Reflections on a first year in retirement - from idiocy to madness
We live in a world where madness is normalised. I’m not allowing this to drive me crazy.
As I write this in 2022, on my 69th birthday, several thoughts go through my mind. First is a sense of achievement at being only the second man on my father’s side to reach this milestone. Human health has improved exponentially over that last millennium. How much time we have in front of us is a different question. And as I’m as hopeless at predictions as the next person I’ll simply choose to live one day at a time.
Second, I reflect on what the world looked like in 1962-63. It was a time when we seemed on the brink of a global nuclear conflict. Our government broadcast infomercials telling us what to do if we heard air raid warnings. Our parents, who remembered WWII and served in the army and WAAF were genuinely concerned. Since that time we’ve enjoyed relative peace in our land, despite the numerous conflicts in which the U.K. has been directly or indirectly involved elsewhere in the world. Today, that peace looks perilously fragile though our children and grandchildren have no knowledge of war on our doorstep.
Third, I am conflicted about my interest in model armour building. On the one hand it seems vaguely inappropriate to derive pleasure from building models of killing machines. On the other hand, building those vehicles has amp’d my lifelong interest in history, which is always punctuated by man’s proclivity to wage war.
Regular readers know I build (mostly) tanks from the WWI and WWII eras. I’ve only built one Vietnam era tank and have little to no interest in modern examples. Right now I have a small handful of WWII panzers in various stages of paint and am building larger scale, more detailed German Stug III and Panzer IV examples.
A big part of modelling surrounds their history, context and technology advances. There are thousands of books and copious internet resources available. Most academics agree that economics play a huge part in determining who wins these conflicts.
As I’ve pondered what made some tanks better than others I learned (among other things) that materials available to Germany hobbled armour production. It meant that the otherwise feared Tiger was made in relatively small numbers that couldn’t compete with the mass production capability that Russia deployed in its production of T-34s and KV series tanks and tank destroyers. It also meant that adapting designs to Russian conditions was difficult. In the latter stages of WWII, chronic material shortages led to additional compromises, effectively reducing armour protection. As if those factors weren’t bad enough, a lack of spare parts and desperate fuel shortages made any hope of a German land war victory little more than a fantasy. Even so, the German leadership maniacally committed its people to total war, a policy that directly contributed to a massive loss of life as they pursued an already lost war.
On the Russian side, the leadership didn’t care about loss of life and considered its tanks as disposable as a hand grenade. That seems strange to non-Russians but has to be seen in the context of a country ruled by fear and the paranoia of a leadership steeped in a near thousand years of totalitarianism. Not for nothing does the phrase Fortress Russia stand for something deep in the Russian psyche.
And all of that needs adding to the infamous Russian Rasputitsa conditions that stymied both Napoleon and Nazi Germany in their vain glorious attempts to conquer Russia.
Fast forward to today and the apparent reported surprise at the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This has been brewing for many years yet it seems our collective non-Russian leadership has quietly ignored the possibility of what, when viewed through a certain historical lens, looks like the repeat of a history we have seen before. And not for the first time. It always ends badly.
Julius Caesar was doing so well up to the point when he declared himself Deo Invicto and dictator for life. Napoleon thought himself invincible until he came up against the Bear’s winter. The British thought the sun always shone on its empire until the Boers put up the kind of resistance that led to both the novel creation of concentration camps by the Brits and the development of guerilla warfare by the Boers.
So while history rarely repeats itself precisely, it has a nasty habit of echoing loudly, especially when leaders fail to learn from the past. This applies to both sides in conflict. As I hear the chest thumping of those imposing economic sanctions against Russia and its oligarchs I can’t help feeling that the non-Russians who express disgust in these terms are as delusional as Chamberlain was in 1938.
More optimistic colleagues bring up the prospect of an Arab Spring in Russia as the long term way out. That’s equally delusional in my view, largely because the thousand year history of that country suggests a population that doesn’t know there is another way. What’s more, Putin has demonstrated time and again that he has no fear of consequences for otherwise terrible actions.
In my mind there are two alternatives. The first comes from within as it did for Caesar. If, as seems likely, the Russian invasion gets bogged down, or its troops get caught up in a nasty city war, then those closest to Putin could push him out of the way rather than risk escalation to a state of guaranteed global annihilation. We cannot know what, if any, guardrails exist but we have to be hopeful that despite his apparent willingness to throw conscripts into a fight, there are level heads who see the dangers.
The second alternative is much grimmer. Despite all the talk of there being little or no prospect of total war, non-Russians would be stupid to believe that Putin wouldn’t hit the big red button. In 2015, the FT reported:
By shifting the military theatre from Ukraine to Syria – however big a gamble Russia’s military intervention there may be – Mr Putin seemed to feel he had seized the initiative. His acid wit and self-assurance were back.
Explaining his decision to take on Isis, in a classic Putin turn of phrase the Russian president said he had learned on the streets of his home town of Leningrad 50 years ago that “when a fight is inevitable, you have to hit first”.
Those last words, when combined with his most recent reported remarks should send a chill down everyone’s spine if for no other reason than Putin’s apparent descent into a dangerous paranoia.
In common with Hitler during the latter stages of WWII, he has withdrawn from public life, reserving his appearances for carefully controlled statements. Any media that doesn’t support his ‘special military action’ has been all but snuffed out. His statements appear borderline irrational and far removed from the careful man we saw 20 years ago.
On the non-Russian side, I hear military leaders and those with military pasts talking up conflict as the only way to deal with what they believe to be a deranged madman.
But overarching all of this, I worry that for too long, the non-Russian world has failed to understand Russian leadership fears and their need for stability. Instead, we have seen a period when the growth of what Russia believes are hostile forces in the shape of NATO. It seems that no amount of appeasement satisfies its leadership today. At the same time I see what worries the ordinary Russian and wonder the extent to which it’s leadership might be detached from internal reality. So where to next?
Like anyone else looking at the relentless stream of news, I view the current situation as horribly confusing and complex. I can’t see how bellicose language does anything to help. But then with an eye on history, I fear for the future and wonder what I’ll be writing in a year’s time.
I only hope that what seems like a descent from idiocy to madness doesn’t become the new normal. I, for one, am not going to allow it to pervert my thinking.
A sobering read Den