Most people can’t think, as opposed to just talk, about politics. And even those who can won’t. Ideology has replaced ideas, which is a distinctly modern phenomenon.
French revolutionaries coined the word idéologie because they felt the need for it. And there was one: as they, inspired by their American, Swiss, German and British role models, led the West away from God, they were steering thought away from truth.
Laissez-faire ineluctably became laissez-penser and laissez-parlez, an encephalophonic free-for-all, with intellectual integrity dumped into the rubbish bin of history, to use another revolutionary’s phrase.
Later the word ‘ideology’ gained tremendous currency, largely through the cannibalistic musings of Karl Marx. It has now become the single currency of political discourse.
If it takes feeble, dishonest, downright lying, ignorant thought to arrive at an ideological end, no one minds. It’s fine with both the subject and object of thought.
How intelligent the speaker and his audience are no longer matters. These days they sign an unwritten pact: one agrees to make appropriate ideological noises; the other, to accept them as real thought. Both undertake to disregard flagrant violations of truth or indeed logic.
My customary whipping boy Peter Hitchens seems to have committed his work to proving these melancholy observations right, at least every time the word ‘Russia’ crops into his narrative. Not a stupid man, he makes sense on most subjects that don’t touch upon his ideology. Russia does, and suddenly this otherwise clever chap starts mouthing turgid gibberish.
To wit, today’s column: “Ministers and others continue to shout and squawk about Russia, a poor, weak country which is no threat to us, and which isn’t even especially interested in us. Is this because they lack the guts to tackle the giant, rich bully China, whose despots are entertained in Buckingham Palace?”
As far as Hitchens is concerned, those who understand Russia better than he does never just talk. They shout and squawk. However, even we poor shouters and squawkers try to avoid logical solecisms, factual falsehoods and lapses of reason.
Hitchens’s short paragraph contains a long list of those, all deserving pride of place in the encyclopaedia of rhetorical fallacies. Here are a few, off the top.
The implication seems to be that because Russia is poor it’s weak, and because it’s weak it’s no threat to us. This is simple ignorance, in addition to being ideologically inspired nonsense.
Hitchens applies Western philistine standards to the definition of poverty. True, most Russians live from hand to mouth and can’t afford to buy what they see in the shops. But Russia’s relevant wealth isn’t in the shops. It’s in the silos.
Russia has more thermonuclear warheads than the US does. Russian Goebbelses, such as Putin’s top TV mouthpiece Kisilev, never cease to remind their audiences that Russia could “turn America into radioactive dust” at the touch of a button. And this isn’t just braggadocio.
Another implication is that an economically poorer country can’t threaten a richer one. This is equally nonsensical. The vandals’ GDP wasn’t a patch on Rome’s, nor could the Turks match the riches of Byzantium. Closer to our own time, Kuwait was wealthier than Iraq. How many more examples would you like of economic Davids slaying economic Goliaths?
Then comes a downright lie: Russia “isn’t interested in us”. On what basis does Hitchens make this assurance? Every page of every Putin newspaper spouts unadulterated hatred for the West, especially the Anglophone West. Hardly a day goes by without open threats being made, along the lines of radioactive dust.
Russia is specifically issuing threats to Nato members we are contractually obligated to defend. Does Hitchens think the Russians have no vested interest in reducing our defence capabilities? Are they waging electronic war against us just for fun?
The answer is, he doesn’t think so. He doesn’t think, full stop. It’s ideology he’s offering, not ideas.
Then comes a non sequitur, straight out of the ‘Don’t’ section of the logic textbook. Yes, China is a despotic bully, and yes, the West doesn’t have the guts to confront it, overlooking the evil nature of communist China for its giant market and endless supply of coolie labour.
And yes, in a better world Chinese despots wouldn’t be invited to Buckingham Palace. (Neither would the Russian despot Putin, who’ll be staying at Buck House next week, and one would think his purloined billions would stretch to a hotel room.)
But what does that have to do with Russia? Are we allowed to have only one bogeyman at a time? One vaguely recalls that, while fighting the Nazis, Britain was also at war with Italy and Japan. In the previous big war, we didn’t just fight Germans – Austrians, Czechs, Hungarians and so forth were also our enemies. On what authority is Hitchens rationing the number of adversaries?
Then he seems to think we are the flat-track bully for picking on poor, weak Russia that can sink the British Isles within minutes. And cowards for not confronting China. The second proposition is true; the first, false. There’s no logical connection between the two.
Hitchens would do well to remember that Russia has launched three wars of aggression under Putin, while China so far limits itself to menacing talk. So if we had to choose one, I’d say Russia should be our first choice of evil to resist. But we don’t have to choose: neither Russia nor China nor Islam has exclusive rights to evil.
Excluding Russia from this company is neither honest nor moral nor clever. Ideology does work in mysterious ways, doesn’t it?
“But Russia’s relevant wealth isn’t in the shops. It’s in the silos.”
Exactly the case. An economy 1/10 that of the U.S. but twice as many nukes. Fancy that! And Satan going to be replaced by Satan-2. ICBM with a whole bunch of very big warheads.
Mr Boot’s blusterings have been drawn to my attention by a reader of my blog.
First, he completely mistakes my point about China. It is this. If our objections to Russia were truly motivated by disgust at its repressive regime, then we would have a similar disgust at the equally or more repressive regimes of China and Saudi Arabia. We don’t. On the contrary, we crawl to them for business and refrain from criticising their despotism.
Therefore our supposed disgust is a pose, which would vanish if Russia became truly rich and powerful, and of no worth. Simple, surely?
Does Mr Boot actually believe that nuclear weapons are usable by anyone except madmen, or that Russia’s possession of them has any effect on the NATO/USA/EU push to diminish Russian power in Eastern Europe (the objective of German (and Austrian) policy for more than a century, and now of EU policy, the EU being the continuation of German Mitteleuropa by other means). Of course any threats to use them are braggadoccio, and rather pathetic demonstrations of real weakness.
I can see no evidence of this. If Russia’s nuclear weapons were a realistic military/political threat, then Moscow would not have lost control of 700,000 square miles of territory since 1989 (400,000 square miles of which have since found their way into EU control, with most of the missing area being composed of Ukraine, which was non-aligned until the violent pro-EU mob putsch there in 2014 ). This was a pivotal event, bound to draw a response from Moscow. As Zbigniew Brzezinski, one of the canniest of the old Cold Warriors, wrote back in 1997, ‘Ukraine… is a geopolitical pivot because its very existence as an independent country helps to transform Russia. Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be a Eurasian empire.’ Yet Moscow’s riposte to the incorporation of Ukraine into a politico-military alliance with the EU (in the accession to the Association Agreement which was the main aim of the putsch) was extraordinarily limited . The reincorporation of Crimea into Russia was simple opportunism and is now a fait accompli. The violent harassment and covert warfare in eastern Ukraine was an attempt to deter further action of this kind, but not to recover what was lost . Far from it. Its effect has been to strengthen Ukrainian national identity and pretty much ensure that Ukraine will take an EU rather than a Russian path, provided it remains available in the future.
Russia’s nuclear power was irrelevant in this affair. The modernisation of Russian conventional forces, which is considerable but limited, was. So was Russia’s considerable caution and realism about its abilities. Ukrainian token forces in Crimea were easily overcome by well-trained and cunningly-directed Russian forces legally in position thanks to the Sevastopol basing agreement. But the supposed Russian invasion of Ukraine, much-predicted by Ukrainian nationalist and other enthusiasts for combat, did not take place. A far more deniable, covert and limited operation did (which might be said to match the covert and deniable operations by western nations and intelligence services both on the Maidan and in the Ukrainian armed forces).
Russian conventional forces, sustained by a GDP smaller than Italy’s simply could not sustain a major war (nor as we saw, could Saddam Hussein against Kuwait. Not could the Vandals. I have no figures on Turkish GDP, but suspect things were more equal than Mr Boot suggests ) Nor could they sustain futile and mad invasions of the Baltic states, even if Vladimir Putin (who whatever he is, he is neither stupid nor rash) wanted to take such steps. The governments of two of those states have probably ensured that they will eventually fall back into the Russian sphere by their stupid treatment of their Russian citizens. Russia no doubt hates the loss of the Baltic states (Gorbachev, as I have personal reason to know, fought very violently to prevent it) but their physical location, and the eventual inevitable fading of American interest in Europe which we will see in the coming century, mean that it is most likely that they will eventually come under Russian influence again anyway. Moscow can afford to wait for that.
Mr Boot says : ‘Then comes a downright lie: Russia “isn’t interested in us”. On what basis does Hitchens make this assurance?
***PH writes: On the basis of the fact that there is no rational casus belli. We have no territorial or other conflict with Russia, at sea or on land. The whole thing reminds me of Peter Simple’s elaborate joke about the ( as it happens, non-existent) Swedish-Yugoslav war, which could never get started because the two sides were separated by so much geography they could never get to grips.
Mr Boot says: ‘Every page of every Putin newspaper spouts unadulterated hatred for the West, especially the Anglophone West. Hardly a day goes by without open threats being made, along the lines of radioactive dust.’
Talk is cheap. Much of our own press is full of similarly empty rubbish about Russia, which is less excusable because the media involved do it of their own accord.
Mr Boot then says: Russia is specifically issuing threats to Nato members we are contractually obligated to defend.’
***PH asks: Is this so? What threats are these? Can he please give me referenced quotations?
Does Hitchens think the Russians have no vested interest in reducing our defence capabilities? Are they waging electronic war against us just for fun?
***PH writes. I cannot for the life of me see why. We have, in the Thatcher-Major-Blair-Cameron-May period reduced ourselves to military and naval insignificance entirely by our own efforts.
“Mr Boot then says: Russia is specifically issuing threats to Nato members we are contractually obligated to defend.”
“***PH asks: Is this so? What threats are these? Can he please give me referenced quotations?”
1. Threats concerning the tearing-down [actually the moving to a new location] of various monuments to the fallen Soviet soldiers of WW2.
2. Cyber attacks and denial-of-service computer network intrusion directed against those Baltic nations Putin has such a beef with.
Those aren’t referenced quotations, nor do they look to me like threats. Try harder
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