On the unpreparedness for war: expect the unexpected

During the Second World War Germans would scoff at the Russians, and one of the jokes was of a Russian POW who came across a German soldier’s watch.  But it didn’t work.  In a moment of insight the Russian realized the problem exclaiming: “Ah! The mechanic is dead!” 

Yet there were real-life equivalencies to the Russian war experience, which posed problems for Stalin.  As Soviet troops advanced on Berlin, they discovered that the Western capitalist swine (so-called), be they Fascist or not, also had the benefits of flush toilets, something unknown to most, if not all, of ‘mother Russia’.  As a result, the invading troops also had to be ‘de-contaminated’ upon the war’s end.

Today, as Russian troops attack Ukraine, there are other psychological problems faced by Putin’s forces who are fighting an undeclared war.  In Russia, it is illegal to talk about the activity in Ukraine as a “war”, or as anything other than a “special military exercise” where Russian-language minorities in Eastern Ukraine might welcome Putin’s ‘help’.  This puts Russian troops at a tremendous psychological disadvantage, because they are not – or were not – anticipating full-on war as their tanks rolled towards Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities.  In effect, Russia’s effort amounts to a kind of “Mission Impossible” writ large. We know Putin succeeded in the KGB, but can he effectively mobilize a nation over an official secret?

Perhaps this is why Russian troops are committing war crimes (if reason can be attributable to such atrocities), news of which is now surfacing in widespread media reports.   Possibly still thinking of the enemy as “Nazis”, Russians are not only fighting Ukranian soldiers, but find themselves pitted against an entire citizenry, who are prepared to defend their country to the death.  So the Russian forces appear to be either seeking vengeance at their own unanticipated war shock or wanting to settle “historical” scores, which is less likely. When making war, one should always expect the unexpected: what can go wrong, will, and this was the greatest lesson of the First World War, “the war to end all wars”. In August 1914 the British had no military plans, and of the European powers they fared better than others, precisely because they had no plans.  In February 2022, the Russians began to stall, then flail, simply because their forces did not know of any plans, although there was one, yet troops had not been prepared mentally for the actual grim combat of war against Ukraine.

It is also worth noting that according to the Gini Index, which ranks the income disparities of each nation across much of the globe, Ukraine (along with Finland, interestingly) is placed among the top ten countries where income disparity is least.  In other words, the Ukranian sense of  ‘solidarity’, ‘nationhood’ and perhaps ‘selflessness’ are well developed, as there is less social ‘envy’ or ‘conflict’ - and success against the Russians is not just attributable to Volodymyr Zelensky’s thespian oratory.  Put another way: the country was long primed for shared action, culturally, politically - and economically. Today Ukranians are still determined to defend themselves, and when coupled with military weapons from the West, their spirit becomes a beacon of hope against the powers of a bloodthirsty autocrat. 

A Tale of Two Genocides?

As China builds in Xinjiang region vast internment camps intended for Uyghur Muslims, and others, Putin’s military targets and bombs civilians in Ukraine - notably women, children, and schools.  Perhaps Russians find themselves forced to kill such opponents because they have neither the time nor resources to re-educate them.  In any event, the brutality of the Bolsheviks persists to this day. 

Putin is Making a New World

Paul Nash, We Are Making a New World, 1918

Ukraine, 2022

Found: Horror and Purpose in Ukraine

 

They were long, narrow, and very strong steel frameworks carrying the engines, and borne upon eight pairs of big pedrail wheels, each about ten feet in diameter, each a driving wheel and set upon axles free to swivel round a common axis.  This gave them the maximum adaptability to the contours of the ground.  They crawled level along the ground with one foot high upon a hillock and another deep in a depression, and they would likely hold themselves erect and steady sideways upon even a steep hillside.[1]

H.G. Wells, The Land Ironclads (1903)

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[1] Quoted in Frank Field, British and French Writers of the First World War: Comparative Studies in Cultural History (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), p. 126.  H.G. Wells was the first person to anticipate the armoured tank.

Taking Ukraine: Putin’s Legacy Project

Why are Putin’s forces attacking Ukraine?  The simple answer is that dates matter in history, particularly when someone wants to evoke a memory and leave a legacy.  For example, Napoleon III’s coup and his other activities recalled the anniversaries of important military victories achieved by his far more famous uncle.  Another example is the French Revolution of 1789 which recalled, in part, England’s ‘Glorious Revolution’ of 1689, while the 200^th anniversary of the former, in 1989, echoed at both Tiananmen Square and the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Putin will be turning 70 years of age in October.  More aware now of his own mortality, the year 2022 is also the 100^th anniversary of Lenin’s establishment of the USSR, which was founded on December 30, 1922.  Ukraine was part of the USSR since its inception.  Putin probably intends that Ukraine belong to Russia by the time this calendar year is completed. 

Lenin, who suffered from series of strokes beginning in 1922, died just over a year after the creation of the Soviet Union, but, before his death in early 1924, warned others of Stalin, thinking of him as too rough and not the best of comrades.  The succession battle that followed was won, as we all know, by Stalin, whom Putin admires.  In this way, by attacking Ukraine, Putin reconnects with the memory of both Lenin and Stalin while securing Russia’s border for the eventual succession battle that will follow Putin’s own demise. It is doubtful that Putin wants to recreate the Eastern Bloc complete with its Iron Curtain, which included Poland, for example.  But Belarus was part of the original USSR, so it might follow the path of Ukraine today, if need be.  It is the borders of the old Soviet Union which has captured Putin’s imagination, and that could also include Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia (added in 1940), so beware of cultural memory and aging men, especially if you know of a former KGB agent as head of state.

 

Things That Must Not Be Forgotten: A Childhood in Wartime China. Book Review

Things That Must Not Be Forgotten (2000) is a revealing and compelling memoir of the late Canadian Michael David Kwan’s first twelve years of life in China, stretching from the Japanese occupation to the cusp of Communist takeover.  Born in 1934 to a Cambridge-educated Chinese father, who had diplomatic immunity along with positions of high influence, notably as a railway administrator, and to a young Swiss mother who deserted the child while he was still a toddler, Kwan grew up knowingly Eurasian, a “half-caste”, as it was so politely put to him - by those outside his family. 

His first memories were of considerable privilege at Beijing’s Legation Quarter where he was regarded as a curiosity piece by Caucasian children because of his light brown hair, “foreign nose”, and otherwise Chinese features.  Throughout his young life he always had trouble making friends, perhaps because he was the product of a Chinese man and western woman, considered lowest status of all, outside of, maybe, plain peasantry – this, despite his father’s importance.  As the Japanese advanced, destroying Kwan’s “magic circle”, the family retreated to the seaside at Qingdau, where the boy befriended his only close peer at a Catholic school, Shao, also of similar mixed parentage.

Behind the scenes Kwan’s conveys the activities of his father, now Commissioner of Finance in a Japanese-sponsored government, who, while residing next door to a Japanese Admiral and his wife (central to the child’s newly recreated magic circle) continued to intrigue and lead the resistance against the Japanese. The family also took in a U.S. airman (who reappears later in he story) to deal with his month-long recovery, at considerable risk to their lives, but, as Kwan senior cleverly figured, no one would suspect a thing precisely because of proximity to their distinguished Japanese neighbour.

One of the most remarkable aspects of the book is the great sense recall and detail by Kwan as the family is buffeted by both the Japanese and KMT (and implicitly by the Communists), as well as by Kwan’s schooling, which makes it a pleasurable read that develops with advancing interest.  A powerful family with fine food always at the table (save perhaps for the very end), it is worth observing that the boy’s most memorable meals were with his father’s tenant farmer outside the family villa at Beidaihe (now a summer resort for the Communist elite).  An anti-Japanese guerrilla combatant who suffered at the hands of Korean collaborators, Xiao Hu, had introduced him to the delicacies of roasted grasshopper.

Of particular historical note is the chapter “Bulldog’s Dozen” which marks Kwan’s entry into China’s so-called Boy Scouts, which was itself motivated in part by efforts to get his father released from detention by the KMT.  Kwan’s activities were more reminiscent of the Hitler Youth - or they anticipated Mao’s Red Guard of the Cultural Revolution.  To elucidate Kwan’s own point consider the following scouting activity: ”Forcing our way into strange houses, turning rooms upside down, taking armfuls of books and pamphlets without bothering to see what they were, and burning them in street-corner bonfires gave me a tremendous charge.”[1]  Clearly there were elements of Nazi Germany in China’s Republican phase under Chiang Kai-shek.

Another point of interest is the fascination KMT soldiers had with the flush toilet at the Kwan family residence in Qingdau, which they came to occupy.  Those soldiers wishing to wash rice only ended up flushing it down the toilet.  This is reminiscent of Russian troops at the end of the Second World War discovering similar modern facilities beyond the range of Communist experience in what was occupied East Germany – a problem for Stalin’s propaganda machine.

Things That Must Not Be Forgotten is a book that must not be forgotten.  In the maelstrom of war Kwan brings attention to the particular and a long view – over twelve short years - that some observers of modern China might miss.  For example, it helps give perspective to Jan Wong’s observation in Red China Blues as to why Communist bureaucracy extracts from the remaining family the cost of the bullet (amounting to a few cents) for each execution.  Kwan notes the same: alleged traitors were shot and hung by the KMT from lampposts, and remained there until family members paid for the bullet.  In other words, it might belong to a tradition of Chinese justice, however peculiar. With his rich survivor’s account of an outsider who speaks like an insider Kwan’s memoir deserves to be on your reading list.

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[1] Michael David Kwan, Things That Must Not Be Forgotten: A Childhood in Wartime China (Toronto: Macfarlane Walter & Ross, 2000), p. 206.