Honesty and humility lacking in jingoistic war commentary
The reports and images of death and destruction also provide a sharp reminder of what is at stake as calls for Ireland to join Nato and end our long-standing position on military neutrality intensify. Picture: AP/Efrem Lukatsky
Did you know that if you ask any search engine the word for peace in the Ukrainian and Russian languages you will get quite a poignant result.
It is the same word in both languages — 'мир'.
That poignancy has intensified in recent days with the ever growing military and humanitarian crisis emerging under the blue skies and expansive yellow fields of Ukraine.
The reports and images of death and destruction also provide a sharp reminder of what is at stake as calls for Ireland to join Nato and end our long-standing position on military neutrality intensify.
Those making these calls, no matter how misguided you may feel them to be, are perfectly entitled to do so.
More worrying, however, is the fact they are being made amidst an increasingly jingoistic political and media reaction — here and abroad — to the crisis in Ukraine.
Commentary that has, in some quarters, reduced this conflict to reactionary sound bites and a black and white 'them and us' narrative.
That narrative was perhaps inevitable, considering it emerged amidst, among other things, the censorship of Russian media outlets across western technology and television providers, the imposition of wide-ranging economic and sporting sanctions and the unprecedented decision by the EU to provide military funding to a non-EU country.
And what is the problem with that you might ask.
Putin is a dictatorial warmonger who has overseen the invasion of a sovereign European state so we are fully justified in those decisions and those who argue differently amount to little more than appeasers to tyranny.
It is an argument that is hard to counter.
But counter it we should because a failure to do so ignores the reality of a fault line that runs directly through the very heart of western and eastern geopolitical discourse.
A level of discourse which has been sadly lacking in the vast majority of political and media analysis of the issue.
As someone who grew up in 'western aligned' South Africa at a time when it was at war on many fronts with Marxist and Russia-aligned neighbours, I was introduced at an early age to the reality of cold war imperialist expansion and the death and destruction it exacted on those unlucky enough to be on the front lines.
From that cold war fire, my family moved to the frying pan of Northern Ireland, where a keen awareness of the societal division inherent to post-colonial societies was also fostered.
It was perhaps those influences which underpin the uneasy reaction I have felt in light of much of the political and media discourse that has unfolded since the unforgivable and depressing invasion of Ukraine began.
In his recent award-winning podcast, Conflicted, the American born Islamic scholar and academic Thomas Small verbalises those misgivings concisely.
He explained how, as an American convert to the primary religion of Ukraine and Russia — Orthodox Christianity — he had been left hugely conflicted by the events unfolding in Ukraine.
Whatever ideas he might entertain in his head, he explained, in his bones he was a liberal in the broadest sense, a proud citizen of the west.
So when the leaders of the west denounce Russian aggression and authoritarianism and affirm the primacy of western democratic values he, like all of us, feels patriotism and pride.
But when non-western thinkers, Russian thinkers, denounce the US, the west, as a sneaky, perfidious globalising leviathan seeking to turn the world into a vast marketplace rigged in favour of a small elite, he can also relate to that.
The conflict tearing Ukraine apart, he says, runs through his very heart.
The war, he continues, is a monstrous villainous and foolish crime that Vladimir Putin bears full responsibility for.
But the history before the war. The weeks, the months, the decades, the centuries. That history, he says, is impossible to reduce to easy, black and white, good versus evil categories.
He concludes by admitting he has no real idea of what to make of it all.
It is perhaps that honesty and humility that is sadly lacking in the words of most political and media commentators — here and abroad — in their reaction to this war.
What is certain is that any solution must be rooted — as it has been in all other conflict resolution situations — in an honest assessment and public airing of what has brought both sides of the conflict to where they are.
No matter how and when the present conflagration ends, the planes of eastern Europe will continue to be at the very confluence of western and eastern culture and ideology.
A continued unwillingness by western political institutions to properly address that reality with meaningful and negotiated accords and legally binding treaties with our eastern neighbours does not bear thinking about.
On behalf of my eight-year-old son, therefore, I hope and pray that as a nation we will hold fast and continue to cherish our neutrality, our policy of non-alignment in armed conflicts and our longstanding commitment to world peace through the Nato Partnership for Peace programme.
- Dolan O'Hagan is the Irish Examiner's digital project and product editor. The views expressed here are his own.
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
