Letter to a Pacifist: Reflections on Conflicting Narratives

Dear John,

We need to talk about Ukraine. The first time I heard you talk about the war, you said something to the effect of “it’s not our war… we can’t afford it… the coffers are empty… we should be spending that money at home…” I think this is a wrongheaded argument, but I can understand it. Who can argue against spending more on public services and less on foreign wars? Assuming that these two things are mutually exclusive....

However, I'm afraid to say that nearly every other comment I’ve heard you make about it since gives me pause. Although you are ostensibly adopting a pacifist position, I find some of the arguments rather problematic. I appreciate you may find that hard to understand, so here is a non-exhaustive list of those comments:

1) The Ukrainians and the Russians are the same people.

2) The Russians are just acting as any state would in the face of foreign aggression.

3) This war is America’s fault.

4) Would you be willing to fight in the war?

5) Ukraine is a corrupt state and we don’t know where the weapons are going.

I want to address these arguments one by one:

1) Aside from the fact that claiming the Ukrainians and the Russians are “one people” is literally Kremlin propaganda, the sub-text is that Ukrainians cannot choose to live in a democratic state rather than under a brutal dictator — that it’s no big deal if Ukrainian language and culture is wiped out (as Russia is trying to do in this war through specific policies like kidnapping children). This is a despicable argument that minimises attempted genocide and does not merit further discussion.

2) Putin has been laying the groundwork for this claim in articles and speeches for a long time. The premise is similar to the so-called “realist” argument, i.e. that the threat of NATO expansion led Putin to make a rational decision and preemptively invade Ukraine to create a buffer zone between NATO-Allied territories and Russia. However, this fundamentally misrepresents the purpose and objectives of NATO and why Eastern European countries want to join it. First of all, NATO is a military defence alliance; it is not a threat to peaceful nations – it exists to protect its members from foreign aggressors. If NATO is “expanding,” it is precisely because the Baltic and Balkan states — and basically all former Soviet states —rightly perceive a threat of invasion from Russia.

The second logical fallacy in the realist argument is that it essentialises Russia; it implies that Russia is by nature bellicose and destined to invade its neighbours. History shows us that this is not inevitable: two of the most aggressive states of the 20th century (Germany and Japan) are now peaceful allies, despite being devastated and “humiliated” during WW2. Indeed, according to many foreign policy experts, Japan is now a “Western” country – in a philosophical sense rather than a geographical one. Whatever you think about this categorisation, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida made a speech to US Congress in April 2024 begging Americans to abandon isolationism and keep up its involvement abroad. Not many people are saying the same about Russia.

3) Putin apologists often claim that the West is responsible for this war, and they do it in two ways: firstly, they claim that the US fomented the Maidan revolution. This is in part true: it is well known that the US financed pro-democracy NGOs to protest against Russian influence, but once again, to over-index the impact of this influence implies that the Ukraine has no agency — that they would not want to be free of Russian influence and join the world’s largest trade bloc if it wasn’t for American brainwashing.

The second way is that they claim that the US wants to prolong this war because it weakens Russia. There may be people in the US establishment who think this (there are probably more who think it is a convenient side-effect of the war) but it is not really the issue. The right question to ask is twofold: who is responsible for this war? And what is the right strategic and ethical move now?

4) Asking me if I would be willing to fight in the war is simultaneously a non sequitur and a strawman; it is a question that has nothing to do the issue at hand, and it is a misrepresentation of an opponent’s position. In this case, it was an implicit reference to the fact that Emmanuel Macron was quoted as saying “you cannot rule out sending western troops into Ukraine in the future.” The French far right translated this as “Macron wants to send French troops to fight Russia.”

The implication is that it is hypocritical to be in support of Ukrainian self-determination if you are not going to fight on the front, but my individual fitness or readiness to fight is irrelevant to French policy decisions. National defence is carried out by professional military personnel, not by every citizen who supports a cause. If my country was being invaded by a fascist dictator I would certainly defend it, but this is not what is happening now. Moreover, although I am not responsible for whatever Macron happens to say in a press conference, this quote was in fact an instance of strategic ambiguity (which mirrors America's attitude towards Russia) rather than a threat to actually send troops to Ukraine. Furthermore, to blame Macron for escalation is to shift the burden of blame away from the actual belligerent.

5) As for the claim regarding Ukrainian corruption, while it is true that Ukraine (like most former Soviet states) has a very bad record in terms of corruption, there is also a lot of evidence pointing to a fight against this systemic corruption. Moreover, it seems obvious that acquiescing to Putin’s colonial ambitions is unlikely to reduce the level of corruption in Ukraine, whereas opening a pathway to EU membership on the other hand...

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You also made another point: if the West stopped financing Ukraine, the war would be over. This is the most reasonable and strongest argument to my ears.

On its face, this might appear to be a common-sense position to anyone who is anti-war, but it poses a false dilemma: it implies that the only two options available are (i) either fund a terrible war and lots of people die or (ii) let Russia take over Ukraine and peace will return. But the war wouldn’t be over, Ukrainian freedom fighters would continue to fight, ultimately leading to even more deaths. This is a situation that is relatively common after the end of formal hostilities (cf. The French resistance, the Forest Brothers after World War II, the mujahedin in Afghanistan, various factions after the Iraq war).

Moreover, there is no reason to assume that Putin would stop at Ukraine. Ask any leader of a Scandinavian, Balkan or former Soviet state; they are all worried that Putin will come after them next. Their concern is not unfounded: under Putin, Russia has already invaded Ukraine (Crimea) and Georgia, sought to foment separatist movements in Ukraine and Georgia, sought to the pervert the political process as it is currently doing with its proxies in Georgia, Hungary and Belarus…

As Garry Kasparov says, “Many politicians in the West cling to the notion of a partnership with Russia. They want to include [Vladimir] Putin, make compromises and constantly negotiate new deals with him. But history has taught us that the longer we pursue appeasement and do nothing, the higher the price will be later on. Dictators don’t ask ‘Why?’ before they seize even more power. They ask: ‘Why not?’"

The only good resolution to this war would be for Russia to pull out of Ukraine. This would have another positive outcome in that it would make Putin’s position untenable, which is why he cannot accept it.

To non-Ukrainian ears, a negotiated settlement sounds increasingly reasonable, but it is easy to understand why Ukraine would find it hard to accept . The settlement would inevitably include the loss of territory which, as well as effectively implying the deportation (or de facto refugee status) of all Ukrainians living on that land, would allow Russia to use this pause to prepare its army, economy and population for another future assault. Worse, it would also validate Putin’s strategy. The message that we would be sending to autocrats around the world is that it is rational to invade a country, take what you can and then negotiate to see what you can keep.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I would like to finish with my take on Putin’s actual motivations in this war. He is on record multiple times inventing an alternate history that justifies Russia’s natural right to Ukraine, but my belief is that this invasion is for purely geopolitical reasons. Putin is also quoted as saying that “the breakup of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical tragedy of the 20th century.” This is absurd, but it is also quite revealing. According to geopolitical strategist Peter Zeihan, Russia wants the buffer zone of former Soviet states because it has an 8,000-kilometre external border with few natural barriers that is very hard to defend. As a result, Russia’s historic military defence strategy has been to expand its borders to assimilate barriers to invasion such as the Carpathian mountains (which run through Slovakia, Poland, Ukraine, Romania and Serbia; the Caucasus Mountains (Georgia); the Altai Mountains (Kazakhstan); and the deserts of Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan.

Controlling Ukraine also means controlling Ukrainian wheat production at a time when the world is transitioning away from fossil fuels (which weakens Russia financially and geopolitically). It protects their internal food supply and also gives its Russia leverage over its African client states as well as holding the spectre of food shortages in the Middle East (and the ensuing chaos they would bring) over Europe.

I believe that Putin’s romantic rhetoric about the Russians and Ukrainians being one Slavic people (as well as the claim that Ukraine is ruled by Nazis) is purely to make the Russian population feel better about the whole sordid enterprise. Maybe he really does believe it — or maybe he has convinced himself of it — but this is irrelevant. What matters is that by invading Ukraine he has violated long-standing norms, treaties and laws protecting territorial sovereignty (mostly respected since WW2 apart from a few small, localised conflicts and clashes over disputed territories), and in doing so he has potentially ushered in a much more unstable, violent world where other dictators are emboldened to re-take land that they have a historic claim to — however questionable that claim may be.

For what it's worth, nothing I have written here should be construed as being pro-war. It is pro-nuance. I worry that the war could drag on for years or escalate to a wider conflict. I see the appeal of a negotiated cease-fire and I can understand the argument for stopping military aid to Ukraine, but I have also heard the case against these options, which I believe are, respectively, unrealistic and potentially even more dangerous for the reasons outlined above.

I don't suppose we are going to agree on the basic facts in this letter — we have different news sources and political leanings, which means we have different perceptions of the world. The fact is, no one knows what is in Putin's head, and no one knows how this is going to play out. Everyone comes to it from their own perspective. Mine is this: it may be difficult to imagine now, but the second-order consequences of the appeasement of Putin could be scarier than the status quo.