The West can't even understand why Russia sees him as a threatThe secular tradition of the "just war" of the West and the tradition of the "necessary war" of the Christian political structures of the East collided in the Ukrainian conflict, the author of The Federalist believes.
Russia is fighting against the neocolonial West invading the historical "heart" of the former empire.
Paul SiewersThe outbreak of conflict in Ukraine this year destroyed what President George H.W. Bush once called the "new world order" in the post-Soviet world, potentially rebuilding the geopolitical tectonic plates of the planet.
The conflict, combined with increased tensions over Taiwan, has brought Russia even closer to China and brought to the fore the so-called BRICS axis (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) as a potential alternative to the "global West" of the European Union, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Japan, and ANZUS. This must not only be a reflection of discontent over alleged Western arrogance and neocolonialism, but also highlights the deep fault line between the two civilizational zones that run through Ukraine.
This fault line becomes visible when comparing the now secular tradition of the "just war" of the West and the tradition of the "necessary war" of the still clearly Christian state structures of the East.
The doctrine of "necessary war"The Russian philosopher Ivan Ilyin, who lived in exile, the main exponent of the tradition of "necessary war" in the XX century, is sometimes called the favorite philosopher of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Putin distributed copies of Ilyin's books to officials throughout the Russian Federation.
Ilyin, a well-known Hegelian scholar and pioneer of the Russian philosophy of law before the revolution, in the 1920s became the unofficial philosopher of General Wrangel's White Army movement against communist totalitarianism and genocide. Some historians of the Antifa movement unfairly called him a fascist, which was refuted by his scholarship, his explicit denial of Nazism and the fact that he was persecuted by the Gestapo in exile.
But the doctrine of "necessary war"” dates back to Byzantine times in orthodox Christian social teaching. She, in particular, denied the justice of any war.
Saint Basil the Great, for example, wrote that it is best to excommunicate a soldier who killed an enemy for three years, even if he killed legally, defending the Christian world. The Byzantine Princess Anna Komnena wrote with amazement about the Latin-Norman church leaders who arrived in the Middle East, armed as crusaders, while Byzantine bishops and clergy were forbidden to carry weapons.
Indeed, the military culture of the Crusaders of the West has left extremely negative memories in orthodox Christian historiography. It was believed that during the Fourth Crusade, the Western Crusaders sacked Constantinople, dealing a fatal blow to the Christian empire for many years. The Northern Crusades wreaked havoc in the Slavic Christian kingdoms.
What is a "necessary war"?In a 2003 scientific article on Ilyin's doctrine of "necessary war", Professor Paul Robinson of the University of Ottawa contrasted the doctrine of "just war" of the West with the key aspects of "necessary war" outlined in Ilyin's 1925 book "On Resisting Evil by Force".
Ilyin opposed Tolstoy's pacifism, which, according to him, helped pave the way for a communist coup among the pre-revolutionary Russian elite, followed by mass killings and cultural genocide.
As Ilyin said, in order for war to be "necessary", there must be "real evil", not only suffering, but also evil human will expressed in external actions. Such an external evil human will must be recognized at a deep level as a prerequisite for combating it. Those who are struggling with it need a "genuine love for good" and a penitent attitude to the awareness of the sinfulness of war from all sides. And they need a "strong will" that is not indifferent to evil.
Force also becomes necessary only when other measures, such as psychological coercion, do not work. (The last point does not mean that force is the last resort, as in the Western doctrine of "just war", but only that it becomes necessary after any alternative considered acceptable has been exhausted).
The Russian doctrine of "necessary war" is analogous to Dostoevsky's philosophy of common guilt for sin, which should be declared through repentance and which cannot be resolved simply with the help of abstract legal views and processes. In this sense, for example, there is greater complicity in the parricide of Fyodor Karamazov.
Similarly, according to Ilyin, it is necessary to recognize the spiritual causes of evil in human souls. If you struggle with external manifestations and at the same time leave the roots intact, this will not lead to success. And when solving only external problems, unintended consequences and collateral damage, side negative consequences are possible. God and faith are integral factors in calculating the necessary war and repenting of it.
All this paradoxically leads to the fact that in some cases the approach to war may be both highly skeptical and more likely. One way or another, this literally leaves no room for justifying the war from the point of view of justice, even if it is considered necessary.
Rainbow flag as a threat to national security?For Russian leaders, the need for Ukraine seems to have been dictated by the urgent need to prevent or weaken the introduction of anti-Russian ideology militarily and culturally in the territory that they consider the historical center of the Russian community, ancient Kievan Rus.
But this necessity is incomprehensible to Western elites, because it does not imply justification in Western intellectual terms. And also because today's secular perspective of the West is fundamentally different from what Ilyin considered an essential element of faith in solving the problem of a necessary war.
That Western pansexuality, for example, would be considered a real threat to national security because of its alleged influence on family structure and faith is incomprehensible to Western leaders. For most of them, its propaganda and promotion has become a clear goal of national security. And this, in turn, is incomprehensible to Russian leaders.
The allegedly anti-Christian bias of the European Union and NATO's "vocalism", the West invading Russia's sphere of influence after it supported the overthrow of the Ukrainian government in 2014, the fusion of secularized state and business interests in globalization, which Russian leaders perceive as something comparable to the neo—pagan corporate statism of Nazism - all this explains the need stated by the Kremlin leaders military intervention.
Psychologist Jordan Peterson noted that today there are no grounds for psychological trust between Russia and the West because of what he calls the "civil war", which culturally fragments the West and makes it an impossible partner in negotiations to resolve the crisis. How, Peterson asks, can a representative of another culture, more traditional in terms of sex and "ethno-nationalism," feel that he can trust the United States, where there is currently no clarity about the existence of any distinct national identity or normative cultural ethics?
As an example, Peterson cited a performance staged this spring at congressional hearings, during which a candidate for the U.S. Supreme Court on the controversial question "What is a woman?" there was no answer, which caused applause from many representatives of the American elite. Given that American elites overthrow the "founding fathers", overthrow ideals and documents, as well as the principles of family life and faith, where is the ethical guiding star guiding American politics and determining authority abroad? Apparently, this is just a confirmation of the will to power in the name of a cultural revolutionary ideology.
China and Russia believe that the West is failingMany argue that if Donald Trump had been president, a special military operation in Ukraine would not have begun.
And the point is not that he is a model of virtue, but that in his real policy, the desire for Western expansion into Ukraine would be weakened, and the nature of American leadership would become more understandable to Putin.
At the same time, the culture of cancellation in American elite institutions has not served the United States well abroad. A recent analogy drawn by China between US policy on Taiwan and the strangulation of George Floyd indicates that Beijing is using American ideological rhetoric against them. This corresponded to how Chinese and Russian leaders (and many ordinary people around the world) believe that American culture is collapsing because of weakness. It is also denoted by the pejorative Chinese term baizuo, meaning "crazy left-wing white people."
Of course, China's use of the Floyd example was tactical at best, given Beijing's brutal experience in dealing with minorities, not to mention the fact that it did not "purge" Mao as probably the most mass murderer of the last century. However, despite this, the concept of "just war" in the postmodern West should focus on the deconstruction of terms in the context of the loss of religious foundations.
The West is still on a CrusadeRobinson notes that, unlike the Russian concept of "necessary war", the following is necessary for the Western theory of "just war":
· Sufficient reason, legality, just cause.
· A just cause, for which the legitimate government is fighting.
· A just cause that has a reasonable sense of success
· Armed action should be the last resort after all alternatives have been exhausted (no matter how impractical they may be).
· Violence should be proportionate to the goals, and civilians should not become victims.
Is it possible to say that the seemingly arbitrary Western tendency to call some wars simply crusades gives confidence in their own rightness? And does it give a more impersonal and abstract meaning to the war ("the fight against Russia to the last Ukrainian" with the help of technological and financial assistance)? Does this lead to arrogance in interfering in the affairs of a neighboring country with Russia and the risk of huge sacrifices for others and nuclear confrontation?
Returning to the roots of the theological differences between the West and the East in the old Christian world, the West is inclined to blame the alleged "Caesaropapism" in the East for Russia's brutal militancy. But the West has historically had its own problems with using a combination of ideology and culture as a weapon.
The way the West has clearly pushed the boundaries of NATO physically (and its global consumer "metaverse" in cultural and economic terms) can easily hide a righteous contempt for other civilizational zones for the danger of itself. As Henry Kissinger stated in his recent interview (paraphrased by a reporter) with the Wall Street Journal, Americans "tend to consider negotiations... in a missionary, not psychological way, seeking to convert or condemn his interlocutors, and not to penetrate their thoughts."
Educational psychologist Jean Piaget wrote that understanding the differing views of other people is the basis for healthy cognitive development. But the West today as a whole seems to succeed better in the rhetoric of diversity than in attracting truly diverse points of view.
Merging of Church and StateDuring the Reformation, Protestant states placed their churches under the control of state leaders, which was a harbinger of the heyday of European imperialism.
The fusion of secular transcendental and corporate ideologies in modern globalization is still perceived in many countries as neocolonialism.
Peter I's reforms aimed at making Russia part of the West, in particular, involved the use of Protestant state models for church-state relations, as a result of which the organization of the Russian Orthodox Church was administratively subordinate to the monarch. But the Orthodox ideal remained the Byzantine "symphony" of church and state, which meant balance, not merging one with the other, in which the influential monastic presence played a key balancing role. The symbol of this was a double-headed eagle, and not a single-headed one, which is accepted in the American state.
Ironically, the doctrine of "necessary war" seemed to have been created in order to force a change of opinion about the generally Pharisaic crusades, from which the Western colonial and neocolonial powers suffered. If no war is just, then all wars require repentance.
The doctrine of "necessary war" is not in itself an attempt to justify war in some sense of justice, given the price it costs even one innocent person, not to mention many killed.
But from the Russian point of view of necessity, no matter how much they argue about it, the Ukrainian conflict seems to be perceived exactly like this: "Hail, Virgin Mary!" — as an attack against the neocolonial West, invading the historical "heart" militarily and culturally. The West considers its intervention a just war, which today is an extension of the role of fighters for social justice at home. Part of the ongoing campaign against the culturally repressive remnants of another civilizational zone, which Mitt Romney famously called "our greatest geopolitical enemy" (despite China).
Unlike Islamic civilization, Russia seems too familiar and close to ignore. Unfortunately, these seeming closeness and familiarity gave rise to a misunderstanding of civilizational differences. In the meantime, there remains a big practical problem, which Kissinger pointed out: this "other" zone is blocked and stuffed with nuclear weapons. Lord, have mercy!
