Ruminations 101(2) (The year of Obatala): Looking Back on 2022 in Epigrams and Aphorisms --Part 2, "War, huh, yeah; What is it Good For?"

 

Pix Credit DW here:("'War' written by song writing legends Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong was originally an album track for The Temptations . It was re-recorded and released as single by Edwin Starr so as not to upset conservative fans of the Temptations. This version went to number one in the US in 1970 and became one of the most popular protest songs ever recorded." Ibid )

pix Credit here--Obatala Ceremony

 For the last several years, and with no particular purpose other than a desire to meander through reflection, I have taken the period between Christmas and New Years Eve to produce a s summary of the slice of the year to which I paid attention through epigrams and aphorisms.  It follows an end of year  tradition I started in 2016 (for those see here), 2017 (for these see here), 2018 (for those see here), 2019 (for those see here); 2020 (for those see here); 2022 (for those see here).   

Pix Credit here

At the start of this year I noted, in passing on the Annual Oracle of the Ifa practitioners of Cuba, that this was to be the year of Obatala (The Orishas Speak: The 2022 Letter of the Yoruba Association of Cuba (Letra del Año para el 2022 de la Asociación Yoruba de Cuba) and My Preliminary Interpretation). "This is a year of unsuccessful revolution, of challenges that may not succeed but that may weaken all orders. This is the year of rational irrationality, of creative destruction that is both rational and irrational. It is a year of great passion, if dishonesty, and of violence." (Ibid.). The ruling Orisha of the year was Obatala.  Obatala is the essence of rationality and irrationality.  Obatala represents the highest form of rational creative potential as well as its basest forms of dissipation. Obatala is, in the tradition of the West, the King of Cups in Tarot.  These are to be taken in their semiotic sense--they provide condensed representations of a related cluster of impulses that sometimes manifest.

And 2022 did not disappoint.  It was a year when the firmer the pull toward rationality, toward authoritative structures, toward management and control the more exposed its irrationality and failures. Obatala speaks of the simultaneous apotheosis and  rotting of the ideologies around which rational science is constructed, constrained, instrumentalist, and corrupted. Indeed if 2021 was the year in which what appeared to be new forms of collective management were undertaken (and the rage it was meant to contain), 2022 exposed its corruption--manipulation of social media in the US in the service of elections, abuse of discretion of the sort that exploded even the fig leaf of rule based containment; the corruption of religion by its ministers against its own devout communities. 2022 was the year that just as everything looked like it was going right, it went wrong. And it was a year of violence; of seeking to recreate a 19th century imperial state even as post global empires are forming. It was the year of doing and undoing.

And it is in that spirit, the spirit of 2022, that the epigrams and aphorisms that follow are offered. Each aphorism links to a essay written during the year. The theme of this second set is war. It focuses on the heating up of the third world conflict one front in which began with the first invasion of Ukraine in 2014, but which acquired its contemporary form in 2022.

Links to the 2022 Year End Ruminations here:

Part 1, Seeing and Knowing

Part 2, War, huh, yeah; what is it Good For?

Part 3: Words, huh, yeah; what are they good for?

Part 4: "de Sade's Theater as Performed by the Inmates of the Global Asylum"

Part 5: Good intentions gone bad; bad intentions made farce

 

1.  The conditions for war must be carefully created, and properly nourished.

 Mr. Putin Starts the Process of Territorial Adjustment in the Borderlands of His Empire: If the People of Ukraine Belong to Russia, then the Territory of the Ukraine Does Too.  "Yet these transactions require discursive theatre, if any to manage domestic masses and foreign element  desperate for anything that can be used to support a justification for abdication of national interest. Mr. Putin today, likely on the eve of Russian efforts at territorial adjustments (that continues those made between Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany in 1939; and those made by the allies in 1945), has provided that theatre in the form of an address that accompanied the Russian invasion.  Many have noted that this appears to be a performance of the discursive tropes in  an article authored by Mr. Putin, "On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians" published 12 July 2021.  Thus article sought to make the historical case for the common ethnic and historical ties of Russia and Ukraine. From this, it would follow, would come the inevitability of political union. It is an extraordinary performance for its breadth and ambition.  It is a semiotic tour de force, imposing a new world of meaning on terms that no longer mean what they meant on the 21 of February. At its core: Ukraine must cease to exist because either it was a fake state illegitimately detached from the Russian heartland or it is an illegitimate colony of the United States. And in the process the Russian president revealed as much about Russia self conceptions as he did about the long long litany of Ukrainian faults. It is a reminder that in the 21st century old fashioned military action is a function of the power of the projection of a legitimating narrative to decisively weaken resistance to what comes next. Narrative power is the new imperial power of the first rank, or the power to reorder the world in empire's own image. And the thing about narrative is that it matters little if the elites who spin them believe; it requires only a successful projection into mass thinking and mass believe.   enough of the masses believe the political-cultural battle is won."

2. The more unlikely the more certain that that states are caught in the webs of their own text. ,  

The American Initial Response to Russia's Adventure in Ukraine: (1) Text of President Biden's 22 February 2022 Remarks to the Nation and (2) Text of the Executive Order Imposing 1st Tranche of Sanctions. "With remarkable speed, President Biden has responded to the recent Russian military and diplomatic actions in Ukraine. The remarks make good on US promises of swift response to Russian movement in Ukraine and were crafted in part to respond to the narrative projections of Mr. Putin's much longer weaving of historical-political justification for Russian ambitions for territorial adjustment."

3. Between Empires territories sometimes can be bargained if its occupants can be made submissive.

On the Emerging Shape of the Allied Response to the Russian Invasion--'Trading Ukraine for the Rest of Europe': The View Now Being Shaped Through the Semi-Official Press?. "And that, in the end, is the tragedy. The Americans and their European friends appear willing to concede Ukraine to Russia in war. They believe that the civil fines ought to be adequate compensation and in any case further their own internal objectives. They believe that this is enough to protect the peripheries of the European heartland from expanding Russian ambitions. They believe that this acknowledgement of the power and success of 19th century ethno-racial empire will not undermine the carefully crafted post 1945 principles on which the international order was at least formally built. They believe that eventually they may be able to bring individuals to justice in international tribunals. . . eventually. . . maybe. of ideologies of convergence.Yet this is an extraordinary gamble based on what many may believe was naive assessments of the power of sanction, the integrity of the rump of the EUROPEAN/NATO space that is to be "protected", and an assessment of the integrity and power of the ideological premises that make the old world order appealing--not to the good burghers of Berlin or Park Avenue, but to the shopkeepers in Kampala or Asunción."

4. The business of business is governance; the governance of business is business.

 The Russian Invasion of Ukraine and Business: Responsibility, Complicity and the Responsibility to Respect Human Rights Under the UN Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights. "The bottom line: it is likely that any enterprise that engages in economic activity in and through Russia (the invading state) as well as those states that have supported or are in any way supporting the Russian effort must both conduct quite rigorous human rights due diligence to determine whether at any point in their global production chains their activity contributes directly or indirectly to the Russian invasion efforts (complicity) and then to make a determination respecting how to prevent, mitigate, or remedy the human rights harms caused by  their complicity in facilitating Russian state (or private)  human rights harms. The forms of prevention, mitigation and remedial strategies may depend on the circumstances but may extend the entire length of global production chains and may in some cases require abandonment of an economic relationship and remediation of harm. In any case, depending on the circumstances, complicity that remains unresolved ought to open the enterprise and its officials to both civil and criminal liability. Companies that may have contributed to Russian or insurgent tech or to the development of materials used in the invasion--from chemical weapons, to trucks and tires, to the clothing used to uniform personal may all face complicity responsibilities. Tech companies that provide the phones,software and virtual spaces through which military aggression may be advanced and other crimes facilitated may also face substantial risk. This is especially the case where the victim of aggression has put the company on notice."

5.  Fields, theaters, orders, and faces of battle are manifestations of those who invoke it into material form.

Ukraine institutes proceedings against the Russian Federation before the International Court of Justice and requests the Court to indicate provisional measure. "The Ukraine has instituted proceedings against the Russian Federation before the International Court of Justice and requests the Court to indicate provisional measures. Irrespective of its success, its interposition will contribute significantly to a transformative of the normative and discursive terrains of the legitimacy of state violence. More importantly it suggests the way that the corruption of the concept of genocide has now been weaponized, broadened, and at the same time trivialized. In the process the concept is losing its power except as a projectile in hot and cold wars for territory and normative supremacy." See also Text of A/ES-11/L.1; UN General Assembly Resolution -- "Aggression against Ukraine".

6.  In the Marketplace for Sovereignty, it is Important to Price Well.

In the Marketplace for Sovereignty, it is Important to Price Well. "Reuters is tracking government sanctions and actions against Russia taken by large companies and organisations around the world in the lead up to and following its invasion of Ukraine. Reuters has divided their sanctions tracking into two categories: (1) Sanctions by Country; and (2) Actions by Companies and Organizations. . . . But more importantly the tracker is useful for helping determine the full price of civil fines levied against Russia for its  (so far attempted) conquest of (and subordination in some way or other within its heartland) Ukraine.  And that is all there is--the exaction of a price for conquest. That is what Mr. Biden's now somewhat automated reference to the payment of a 'severe price' is ultimately reduced to.  In the marketplace for sovereignty, Mr. Biden and his advisors, like a family of turnip vendors in a 19th century rural market, have been haggling the price for sovereignty of the European periphery to Russia as a first order imperial dependency of China, though one with its own imperial aspirations and its own first order terrain of sub-dependencies (in Central Asia and the Shi'a Middle east).  There will surely be additional 'taxes' on the sale--within the UN system and multilateral organizations, and within the terrains of international criminal law.  But for a first order dependency protected by the throne of heaven in Asia, the deal that Mr. Biden and his first order dependencies in Europe have haggled, appears to be satisfactory. This is not to imply either criticism or the advocacy of an alternative.  But it is to suggest the power--discursive and action-reaction constraining--of the market and marketplace as the defining trope within which even exceptional events can be rationalized. One can like it or not;one can seek to change it or enhance it; nonetheless and in any case one must recognize both its power and ubiquity.

 7. There are times when even reluctant patrons must be brought to do their duty. 

Text of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's address to Congress 16 March 2022 and to the Canadian Parliament 15 March 2022.  These closing remarks of President Zelensky quite consciously raised the issue that the United States has studiously sought to avoid during weeks of discourse that focused on the negotiation of the cost (to Russia) of Ukrainian sovereignty and the calculus of confronting Russian territorial aims on a neighbor the independence of which it had itself recognized (apparently only for as long as convenient). Having--at the cost of much American blood--built an international systems grounded in the values roughly elaborated in the UN Charter, and having spent even more blood and treasure to preserve it (the extent and quality of the success of which one might leave to generations yet to be born) to what extent and in what way is it the responsibility of the United States to continue to defend and preserve it as it might have been understood, or now redefine both the system and the (much more modest) role of the United States within it. I certainly do not have the answers. I can only point roughly to the costs and risks of each (and everything in between). The values and self-conception of the United states, and its responsibility in the world will in any case be transformed in ways that will make it impossible to walk back. Still--even the embers of past glory and responsibility provide a warmth that will see many in leadership today to the end of their days. And maybe that is sufficient a calculus--for them and perhaps for those they lead. The pity is that the conversation is not to be had. But the glory of the small is its focus on the within.

8. The power of the enterprise is tested on the field of battle.

Global War, Non-State Collectives, and the De-Centering of States--Interesting Hints of Lessons From the Russo-Ukraine War. "The Russo-Ukraine War evidences way that the post 1945 structures of globalization bore fruit after 2000 in a number of interesting ways.  The first was the governmentalization of the private sector as a principal means of dealing with two core problems of global production.  One was the problem of coverage (governance gaps) and the other was on uniformity (compliance, accountability as values embedding techniques). . . The second was the privatization of the state--that is of the willingness of the state to project authority in and through private markets and market activity.  That could be broken down into several components of interest here. One of the consequences of privatization was a tendency toward disaggregation of the state. . . The other was the ability of states to project power outward through private activity in ways that would have not been possible were the state acting in its regulatory-political role. The third was the legalization and judicialization of both public and private spaces. Critical here is a consequence--the possibility of decoupling both law and dispute resolution from the state and state organs."

9. Kings and patrons come to their duty reluctantly when duty clashes with interest. 

¿Pearls Before Swine?--Text of Address by President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy to the Bundestag . Ukraine is delicately lecturing from below, or beside. Power relations dictate care; need dictates presumption. The speeches then serve as a means of moving almost to the edge of lèse-majesté. But perhaps it is more a reminder that the subordinate may in extraordinary times remind the superior power of its fiduciary duty and especially of their breach of duty. Here that is precisely what Mr. Zelenskyy does but in a way that fall within the zone of respect rather than as a marker of rebellion. Ukraine does not undertake these semiotic theatrics for its moral amusement--it requires something,and something important. And that something ought to be as important to its audience as it is to Ukraine.  But the most remarkable element of these speeches--variations built on a singular discursive trope--is the way in which, despite the utter blindness of the elites in the states to which these speeches are addressed (and to some extent wasted--in more extreme form perhaps even pearls before swine), the speeches taken as a while, nicely describe the emerging imperium of liberal democracy under the core of leadership of the United States.This imperium imposes heavy duties on the Americans. These duties echo those of leading societal forces under Leninist theory. In this case, however, those duties are not vested in a Leninist party but rather in . That is, as the leading forces of liberal democracy, they have a duty to protect, engage with and lead the masses of states toward the goals to which liberal democracy aspires. Here, the consequence is clear--the core of leadership has a duty to protect the terrains of its imperium and to aid its subordinate components, and its peripheries, when they are abused or threatened by others.

10. The passport is both a critical semiotic object and a sign of power to signifying communal identity; war follows.

Countering Passport Conquest: "On termination of the Agreement between the Government of Ukraine and the Government of the Russian Federation on visa-free travel" . The Russo-Ukrainian war provided an excellent (through symptomatic) expression of these trajectories. It was made more possible because of the personalities involved--and their ambitions. Beyond its enormous human tragedy--the destruction of property, communities, ways of life and connectivity within communities that were interwoven if not always loving--was another tragedy, the acceleration of the trajectories of detachment. This time detachment occurs at a micro level. The Russian strategy of passport conquest (Passports as Pretext) has been used with at least a little success to detach populations from the states in which they were resident. That was the tactic in Georgia. And it is now the tactic in Ukraine. Borders here are constructed one person at a time; they are built around the location of people and the management of their political identification. It is no surprise then that a counter strategy is necessary. And this one from the Ukrainian authorities may be more interesting than at first sight. Surely it is meant to keep Russian citizens resident in pre-2014 Russia under better control. But it also has application for those people, formerly Ukrainian nationals, who now hold Russian passports in Crimea, and in any other part of Ukrainian territory claimed by Russia. With respect to them, the application of the new rules provides an opportunity to turn the instrumentation of nationality against the Russians themselves. This is necessary. Nonetheless, a very aggressive process of application to Russian passport holders irrespective of former nationality will have to be sensitive to the potential to produce human rights harms. Deportation may not be a plausible or human rights proactive consequence (at least of individuals who held Ukrainian nationality before 2014)--but monitoring and development of struct rules governing the rights of foreigners to participate in national life may well be on the table--along with systems of taxation, surveillance, monitoring, and access to security sensitive positions. That said, individual choices, including the choice of nationality, ought to have consequences when not embraced because of circumstances or under duress.