Kyiv, 8 July 2024. As we hurried across the “fruit tree park” toward shelter, my hostess remarks that Ukraine fired 30 rockets at Russia in the wake of the 40 fired by Russia earlier in the day. They were targeting a power station and a specialist hospital, the one with the aim of making people uncomfortable, the other with terrorizing and demoralizing in mind. Note that I call my hostess “hostess” because using her name might result in her murder.
But I realize suddenly that accepting the possibility that what is happening as tit for tat is to accept a premise that justifies the strikes – there’s cause and effect, which transforms Putin and company into rational actors.
But what rational actor would target a power plant to make people uncomfortable and a hospital for paralyzed children to terrorize and demoralize them?
Accepting the status of rational actor suggests that somewhere there’s a rational solution to all this murder. And there isn’t.
The people who are doing this are bullies, not rational actors. A rational actor has a goal and something to give in return. A bully accepts only a self-imposed minimal acceptable level of shittiness. The only way to stop a bully, as the non bullies all know from experience, is to make them stop.
Accepting Russia as a rational actor when it is a bully has all sorts of consequences for lucid thinking about this war. For one thing, it implies that this war is a ‘conflict’, where two “opposing sides” are trying to get something both want. This word obscures the fact that all the Ukraine side wants is to be left alone.
So, if it’s not strictly speaking a conflict and the only way to stop a bully is to make them stop, shouldn’t our effort be making them stop, not helping the Ukrainians to defend themselves in view of negotiations? There’s a difference. And thinking it over, the risks of nuclear war are probably less if we try stopping them.
Finally, accepting this war as a conflict between rational actors makes it easier to accept the consequences, not just the murder of paralyzed children but everything that comes with that – my hostess’ friend, an energetic 30 something with a son and a brother serving in the army since 2014, feels helpless and has a cynical view of humanity, it’s ability to do good and make the world better. She thinks this, although she spent the day on an emergency team taking care of the dead and wounded and organizing psychological help for survivors; she and friends have organized so that nobody’s kid is ever left alone. We are talking together in a Soviet era, “fruit tree” park: a gorgeously painted gazebo and small buildings in late art deco Bolshevik style. We are lopping, with hundreds of others, on sit-things ranging from benches to chairs to bean bags – all free and open to all comers… so maybe it might not be good idea for her to be believing things about her own life that are so removed from real experience (when we take war and mass murder from the equation of course) … We leave when the air raid sirens go off, it’s a hoof to the shelters…
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Author: Paul Tracy DANISON
