Crisis 22
The Eye of the Storm
The State of Things - What Then Must We Do?
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On November 2, 2023, I wrote the following:
The State of Things
At the moment things seem pretty hopeless.
In Russia Putin lectures the world on political morality while he terrorizes his neighbour. Again and again, bluntly and by innuendo, he threatens the use of nuclear weapons, in what is perhaps the most heinous moral crime of the century.
And he does all of this so smugly, so calmly, as if he wants us to see him as a grand chess master, never flustered, always brilliant. As if Kiev was burning while he cleared his throat, walked calmly to his armoire, and got out his fiddle.
Elsewhere the world is also in a mess. In the Middle East Hamas slaughters young people at an outdoor concert, provoking Israel to take six and a half eyes for an eye.
In the United States people like Marjorie Taylor Greene are allowed to walk the streets without a straight-jacket, and are voted into the halls of Congress.
In the Orient China threatens Taiwan, bullies its neighbours in the South China Sea, and eyes India in the frozen wastelands of Ladakh.
In Iran the mullahs have beaten the thought of revolution from the heads of its women.
In other parts of the world, deep, deep problems remain in Haiti, Congo, Somalia, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Yemen, Burkina Faso, Syria, and Southern Sudan.
Fukiyama’s notion that liberal democracy has triumphed is as difficult as ever to imagine.
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What Then Must We Do?
And yet the world has always been wracked by problems. During the Cold War many of the conflicts revolved around the duelling political-economic systems of capitalism and communism. The conflict was often expressed in proxy wars, and many compassionate people asked the question, What form of government might raise the Third World out of poverty — capitalism or communism?
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In the opening pages of The Year of Living Dangerously, Billy Kwan leads Hamilton from the luxurious Hotel Indonesia into the dark and tattered streets. He asks Hamilton, “What then must we do?” Billy notes that John the Baptist was asked the same question by people who wanted to "flee the wrath to come.”
‘And he told them, if a man had two coats, he should give one to a man who had none. "What then must we do?" Tolstoy asked the same question. He wrote a book with that title. Have you read it? No? One cold night he went into the poorest section of Moscow where the poor were hanging about the doss houses, starving. And of course, they had the Russian winter to put up with. So he bought them hot drinks, and then he began to give them money. He gave until he had nothing left, and still they came. You could do that now, old man. Think five American dollars would be a fortune to one of these people; it would keep him for a month more. Why don't you do it? You can afford it.'
Hamilton, who had decided to ignore this eccentric little man's over-familiar gambits, asked, 'What did Tolstoy do in the end?'
‘Ah, he came to the same conclusion as you, of course, that it was a bottomless pit, and that even if he gave away his whole fortune he'd solve nothing. He decided that he was robbing them in the first place, since his class were parasites.'
In this brief scene, Koch gets at the circular impossibility of solving problems, since we tend to base our thoughts and actions on our own perceptions and reasoning — and because this creates an enormous gap between our intentions and our power to effect change. The above conversation occurs in a fairly realistic Indonesia in 1965, during the Cold War battle between the two systems which eventually duke it out in the novel: Sukarno’s socialism and Suharto’s capitalism.
During the Cold War it seemed that the gap between capitalism and communism was almost impossible to bridge. And yet, as it turned out, the answer to poverty wasn’t capitalism or communism, but a bit of both. The communists in China and Vietnam borrowed market ideas and raised the standards of living dramatically. And while Indonesia shifted drastically from Sukarno’s left to Suharto’s right in 1965, its version of state capitalism continued the social elements written into the Pancasila (Five Principles) of their constitution. In a 2015 article in Global Asia, Beginda Pakpahan writes:
I would argue that the concept of a Pancasila-based economy is positioned between progressive capitalism and new socialism and can be seen as a middle way for Indonesia to respond to the global economic crisis and to secure its national interests. It is a mixed model, demonstrating the role of the state in institutional reform, policy design and socio-economic development, while simultaneously promoting the spirit of social justice through effective partnerships between the public and private sectors and other relevant stakeholders.
The problem today seems less What then must we do economically? than Who is willing to work with others to do it? A mix of capitalism and social concern seems almost universally accepted, and the old problem of who has ultimate control over this mixed world system remains the same. Yet the question of different social and cultural points of view has gained prominence. This question has been intensified because nations that were previously poor are now sufficiently wealthy to assert their different takes on wealth, culture, family, religion, individual rights, and modes of communicating.
Whereas during the Cold War the twin notions of a free market and a free society opposed those of state control over the economy and the individual, today the tensions are more centred on slightly different questions, such as, How much power can the state exercise over individual rights? What exactly are those rights? Do they include critiquing the government and freedom of sexual orientation? Do they include stopping immigration, even if accountants warn of a looming shortage of workers?
Many of these issues lie behind the present actions of Russia. First of all, the shift from communism to capitalism in Russia hasn’t really changed the oligarchic manner in which they operate: from the czars to the commissars to the oligarchs, Russia has almost always been controlled by an elite with a strong man at the hierarchical top. State control over the economy may have slipped somewhat after 1989, yet it’s now as strong as ever, especially since the ‘special military operation’ is used as a reason to multiply this control. Sarcastically, one might avoid the term war economy, and call it instead a special military operation economy… Yet what’s changed most drastically is the rationale the Kremlin now gives for its control over its citizens and its neighbours. Instead of saying that it’s empowering workers worldwide, it says that Russia is defending the economic and cultural sovereignty of other nations. They say that their fight in Ukraine is against NATO expansion and for conservative social values that differ from those of the liberal West.
Russia has always had a problem with the West’s interpretation of the terms liberal, democracy, and sovereignty. The main difference is that now it doesn’t have the rationale of liberating other nations politically and economically, and has replaced this with liberating people from the progressive ‘woke’ values of the West. Because their economic model has proven ineffective, and their rhetorical justification has as a result disappeared, they need another model to incite anger against the West and to justify their takeover of the Ukraine.
It’s a cagey strategy, for it does at least three things: 1. it rings true: Putin does have very conservative values, especially when it comes to religion and national pride; 2. it garners Putin support and sympathy from influential conservative leaders like Orban and Trump, who are also helping Putin by dividing the West from the inside; 3. it makes Putin seem like the global proselytizer of old, standing up to the West on behalf of the Third World, which has become ‘the global south.’ I return to this final travesty in a later page, with its mocking title, ✊ Fearless Leader of the Global South.
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In the closing pages of The Year of Living Dangerously, Kumar tells Hamilton that he’ll follow the Communists, who are about to be hunted down by Suharto and his army. Hamilton tells Kumar that it’s a pity there’s so much violence and killing in the struggle, to which Kumar responds, “To me there are worse things.”
"Tell me something, boss. Am I a stupid man?'
'No, Kumar, you're damn good. I'm glad I had you working for me.'
'Thank you. Then why should I live like a poor man all my life, while stupid people in your country live well?'
Like Graham Greene in The Quiet American, Koch displays an understanding of the economic need and the resentment many felt outside the West during the Cold War. In this final scene Hamilton has been blinded by the rifle butt of a palace guard, and his bandaged eye symbolizes the blindness Westerners once displayed about whole chunks of the earth they presumed to control. Koch makes it clear that this part of the Cold War dynamic was a result not of Russia but of Western presumption, the result not of the darkness in the room, but of “his darkness”:
Hamilton said into his darkness, knowing it was useless, 'Don't follow that bastard Aidit [the communist leader]: they'll kill you out there along with him. I've already told ABS you're the best man we could possibly have. You deserve —’ He broke off. It was stupid, trying to tell Kumar what he deserved.
It’s partly because of this type of understanding that the West got out of the business of colonialism. Yet while most leaders in the West accept the notion that we shouldn’t be telling the rest of the world what they deserve, Putin only pretends to share it, all the while violating basic principles of sovereignty and respect when it comes to his closest neighbour. He pretends to be a liberator of peoples, but is bombs the apartments and tries to eradicate the identity of his closest neighbour. Far closer in population than Belarus and far closer in language and culture than Georgia.
And all the while he plays the mock violin, pretending to have sympathy for his Slavic brothers, while the burning world whirls all around him.
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Next: ✨ The Dark Which Has No End