to Russia in 1996 and dismantled its last strategic nuclear delivery vehicle in 2001….The Budapest Memorandum of Security Assurances is a political agreement between Ukraine, Russia, the U.K. and the U.S. It was signed in 1994. According to the memorandum, signatories Russia, the U.S. and the U.K. agreed to respect the ‘independence and sovereignty and existing borders of Ukraine’ after the country agreed to give up its nuclear stockpile. Ukraine was also promised that its territorial integrity and political independence will be maintained and that the signatories will not use economic coercion against Ukraine to their own advantage.

Of course, many argued at the time, 2014, that the Russian annexation of Crimea was a direct and blatant disavowal and denial and sabotage of the Budapest Memorandum. This latest invasion/war/onslaught by putin on Ukraine itself, is an even more heinous literal evisceration of the Budapest Memorandum.

But, signatures on a piece of paper, however well intentioned at the time of writing, by all political operatives, in all countries, tend to have a way of, like the ink in those signatures, of fading into the mist of forgetfulness, neglect, opportunism, or downright venal narcississtic ambition, whether personal or national. Explained away by some ruse, these historic national self-sabotaging moves have implications. And it is the diplomatic world’s laser focus on what can only be called ‘legal documents’ (without the legal frameworks to enforce them) that seduces both the leaders of nations and eventually the people of those nations into thinking and believing that ‘security’ has been achieved, at the time of such signings.

It would take several warehouses of digital storage to contain the abrogated ‘treaties’ of history, so we must not be shocked that another treaty has been breached. And, no doubt, there are other treaties that have been left to the dustbin of history by other signatories even to the Budapest Memorandum. Some treaties will fade simply because the conditions that gave rise to their signing have changed. And some will be trashed if and when an opportunity for ‘claiming a new prize’ appears like a new sprig of green in Spring, to those patiently waiting for such an opportunity.

Military might, spy and intelligence history and background, and economic prowess are three alleged ‘gems’ in the aspirational crown of national political power. And men, once having been informed about the nature of the game, will use every trick at their disposal to ‘win’ however they perceive that to be defined. Goal driven, even obsessed, strategy and tactics shaped into the larger goal… these are the footprints of history for centuries. History, too, is replete with libraries filled with stories, both as documents and narratives of history and those of renowned literary pieces, that chant like choirs of adulation for the victors, and like requiems for losers. And that compilation of stories, whether or not they comply with the full disclosure of the full range of evidence, depends on the diligence and scope of the researchers, and the availability of the evidence at the time of writing.

How many times have we heard about the Budapest Memorandum in the last month? At least on Canadian and American television, rarely. Boris Johnson mentioned it at least once in a news clip from the U.K. Perhaps, his country is experiencing some considerable angst about the abrogation of a treaty to which its national signature is attached. Does the U.S. have a similar kind of angst?

And, once again, why is there not some oversight agency beyond think tanks, and universities and the United Nations, to which international shared intentions, once committed in some urgency, can be continually assessed. It is not, and will not be adequate for any negotiations aimed at bringing this conflict to a close to merely put another band-aid on the crisis without addressing the ways in which the Budapest Memorandum has become void. War crimes, like all other crimes, are not able to be contained in the “act” of the commitment. They all have significant context, just as do personal acts that are considered crimes. They all stem from a personal biographical history that has shaped, indirectly perhaps but nevertheless impactfully, those acts in which law enforcement engages.

Time, for most of us in the west, has collapsed into concentration spans of seconds, rather than weeks or years, or decades. Only with the benefit of a long-vision, perhaps only accessible to those whose vintage has rendered us merely spectators, on a stage where the current actors are playing their roles, does the span of time seem more relevant. Just yesterday, for example, in a television furniture  commercial, Kelly Clarkson had five different costume changes in a thirty-second spot. Is that attention-seeking on steroids? Or is it rather based on the believe that only through such tactics will the message ‘score’?

We are so intensely and acutely conscious of the momentary shifts in assaults, numbers of apartment bombings, bridges blown out, tanks bombed, and missiles dropped, and babies and mothers killed, all of that highly relevant, that perhaps the world inadvertently complies with those who take advantage of others, in forgetting, or perhaps not deeply learning in the first place. While the action takes place on the battlefield, our adrenalin rushes, in some vicarious identity with the victims. We grieve just as Erin Burnett on CNN’s Out Front wept last night while interviewing the widower of a mother and two children, shot at point-blank range by Russian soldiers. What we are watching is so horrific and so unimaginable and so unforgiveable and so……..(fill in the blank with your most objectionable adjective) that it is hard to imagine how Ukrainian negotiators can even enter a --room with their Russian counterparts, let alone begin the process of a respectful dialogue.

And then there are the questions of whether or not those negotiators have been schooled and steeped in the history, the culture and the ethos of all of the significant themes, theories, treaties and relationships that have brought us to this moment. They too will be angling for a win, a message they can deliver to their superiors and their people that will convey the kind of confidence and trust that have been absent from the last eight years, since the annexation of Crimea.

And we in the west, have to reckon with the fact that we have been asleep, turning our gaze in other directions-- perhaps toward the stream of refugees from North Africa, -- perhaps into Syria where another brutal dictator is propped up by putin, or --perhaps to North Korea where another tin-pot dictator has fired missiles to magnetize attention from America, or --perhaps to Bejing and Hong Kong, where another potential autocracy is stirring for military take-over or –perhaps to Tehran and the Iranian nuclear deal and their ambition to develop nuclear weapons or…….

Attention both to the fine points in the ‘weeds’ as well as to the broad scope of both history and culture, seems like a curriculum that demands and expects some kind of vacillation….and we cannot leave either aspect to specialists and experts only. We need to pay attention to the announcements that blurp out of our governments, for example, on Ford’s silent but inexcusable and relentless crawl to privatize the public health care system in Ontario. We also need to pay attention to an election-campaign announcement from the Minister of Education that Ontario is going to start to teach programming to grade one students. We all know and agree that digital technology has taken over the economic life of our world, and new algorithms are going to be designed and developed, and our best and brightest students will need a proficiency in their methods and capabilities. However, as the kind of literacy that formerly addressed our capacity to “read” and to “write” in our language seems to have eroded over the past few decades, it would seem pertinent and relevant that our educational leaders will want to underwrite those skills and talents as well as the STEM skills.

Employment cannot and must not be reduced to slamming another widget (person) into an empty slot. It has to be a complex process based on a longer-term cultural consciousness that includes and welcomes a far more collective and collaborative perspective that includes us all. And that is one of the important features we could be losing, if we have not already lost, in seeking to place STEM skills above and ahead of ‘normal’ literacy.

We need to be able to read and to discern the difference between words and people we can and do trust and those in whom we cannot and must not place our shared trust. And that social and cultural and political and economic and ethical and philosophic requirement of our culture will only rise in significance as we distance ourselves from ourselves through the interjection of technology into our relationships.

Happy Saint Patrick’s Day to ALL!