Thinking about the Dnieper and the Drava

 

By Xsandriel - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21800930

I wrote this post a while ago.  Then some professor at ASU beat me to writing this one. In essence, it suggests that the Montenegrin Orthodox Church should or will eventually try to gain independence from the Serbian Orthodox Church, much like how the Ukrainian Auto-Cephalous Orthodox Church seeks independence from the Russian Orthodox Church.  (I guess it got it in 2019).

In peacebuilding, we have a concept of cultural and structural violence taught to us by John Galtung.

"By 'cultural violence' we mean those aspects of culture, the symbolic sphere of our existence -exemplified by religion and ideology. language and art, empirical science and formal science (logic, mathematics) -that can be used to justify or legitimize direct or structural violence.' Stars, crosses, and crescents; flags, anthems and military parades; the ubiquitous portrait of the Leader; inflammatory speeches and posters- all these come to mind. However, let us postpone the examples until section 4 and start with analysis. The features mentioned above are 'aspects of culture', not entire cultures. "

(Galtung, 1990)

The Siege of Kiev, 1240
By русский летописец - Оксфордская иллюстрированная энциклопедия, т.3, Инфра-М, Весь Мир, М,1999, ISBN5-16-000072-0, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9688880

 I would argue that Vladimir Putin's desire to invade, carve up, or occupy Ukraine cannot be separated from the Russian Orthodox Church's desire to crush the head of the Auto-Cephalous Church. One is a violent reaction, and one is more insidious. Think the difference between the COVID-19 that puts you on a ventilator fighting for your life versus the long-Covid that messes with your everyday function of life. They are symptoms of the same sickness and manifest in differing, but equally important ways. This is not the first time this has happened; Think of Stalin's efforts in the Holodomor to starve the Ukrainians to death in order to secure the food he needed to make the industries to win the war he knew he had to win against the Nazis. He also did it because he clearly did not see the Ukrainians as a people with a separate history, culture, and desire for independence. He could not see them as human, and so he could crush them mercilessly. He saw them as a fifth column, set up by the Germans and other "fascist", Western, and "imperialist" powers seeking to destroy the European heartland of Russia.

How do you reconcile the very real subconscious fears that drive geopolitical imperatives with the needs of the peoples in your way? For Ivan the Terrible, Stalin, and Putin, the fear is the same as what the princes of Kievan Rus faced: the utter destruction of Kyiv, the soul of Rus, the future of Russia. Imagine if someone took over Texas, and threatened New Orleans, and the whole Greater Mississippi River Valley's access to the ocean, after causing a collapse of the entire United States into chaos? (thanks George Friedman) How would we react? What would we be willing to do? How far would we be willing to go in order to secure our security, as flawed and poisoned of strategic thinking as it could be? Therein lies the key to Vladimir Putin's thinking. He may be poisoned by the contempt and cultural violence embedded in his worldview, but until we understand him, we cannot understand his complicated maneuvers. Until we understand how he thinks, and how the Russian electorate views their terrifying and fatalistic history, we cannot begin to undo this long and tortured history of cultural violence.

I am not advocating for Russia. I see a future full of Russian malign influence leading to instability in an arc from the Baltics to the Balkans, from the Dnieper to the Drava, influencing our ability to intervene in Taiwan, and limiting the number of forces we can reserve for counter-terrorism operations in the Global South. This will have repercussions.

\We can manage the problem of military violence with alliances like NATO, and check structural political and economic violence through venues like the EU, but until we find a way to root out the cause of the cultural violence, we will not make headway on the issue of Ukraine. 

We can send weapons. We can send experts in civil society and democracy and anti-corruption and peacebuilding. But until we come face to face with the real difficulty: how religiously generated (but now agnostic) ethnic identities are so tightly woven with state, power, religion, marriage patterns, and other aspects of the human geography of the region, we cannot expect to change Eastern Europe soon. It will change, but it will change more like Britain in the Roman Empire than say Spain, or France, or Italy. It will be influenced by Anglo-American norms, customs, language, technology, but it will be upon a Slavic linguistic and cultural substrate.

The same must happen within the Serbs over their similarly separatist demands over Bosnia and Kosovo, and the independence of the Montenegrin Orthodox Church. They are symptoms of the same problem expressed differently. The ax needs to be laid at the root of the tree, but we keep hacking wildly at the branches.

References

Galtung, J. (1990). Cultural Violence. Jstor.org, 27(3). August, 1990. http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-3433%28199008%2927%3A3%3C291%3ACV%3E2.0.CO%3B2-6

"But while English has become the most influential lingua franca in the world, its global usage is often distinct from that of native speakers. What is sometimes referred to as a global English, or Globish, is more common than fluency in formal standard English. This is a simplified version of the language, with a smaller vocabulary and less-rigid rules on pronunciation and grammar. The English used by airline pilots is really a simplified Airspeak, while ship pilots use Seaspeak. What is known as Special English, which consists of just 1,500 words, is used by the Voice of America in its international broadcasts. Many who use English on a daily basis for business transactions and work-related functions know just enough to get the job done; they are unlikely to be able to debate the merits of Karl Marx and Adam Smith. Ultimately, it is unlikely that English will become a universal world language that all people speak. Rather, it will probably serve the needs of business transactions and work-related communication in a basic, simplified form. Only a small proportion of the world’s population will be truly fluent. This also leaves open the possibility that another language could gain influence over time. The position of English as a lingua franca looks relatively secure now, but Latin looked the same way during its heyday as well."

Carter, J. Chris. Introduction to Human Geography Using ArcGIS Online (pp. 580-581). Esri Press. Kindle Edition.