None of the recent military musical-tank games in locations spanning from Ukraine, into southern Russia and over to Byelorussia have happened as expected, either for the furious coup planners or the surprised leaders of these three eastern European nations, two of which had a great deal to lose.
Folks were going to die, and some did, in the air and on the ground, but little on the surface of these events has changed. Yet. In some historic native American cultures, the pinnacle of a warrior’s achievement was to die in battle, simply because it was easy to do and, they hoped, his successors would mention his name with awe.
In more militant modern Islamic cohorts, the same is true. Beautiful houris (women) awaited the courageous assassins of the Middle East in Muslim heaven, and the more they killed on the way there, so much the better. True also for history’s much-maligned northern European Vikings, and……..etc.
Most established cultures from very ancient times – read – Japanese, Spartans, Scythians, Mundugamor jungle tribes and all around this small globe have glorified war as the ultimate test and achievement of a culture’s strength and dominance.
Women, too, have been present on the battlefields of recorded and pre-recorded history, witness the awesome Amazons of legend who were said to slice off their left breasts to improve their archers’ aim. One just did not mess with these ladies, nor with a notorious, ancient Iceni noblewoman called Boudicaa (spelling varies), part of a British royal house in Roman Britain, who could drive a war chariot as well as any man, and inspire her obstreperous tribesmen to put Londinium to fire and sword. She died in battle, of course.
There is little of value in art or statecraft which does not require great effort, and often greater risk. Such risk was undertaken by Yevgeny Prigozhin recently, as he drove north with his small army toward Moscow in a towering rage to force Vladimir Putin of Russia to sack his military command staff for incompetency. Seldom has the camaraderie of hunting buddies been more evident, however. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu is still on the job, but the Tartar-born General Gerasimov has gone to parts unknown. Dictators – Vladimir Putin of Russia included – do not like change, fear it in fact, unless they decree it.
And Prigozhin might well have succeeded, but not yet: a close look at his cheering supporters on the open (unopposed!) road to Moscow revealed them to be uniformly young, and very. Twenty-somethings always have a better way to do it; the youth of most cultures do not fear change, but welcome it. Most of the Russian Bolsheviki of a century past were well under fifty years old. Somewhere north of the Ukraine border, and perilously near Moscow’s Kremlin, “Putin’s Chef” came to his wits and put in a call, which Putin declined, also furious that his rule was challenged.
Who talked to who, and when, matters little. The Byelorussian dictator Lukashenko, most unlikely of peacemakers, brokered a compromise which both Putin and Prigozhin abhorred, but which left some but not much dignity for Putin and escape from assassination by his challenger, now set up in a windowless hotel room in Minsk and thinking how to rebuild his mercenary army.
Did one notice that all three of these sterling characters are hideous killers, taking pleasure in offing dissenters with a one-way plunge from skyscrapers, ordering their uniformed goons to shoot little children in the head, physically emasculating captured enemies, bashing old ladies with sledgehammers and smashing a theatre into dust with 300 terrified refugees inside? Putin himself is often more subtle: one swipe from a poison handkerchief and “Hee, hee! You’re toast!”
Lukashenko, no fool, knows his regime depends upon Putin and is locked into a consummate ballet of priorities, always landing on whatever side his mentor prefers. Byelorussia is a client state to Russia now; Russia is, because of Putin’s mis-machinations, a client state to China. And the Chinese dictators just wish they’d all settle down and buy electronics from Beijing.
There is a flaw in Putin’s planning. After manipulating Xi Jinping into declaring their partnership “without limits”, he committed the cardinal sin of war: he surprised his “boss”, who does not like it, or him very much, today. This saga is in process; China of course, governed by cooler heads, will emerge on top. Vladimir Putin will slither into hiding at a vast underground bunker below his dacha, until, like Hitler, his hour is up.
Prigozhin, like many mercenary warlords, will mine Africa for diamonds, gold, and money paid to him by sub-Saharan dictators who make even him seem peaceful. Children are dying in Africa from starvation. They are dying in Ukraine at shopping malls, from missiles – every day a few, or a few dozen, more small bodies in the dust. Little babies – who might have grown up to make the world better – no longer breathe beneath the horrors of war, and the world weeps in fury at the limitless evil mankind may do. God is watching. We are waiting; no more deaths, please, until they are our own, and Earth is left to the coming generation, to do it better. Please.
Linda Berry is a Northsider.
