Thanks for engaging Michelle. I think @Charles_Marxer gave a good answer to this question in a prior post here:
I agree with that, and to be real clear, I have not been advocating for US boots-on-the-ground in Ukraine (at this point). What I am doing is raising questions, along with countless others. There is disagreement among US military officials as to whether or not the US/NATO acted quickly enough in supplying weapons to Ukraine. Secretary of Defense Austin apparently tried to get both the US and NATO to act more quickly, to supply weapons 6 days before the invasion actually began, during the time that Putin was amassing troops on the Ukrainian border, Putin telling the world he was simply preparing to do some “military training exercises.” This is akin to what he has told Russians, that this is not an invasion or war against Ukraine, this is a “special military operation.” Russian citizens are subject to 15 year prison sentences if they refer to the Ukrainian events as ‘war.’
Of course, whether we acted quickly enough or not is a moot point now.
Putin in my view is an authoritarian who uses propaganda and fear to motivate people to do as he wants them to do. He does this within Russia with his own people, and has a record of doing it with the rest of the world, e.g. interference in US elections through propaganda on social media. His threat of use of nukes seems to me to be also using fear to motivate people/nations to do as he wants them to do–stay out of his way. Whether his threat is a bluff or a promise, I do not know.
I can view through one lens that he is essentially making a land grab as imperialists tend to do. From what I’ve read, he has his sights set on creating a land corridor to Crimea, which will involve more than just attack/invasion of Ukraine, but on other countries as well. Which is the source of my question to Ray: what then?
Ukraine is a sovereign nation that applied for NATO membership back in 2008. Membership was denied due to various factors: corruption in the country, military issues. Ukraine also agreed to give up its nuclear weapons along the way, apparently in response to the West’s request. Putin took Crimea in 2014, and the Ukrainian people have been pretty angry and revolutionary ever since–which partially accounts for their ‘fierceness’ in this fight with Putin. (And I do keep emphasizing this is Putin’s war against Ukraine; most of the Russian people themselves only know what the state-approved media allow them to hear and know, and as I say, those Russians who disagree with Putin’s invasion are subject to stiff criminal penalties if they speak out. I have watched countless videos of on-the-street interviews with Russians earlier on in this war, and clearly people opposed to what is happening are afraid to speak their minds.
Best guesses by some, including some integralists, is that Russia under Putin is developmentally amber/ethnocentric with red underbelly and a little orange economics thrown in. I myself do not know for sure, of course, but it sort of looks that way from the outside, from what media I’ve consumed. I would also add that I spent a little time working with adults from Russia, Siberia, and prior Soviet Union states who were in the U.S. on a spiritual exchange program in the early 90s. I was recruited by the Unity Church to teach them some shamanic knowledge and practices, given shamanism was forced underground during the Soviet era, and they were quite interested in retrieving their ancestral knowledge. I also worked with teens from the same area during the same period who were in the US on educational exchange programs. They spoke a variety of languages (I worked with a translator), but every one of them, maybe 50 people total, was incredibly grateful for the demise of the Soviet Union, and they were quite inspirational, with fresh joy and hope. I cannot imagine that there aren’t people in Russia now who feel the same kinds of oppression as this group voiced their relief from.
So when Charles says “take the other’s point of view seriously,” I agree with that. And as he also says, maybe if there had been talks prior to this invasion in which Putin’s sense of threat of NATO expansionism were taken more seriously, none of this would be happening. I don’t know. But I also do not believe that a country is solely its leader, and in the case of Putin, I certainly don’t believe that he is Russia. Gorbachav himself warned about Putin. As I do not believe Trump was the US, or that Biden is either, for that matter. And I think, talk among leaders aside, that we have to consider the point of view of a nation’s citizens seriously too. And yes, it is up to the people of Russia ultimately to determine their own future, using whatever developmental drivers are available to them. The people of Ukraine have made it clear their point of view–they do not want this invasion or take-over or wipe-out or whatever else it ends up being
In some ways, by providing weapons and intelligence and sanctions, the US/NATO already are in this war. I don’t see this as a bald-faced attempt to spread Western liberal values to the degree that some other Western ventures have been. I do see it in the context of conflicts between authoritarianism and democracy, which is spread across the world now, with the U.S having had its own brush with a sort of authoritarianism. If a country and its people are happy with being an authoritarian nation, that’s fine with me, but when authoritarian tactics begin to be used against other parts of the world, we’re in different territory I think. And yes, restraint is necessary. And yes, to acknowledge our ordinariness is important–we, the US, also make errors in judgment, we too gamble on events, we too have had bouts of imperialist ambitions, we, as Trump said, are “not so innocent,” etc. And yes, we share many common traits with both Russia and Ukraine, and should remember that.
And here is what I really think about war. In my deepest and wisest good heart, I know that war is insane, so insane I can hardly believe it, relate to it. So horrifying, atrocious, sorrowful, grievous, a “missing-the-mark,” a “sin.” So unspeakable, it makes me mute. From my knowledge of the history of humanity and civilization, I know it is not new, not a fresh discovery of brutal death and destruction. It is not a happenstance, but intentional, so very ordinary, normal but not sane. From my Integral perspective, I understand the war of worldviews, and the way of evolution–progression and regression. This cools the heat in my mind but does not make me aloof, disconnected, unfeeling or uncaring. It still hurts. From my knowledge of psychology, of human behavior, I see the ills of self-importance and of competition, of egoic desire for power and control. I see the flawed thinking, the cognitive distortions, the delusion, and behold the traumatized minds and souls of the individual and the masses. From my experience of Spirit, I know that death is not an end. I know there is more to come. I know there is that which was never born and never dies. I know Krishna’s conversation with Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita as truth. And yet, still, so many dead, wounded, broken, homeless.
