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Socratic wisdom can be best reached by sympathetic insight into the lives and viewpoints of others.

Bronislaw Malinowski (1884-1942)

Terror in war

Hiroshima, Japan, Atomic Bomb Dome

Terror is an often-happening phenomenon both in daily life and in war, but what actually is terror? I’ll try to explain this with the help of Peter Sloterdijk’s Luftbeben (especially pp. 7-28) plus my own ideas (without separating which ideas are his and which are mine).
The word “terror” goes back to the France Revolution. It’s used to indicate the period of extreme violence and massacres of the first years of the revolution, between 1789 and 1794. The attempts and murders by anarchists at the end of the 19th century and during the first years of the 20th were a second period of terror in Europe. The best-known case is the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria on 28 June 1914. However, following Sloterdijk, the present idea of terror goes back to an event in the First World War (WW1) on 22 April 1915. On that day, near Ypres in Belgium, the German army launched the first large-scale gas attack in war against the French and Canadian troops on the other side of the front line. The front line broke, but the Germans didn’t succeed to take advantage of this local victory. However, by this attack the Germans introduced a new phenomenon in war: terror; a phenomenon that would not be limited to acts of war against enemy soldiers, but soon it would be directed also against civilians, and soon it would be practiced also by those who were no regular soldiers.
The new gas weapon was not a new weapon as any other new weapon, such as, for instance, the tank, which appeared in 1916 in WW1 on the battlefield. No, it was substantially different, for while till then (see note 1) fighting in war was directed against the person of the enemy soldier, now a weapon had been developed that attacked the environment of the soldier. Killing the enemy became indirect. Moreover, there was another effect: fear. Often, a gas weapon didn’t kill the soldier, but it made him suffer for a long time (some soldiers died many years after the war from a gas attack during WW1); or it could make him blind. Moreover, you often didn’t know whether the gas was there; it could be invisible or you could hardly smell it, if you could. It was quite abstract compared with a gun. You never knew where it was and whether it was there. The fear of the fear became bigger than the fear of the weapon itself, so to speak. Also the French and British forces developed gas weapons during WW1 and also Hitler became a gas victim and he was blind for some time. Was it why he refused to use chemical weapons in World War 2, fearing that he, too, could be hit again, if the enemy would use them, too? Was it why he used gas to murder the Jews?
So the essence of terror is not so much that it kills people but that it kills their environment; literally, as chemical weapons do, or psychologically, in the sense that people become afraid of places where an invisible enemy or weapon might kill you. The weapon is invisible for you, and you cannot notice that it is there. You have no idea from which direction an attack can come and in extreme cases you even don’t know whether there is a weapon or whether there isn’t. Terror is invisible like a ghost: it’s not there and it’s there.
Since 22 April 1915 the weapon of terror has been further developed and increasingly used. It has been used against soldiers but even more against civilians. During WW1, the Germans bombed London and other cities in England and the French and English bombed German towns. The same happened during the Second World War. Also legal military objects like weapon factories were then attacked, but not only. Rather the civilian population was the target of the bombardments. A main idea behind these bombardments was: Surrender, for if you don’t, we’ll destroy your life world. Even if you survive, we’ll make life for you impossible. Also the A-bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were of that kind. Modern attacks by Islamic extremists on the Twin Towers, on cartoonists and so on are also terrorist attacks in the sense just described. They are not only meant as “punishments” of the persons killed or of the USA or of whoever else, but these attacks contain a message: We are everywhere, but you don’t know where we are or where we are not and we’ll kill you if you don’t stop to draw those cartoons that we don’t like or when you don’t accept our interpretation of the Islam. We’ll make your life impossible if you don’t accept our world view.
And that’s what we see now also in the Russian-Ukrainian war. Often civilian objects like houses, flats and residential quarters are hit by Russian missiles, bombs and grenades. There can be all kinds of reasons for that. The Russian army may think that there are military objects at the site targeted; the missile missed the target; it was a case of collateral damage; it was a mistake; etc. But often in this war hitting a civilian target is intentional. The message sent is: Surrender, for nowhere you are safe. Give in to our demands, for if you don’t, we’ll make your life impossible. When this happens, it’s pure terror. 

Note
(1) Also before WW1, even in Antiquity, sometimes it has been tried to contaminate the environment, for instance by means of dead animal bodies, which was also a kind of terrorism. But the modern idea of terror goes back to WW1.

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When a scheme simplifies a situation to better explain it, a slogan gives a certainty that stops the thought.

Boris Cyrulnik (1937-)

Preventing war crimes

Oradour-sur-Glane (F)

At the moment there is much to do about mass killings of civilians by Russian soldiers in the Russian-Ukrainian war. Soldiers who had retreated from the Kyiv region apparently have killed many innocent civilians during the weeks that they occupied the area. In other regions the Russian army has attacked apparently intentionally places where civilians live or where these had gathered in order to leave the war zone. Also this has made that many innocent civilians have been killed. In future, Bucha will be named in one line with Oradour-sur-Glane and Lidice. Also the Ukrainian army is not free from atrocities (see here), albeit it on a much smaller scale and albeit it that in this case the persons intentionally wounded or killed are not civilians but prisoners of war, so soldiers (which doesn’t make it less objectionable). There is great indignation at these facts (supposing that they are facts, and most likely they are), especially at the killing of civilians. Rightly, for intentionally killing innocent civilians and prisoners of war is a war crime. Now it is so that much can be said about why soldiers perform war crimes, but in the end soldiers have mortal weapons at their disposal, which they can or are ordered to use in certain circumstances, and this makes that they must be very aware of when and why to kill. In other words, maybe more than any other person a soldier must be a “moral agent”, so a person who is able “to refrain from behaving inhumanely [and who has] the pro-active power to behave humanly.” (Bandura) Following Aristotle in his Ethica Nicomachea, we can also say that a soldier must be a virtuous person who has the professional skilfulness to apply his virtues. A soldier must know what acting morally is and how to act morally. Which moral virtues then must a soldier possess? That’s what Plato tells us, who distinguishes four so-called cardinal virtues: Prudence (the ability to do the appropriate thing at the right time in the right situation), justice, temperance (moderation or self-restraint), and courage.
Now you may think that this is quite abstract and typically comes from the brain of a philosopher in his ivory tower. Then I can tell you that I found the idea that a soldier is a moral agent and the reference to Aristotle and Plato in this context in a textbook on military ethics written for classes of the Dutch Royal Military Academy. Apparently, also for soldiers nothing is more practical than a good theory. One practical problem is, however, that many soldiers don’t realize that they are moral agents and don’t behave that way, with the result of the possibility of war crimes, when soldiers are in situations that easily make them behave immorally. Even then many do behave morally but too many do not, with terrible consequences as we see now in the Russian-Ukrainian war. Nevertheless, war crimes can be prevented. To my mind, the essence of the methods to prevent war crimes and immoral behaviour is making soldiers aware of the problem during their training plus good leadership. The latter means that commanders at all levels must not be only aware of the problem, but they must also be attentive to the problem before, during and after an action. So education and awareness are the essence of preventing war crimes. But let’s look what the textbook on military ethics says about it, which is in fact an elaboration of what I just said. The book mentions four ways to prevent war crimes:
1) Application of national and international wartime offences acts. However, in war situations it is difficult to arrest war criminals; war crimes done by own soldiers are seen as less important; war criminals are often arrested only long after the act; and war criminals usually don’t think of the possibility of being arrested when committing their crimes. So the preventive effect of wartime criminal acts is often insufficient.
2) Education, training, learning skills and doing practical exercises how to apply what you have learned. So soldiers and commanders must be taught and trained to behave morally in difficult situations.
3) Soldiers must learn that it is something special to wear a uniform; that it’s an honour to wear a uniform; and that the crime of one soldier is seen by others outside the army as a crime done by the whole army.
4) Moral character building. Soldiers must learn which values are important to defend and which values the army stands for and he or she must be aware why s/he wants to defend them. The soldier must learn that there are situations in which “there is something worth living for that is more important than one’s own skin”.
Maybe war crimes can never be completely prevented, but they are not natural phenomena. Human beings must learn to behave morally, and they can. 

Source
A.H.M. van Iersel, Th. A. van Baarda (red.), Militaire ethiek. Morele dilemma’s van militairen in theorie en praktijk. Budel: Damon; chapter 2. Quotes are from this chapter.

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Change never comes from the top down. It always comes from the bottom up.

Bernie Sanders (1941-)

How dictatorship works. “We” by Zamyatin

Everybody will have heard of Orwell’s novel 1984, published in 1949. Not many people will know Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We. Zamyatin (1884-1937) was a Russian engineer and author. He wrote We probably in 1920-21. It was an implicit critique of the Soviet Union. Although the novel circulated for many years there in literary and other circles, it was not published in Russian before 1988. Its first publication in English was already in 1924.
We can be seen as the first dystopian novel, so a novel that describes a society we don’t want to live in. It had a big influence on later writers of such novels, like George Orwell and Aldous Huxley. It criticized the developments in the Soviet Union in the early 1920s and actually foresaw what would happen in this state, but I think that, just as Orwell’s 1984, it is still relevant and helps us understand what is currently happening in many countries and especially in dictatorships like Putin’s Russia. In this blog, I’ll not summarize the story of the book but I’ll focus on what is nowadays most interesting in the book, namely the way Zamyatin’s society, named the One State, is organized.
The events in the novel take place a few centuries after now. After a two hundred years lasting war the One State is the winner. It is a city state surrounded by a Green Wall, which closes the town off from the wild world, a savage world with wild animals, birds and a lush nature where man is thought to have become extinct (which is not true, as later becomes clear in the novel). Life in the One State is strictly organised according to mathematical principles. Its inhabitants don’t have names but numbers. Also buildings have numbers. The daily schedules of the inhabitants are exactly determined by the state: How late to wake up and go to work; when to take lunch (in a common restaurant at your workplace); when to make a walk outdoors; etc. Only two hours a day can be used at will. People live in apartments made of glass and so everyone, including your neighbours, can see what you are doing. There are curtains, but you must have permission to close them. You get it when you want to have sex with a partner. Then you ask for a pink ticket to meet your partner at home. You can choose your partner yourself, but the state must accept your choice; or the state pairs two people off (but a person can have more partners, for meeting a partner is only for the sex; babies are brought up by the state).
It can happen, of course, that an individual breaks the law. To keep people under control, there is a secret police force, named Bureau of Guardians. For only minor offences citizens can be arrested by the guardians and be punished. Not too serious violations can be punished with the death penalty. The execution of the death penalty is public and then the perpetrator is completely annihilated and nothing of the body remains. A citizen can also report someone to the Bureau of Guardians for breaking the law. Need I add yet that all information is state-controlled?
The head of the state is the Benefactor. He cares for the people and does what is best for them. He is elected once a year at a public meeting. Of course, there are no opposition candidates. You are just supposed to vote for him, and everybody can see that you do (or could see it if you did not). However, once it happens that many people vote against the re-election of the Benefactor. Of course, this is seen as a kind of rebellion, and “[it]t is clear to everybody that to take into consideration their votes would mean to consider as a part of a magnificent, heroic symphony the accidental cough of a sick person who happened to be in a concert hall.” (report 26 in We). These votes are simply not counted. However, this misbehaviour appears to be part of a real rebellion that is going on. The Benefactor and the Bureau of Guardians have already noticed that for some time that there is unrest in the One State. Happily, medical researchers have discovered that the imagination of human beings can be found in “a miserable little nervous knot in the lower region of the frontal lobe of the brain.” (report 31) Once it has been removed, people will become docile and will do everything the Benefactor asks them to do. Removing the imagination of all citizens of the One State will prevent future unrest, and the operation can be simply done by targeting the knot in the brain with X-rays. Therefore, everybody must be treated. And why wouldn’t you agree with being operated? In fact, imagination is a kind of illness and removing it will make you happy. For with your imagination also your desires are gone: “... Desires are tortures, are they not? It is clear therefore, that happiness is where there are no longer any desires, not a single desire any more. What an error, what an absurd prejudice it was, that formerly we would mark happiness with the sign ‘plus’! No, absolute happiness must be marked ‘minus,’—divine minus!” Happiness is where there is nothing, where there are no own thoughts. Then you behave like a machine and execute the orders of the Benefactor obediently and you feel good by doing so. Then you follow Reason.
With his novel We, Zamyatin has foreseen what would happen in Stalin’s Soviet Union, but didn’t he also foresee what happens in all dictatorships, and especially what happens now in his own country one hundred year later?

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Putting myself in the other person's shoes will be difficult if the other person doesn't own a pair of shoes.

Shaun Gallagher

Power and Violence. Hannah Arendt

One of the most interesting books by Hannah Arendt is her On Violence. It’s a little book but it gives you many insights that apply to the political developments in the world and especially now to the Russia-Ukraine War. Most important is part II, where Arendt analyses the concepts of power, strength, force, authority and violence. These concepts are often used as synonyms, so Arendt, but then one ignores their subtle distinctions in meaning, which can make you blind to the realities they correspond to. (p. 45) Once you have become aware of these distinctions, they are very helpful to understand complex political events, like the Russia-Ukraine War. Before I’ll give you Arendt’s interpretation of the concepts just mentioned, first a quote: “The extreme form of power is All against One, the extreme form of violence is One against All.” (p. 42) Keep this in mind, when you go on now.
“Power”, so Arendt, “corresponds to the human ability not just to act but to act in concert. Power is never the property of an individual; it belongs to a group and remains in existence only so long as the group keeps together. When we say of somebody that he is ‘in power’ we actually refer to his being empowered by a certain number of people to act in their name. The moment the group, from which the power originated to begin with … disappears, ‘his power’ also vanishes.” Power needs legitimacy in order to be accepted. This can be by legal institutions or, for example, because a majority silently stands behind the person in power.
While power refers to the many, strength is an individual capacity. “[I]t is the property inherent in an object or person and belongs to its character, which may prove itself in relation to other things or persons, but is essentially independent of them. The strength of even the strongest individual can always be overpowered by the many, who often will combine for no other purpose than to ruin strength precisely because of its peculiar independence.” So, a boxer is strong by his training, but he can be overpowered by ten persons who individually are less strong but together they are.
Force is often seen as a synonym for violence but Arendt reserves it for “the force of nature” or “the force of circumstances”, so “to indicate the energy released by physical or social movements.” I think that you can also say that force refers to the intensity of violence.
Authority can be invested in persons and in offices. “Its hallmark is unquestioning recognition by those who are asked to obey; neither coercion nor persuasion is needed.” Authority requires respect and “[t]he greatest enemy of authority, therefore, is contempt, and the surest way to undermine it is laughter.”
“Violence, finally,” so Arendt, “is distinguished by its instrumental character. … [I]t is close to strength, since the implements of violence, like all other tools, are designed and used for the purpose of multiplying natural strength.”
Arendt stresses, however, that in practice these distinctions are rarely sharp and that the borders between the concepts can be vague.
Although power and violence are different phenomena, they often go together, so Arendt. Power can be destroyed by violence (massive use of artefacts, like killing and mass murder) but violence can never turn into power. Also this remark by Arendt is interesting: “To substitute violence for power can bring victory, but the price is very high; for it is not only paid by the vanquished, it is also paid by the victor in terms of his own power.” For instance, too much violence can undermine its (alleged) justification and by this the power of the user of violence, because people turn against him. (see for the quotes, etc. pp. 43-54)
Arendt’s concepts and ideas, as just expounded, can be used to understand philosophically what is going in Ukraine, and why Putin’s invasion has failed to a large extent and why Ukraine has held out so far. Here are some hints for your analysis:
- Putin and his generals apparently thought that Zelensky and his government didn’t have power; i.e. that the Ukrainian people or too many of them didn’t stand behind them and that especially the Russian speaking population was on the side of the Russians. However, the Ukrainians just massively supported their government: Zelensky and his government had by far more power than Putin & co. expected.
- The Ukrainian army was stronger than its adversary expected. It had better weapons than expected and got even better weapons during the war; its unity and morality were better; its strategy and tactics were better than expected and also better than the Russian unity, morality, etc.
- The Russian army is prepared to use very forceful arms during this war, leading to the destruction of cities and villages and to many civilian victims.
- The authority of Zelensky and his government was not only recognized by the Ukrainians but also by almost all countries in the world and especially by the western democratic countries. This led to a massive international support for the Ukrainians, resulting in the massive sending of weapons and humanitarian aid.
- Although the Ukrainian government had power (and authority), Putin & co. expected to be able to destroy it by the use of violence, which didn’t come true by such factors as just mentioned and by other factors as well. Russia reacted by using more violence, but just this can undermine its “justification” of this war, and by this Putin’s power, if not the power of the whole regime.
This first tentative analysis alone shows how powerful Arendt’s concepts are. I leave it to you to use them for a thorough analysis of what’s going on, in the southeast of Europe and in politics in general.