"Please, sir, I want some more": Gratitude is a Heavy Burden; and Patronage a Tight Collar --The Allied Response to Ukraine's NATO Admission Critique

 

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 “The American people have sought – in watching and wanting to stand in solidarity with the brave and courageous people of Ukraine – to step up and deliver. And I think the American people do deserve a degree of gratitude — from us, from the United States, from our government, deserve gratitude for their willingness to step up and from the rest of the world, as well, as do every ally and partner that's supporting it,” he said. (US official's tense exchange with Ukrainian activist could offer preview of how Biden responds to Zelensky)

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British defence secretary Ben Wallace told the Nato meeting that he had to tell the Ukrainian leader that he “wasn't Amazon” when handed a list of equipment demands in Kyiv. He told the former comedian that his forthright manner could harm ties with the most generous donors, particularly the US.“You will sometimes hear grumbles, not from the administration and the American system, but you will hear from lawmakers on the Hill, ‘We’ve given $83 billion worth of whatever and you know, we’re not Amazon.’

"I mean, that’s true. I told them that last June: I said to the Ukrainians when I drove 11 hours to be given [such] a list: ‘I’m not Amazon’,” Mr Wallace said. “There is a slight word of caution here, which whether we like it or not, people want to see gratitude.”

Within hours Mr Zelenskyy was doing just that as he spoke at a press conference after meeting the NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. He told an American questioner that the US government, Congress and people deserved profound thanks. “You are truly the leaders in support for Ukraine. We really appreciate it,” he said. (NATO leaders remind Ukraine support is not an 'Amazon transaction')

Gratitude is a heavy burden.  It bears down on those who have accepted those things that create the condition of gratitude--a favor, alms, aid, a good word, and the like. Gratitude, however, is also a condition around which social relations are created and hierarchies of dependence, guidance, and leadership maintained.  One can be grateful; one must show gratitude.  The performance of gratitude is then bound up with other performative concepts--loyalty, subordination, passivity, duty. To be ungrateful is to challenge both the authority of the patron, and to appear aggressive, demanding and unwilling to meet the conditions under which the expectations gratitude were created. To be grateful requires the surrender of liberty for the thing thing or service  for which gratitude is required. (Carolina Moulin, "Ungrateful Subjects? Refugee Protests and the Logic of Gratitude," in Citizenship, Migrant Activism and the Politics of Movement (Peter Nyers, Kim Rygiel (eds) Routledge 2012) p. 54, 55).

Those confined to the work houses of the post-global imperial system that has been emerging since the invasion of Ukraine in 2014, may be punished in greater measure for the lèse majesté of ingratitude than suffer the perdition of the misery that brought them to the state of seeking the charity and protection of a patron.  The poor are expected to show a proper degree of gratitude for the rolls of cheese (recalling an act of sate charity from the United States in the 1970s) delivered to them by a kindly state; the recipients of grants from leading foundations (which sometimes represent the divergence of wealth from product to normative production of wealthy enterprises or the people who were enriched through them) must also show a proper degree of gratitude--and certainly produce appropriately grateful products to suit the tastes and expectations of-- their patrons.  None of this appears out of the ordinary.  But it does suggest the character and nature of power in the post-global--one made excruciatingly clear, for example, by the shift of the European royal houses, the very wealthy former founders of great American enterprises from the business of governance through a state or enterprise apparatus to the apparatus of "giving."

Societies in which charity in which charity plays a significant role (and there are few major systems of social relations in which it does not) use the psychology of what is trumpeted as philanthropic actions retain and refine systems and structures of dependence and subordination that are meant to be enforced through a process of the internalization of the "naturalness" of gratitude as an important positive aspect of moral character. It serves as a much more elegant and antiseptic alternative to the more old fashioned systems of externalized power relations that required the exposed exercise of a police power (whether by states or other collectives). These are now understood as inconsistent with the rules of "polite" political society; especially where normative inoculations can do the work of the police or military and their batons or arms, and more efficiently.  (Tomohisa Hattori, "Reconceptualizing Foreign Aid" Review of International Political Economy 8 (2001) 633-660; suggesting how aid practice transforms material dominance and subordination into gestures of generosity and gratitude). 

 

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Ukraine must be grateful.  That s the price of entry into the liberal democratic empire and the incorporation into Europe. It was easier when these things could be arranged through strategic marital alliances.  But that is impossible now; charity works as well. Charity and the power to provide or withhold things of value to recipients--that is the way that the old manage the new, the haves guide the have-nots. And so on. One year or more into the 2nd phase of the Russo-Ukrainian War, Ukraine has no choice. Their new NATO and EU friends know this. And they have been asked to contribute to the cause.   But Ukraine is a piece with a larger set of relations; these are built around the critical question o this decade--what is Russia and where, geo-culturally, will it drift--to Asia or Europe or Persian-Ottoman entanglements. NATO is the object commnity--the Americans and allies are the crucial patrons (in the old sense of the term from the Latin patronus "defender, protector; former master (of a freed slave); advocate,") And to them Ukriane has just been reminded it must perform--with feeling--the tropes of gratitude. And to be content with what is offered--on pain of being found ungrateful, and therefor unworthy.

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The evening arrived; the boys took their places. The master, in his cook's uniform, stationed himself at the copper; his pauper assistants ranged themselves behind him; the gruel was served out; and a long grace was said over the short commons. The gruel disappeared; the boys whispered each other, and winked at Oliver; while his next neighbours nudged him. Child as he was, he was desperate with hunger, and reckless with misery. He rose from the table; and advancing to the master, basin and spoon in hand, said: somewhat alarmed at his own temerity:

'Please, sir, I want some more.'

 The master was a fat, healthy man; but he turned very pale. He gazed in stupified astonishment on the small rebel for some seconds, and then clung for support to the copper. The assistants were paralysed with wonder; the boys with fear.

'What!' said the master at length, in a faint voice. 'Please, sir,' replied Oliver, 'I want some more.' The master aimed a blow at Oliver's head with the ladle; pinioned him in his arm; and shrieked aloud for the beadle.

The board were sitting in solemn conclave, when Mr Bumble rushed into the room in great excitement, and addressing the gentleman in the high chair, said, 'Mr Limbkins, I beg your pardon, sir! Oliver Twist has asked for more!'

There was a general start. Horror was depicted on every countenance. 'For MORE!' said Mr Limbkins. 'Compose yourself, Bumble, and answer me distinctly. Do I understand that he asked for more, after he had eaten the supper allotted by the dietary?' 'He did, sir,' replied Bumble. 'That boy will be hung,' said the gentleman in the white waistcoat. 'I know that boy will be hung.' . . . For a week after the commission of the impious and profane offence of asking for more, Oliver remained a close prisoner in the dark and solitary room to which he had been consigned by the wisdom and mercy of the board. (Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist (chps 2 and 3)).