The Problem and the Solution Are Both on Display
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…” Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities.
In this Ukraine-Putin crisis, we can see both the ugly consequences of civilization’s long-running Anarchy in the system in which societies interact, and the world’s moving toward the kind of Order that we will need to achieve to prevent human civilization from destroying itself.
The Bad and the Ugly
Civilization’s most fundamental problem comes into focus.
In a piece here a couple of months ago (“What Rules This World?”), I showed that
- the emergence of Civilization necessarily meant a plunge into Anarchy, and
- that Anarchy gave “the Spirit of the Gangster” a huge and destructive role in shaping the societies of the civilized world.
It was inevitable that Civilization – defined as “those societies developed by a creature that has extricated itself from the niche in which it evolved biologically by inventing its own way of life”– would emerge outside of any order.
- No natural order—that’s what the “extrication” means.
- But no human-designed order either, because civilization inevitably emerges in fragmented fashion – clusters of little civilizing societies having to interact with each other but having way too little interconnection among them to be able to make any collective decisions that would keep an aggressor in check.
So civilization inevitably gets disproportionately shaped by those willing and able to sacrifice all to gain power. The Warlords. The thugs.
Which is why I said, “The ugliness we see in human history is not human nature writ large.”
That problem has persisted. Because power remains inadequately controlled -- thousands of years after the tyrants that cruelly ruled the empires of the ancient world -- the likes of Stalin and Hitler and Saddam still have a disproportionate impact on the human world.
And what we see today is one murderous gangster – Vladimir Putin – compelling the whole of human civilization to contend with his willingness to build an empire by force, willing to terrorize millions and kill thousands of innocent and vulnerable human beings to slake his thirst for power.
The ancient problem persists: a world in which intersocietal Anarchy allows “the strong to do what they can and compels the weak to suffer what they must.”
Indeed the danger from “the Spirit of the Gangster” has in this crisis reached an ultimate level: with Putin in command of a massive nuclear arsenal, this possibly deranged thug has the capability to bring the human story to a destructive end.
The Good
But this same crisis also reveals a strengthening of the positive side of civilization’s challenge-- i.e. the challenge to create the kind of intersocietal order that can overcome Anarchy’s terrible “war of all against all.”
It was the fragmentation of civilization that made that “war of all against all” unstoppable. But the world has responded to Putin’s gangsterism with an unprecedented coherence.
Ancient Rome built its empire by picking off its neighbors one by one. Each of those neighbors, in that fragmented world, regarded the plight of its neighbors as no concern of theirs – until the Roman power arrived at their door.
But American leadership combined with European memories to lead much of the world community to mount a swift, powerful, and coordinated global response to Putin’s aggression. The international order was too incomplete to prevent the crisis, but the world was tied together enough that it is highly likely it will make the Spirit of the Gangster fail in its ambition.
Many nations have agreed to arm the Ukrainian nation – the victims of this thug – to hold off the aggressor. Ukraine is not, like Rome’s neighbors, left on its own to deal with its power-hungry empire-building neighbor.
The increasingly dense interweaving of the world’s economic system also strengthened the capabilities of the world community to defeat the Russian gangster’s gambit. The fact of economic interdependence made possible the imposition by a multi-national coalition of the most profound sanctions to drive the aggressor’s economy into a depression. (Even the habitually neutral Swiss joined in.)
(Nothing like that would have been possible with the more isolated economies of the various ancient empires.)
Eventually, we will need an intersocietal order that makes inviolable the norms against aggression that Putin has violated. Although we remain far from that achievement, the world’s powerful response to Putin’s violation strengthens those norms.
In fact, the ultimate outcome of this crisis, in terms of the overall trajectory of human history, looks likely to shift the battle between Good and Evil in a favorable direction. That expectation rests on the probability that Putin will emerge a loser and a failure, as well as a war criminal.
So if we survive the threat from this nuke-brandishing Thug, the Spirit of the Gangster – the side of Evil – will be discredited and weakened, its sheer ugliness fully exposed.
And meanwhile, having achieved that outcome, the “international community” – having come together to prevent Evil from being rewarded -- will be victorious and celebrated.
The Good – in this case the forces working toward a better intersocietal order -- will be fortified, as humankind works toward a future intersocietal order that assures that nothing like this – a thug with veto power over human survival – can ever happen again.