A moving story by the Financial Times Berlin Bureau Chief, Guy Chazan, allows us to see a hidden kind of individual tragedies resulting from Putin’s invasion of Ukraine: its cost to ordinary Russians (“A message from Moscow: ‘It’s like I’m in a nightmare. And I can’t wake up,’” March 11, 2022):
A week earlier, Russia had invaded Ukraine, unleashing the largest military assault on a European country since the second world war. The west responded with a fusillade of sanctions to isolate Russia and cripple its economy. Lena and her friends, a band of liberal intellectuals, found their lives turned upside down. …
“I grew up in the Soviet Union and only ever wanted to live a normal life—to work . . . travel, drink delicious wine,” Lena wrote, in the 150-word message, bashed out on Facebook. “God knows, these weren’t exactly wild aspirations. But even they have now been taken from me . . . I watch, rigid with fear and shame, as my world collapses and rockets land on Kyiv . . . Where did we go wrong? Is it our fault? I just don’t know.” …
She travelled widely, expanding her world, which now seems to be narrowing again to a vanishing point. “It’s pure Orwell,” she wrote.
The journalist also writes about another Russian friend of his, Dima, who fled to Western Europe but whose Moscow business is now likely to go bankrupt:
“I’ve lost everything and have to start my life here from scratch,” he wrote to me. Dima says he’s in favour of sanctions and is prepared to pay a personal price to see Putin punished. But he adds that they’re a double-edged sword, causing the most hurt for the 20 per cent of Russians who were always against Putin.
One lesson is indeed that economic sanctions—Western governments prohibiting their own citizens from trading, directly or indirectly, with Russians—are a double-edge sword.
A second lesson, lies in Lena’s question, “Where did we go wrong? Is it our fault?” Assigning any fault or blame to powerless ordinary individuals is not warranted, but we can answer the question of where “we” went wrong. “We,” in both Russia and the West, went wrong in not taking seriously enough the danger of unlimited political power as it stands in Russia and as it has been growing in the West for more than a century. Such a classical-liberal and individualist approach helps us focus on individuals behind the collectives such as “Russia” or “the West.”
The individualist approach may also help answer the question: Isn’t the threat of admitting Ukraine in NATO or establishing closer relations between Ukraine and the West the main cause of Putin’s invasion? University of Chicago political scientist John Mearsheimer defends this argument in The Economist. It is a strange thesis that organizing the defense of a group of individuals can be viewed as an aggressive activity. It makes some sense in a world paved with powerful Leviathans or Leviathans-to-be—powerful enough, for example, to tightly control with whom their subjects exchange and how they spend their money. If the free world was populated by humble classical-liberal states, even assuming they enter into military alliances, defensive activities could not so easily be viewed as aggressions.
We have to somehow escape the logic of state power and war, but it is not easy to go there from here.
READER COMMENTS
steve
Mar 14 2022 at 3:11pm
“Isn’t the threat of admitting Ukraine in NATO or establishing closer relations between Ukraine and the West the main cause of Putin’s invasion?”
Ukraine cant join NATO. it doesnt meet the qualifications. The includes the fact that it has an internal low grade civil war in its east, instigated by Russia. This has much more to do with economics and Putin;s personal ambitions. Ukraine was supposed to join the Eu power grid this year. It has been looking for closer economic ties to the EU noting that those countries having left the Russian economic sphere have had much better economic performance. For Putin, his popularity had slipped. Russian per capita GDP had slipped. He relies upon high popularity ratings so that he can maintain his one person autocratic rule. He needed to keep Ukraine as an economic vassal and he has been playing to the religious faction (Orthodox) in Russia. That should sound familiar.
” where “we” went wrong. ”
We? I am pretty sure Russia was the country invading Ukraine. Russia is killing lots of innocents, no one else now. Russia and guys like Mearsheimer want us to forget that that Ukraine is also a country of individuals and they are the ones being killed. They insist that Ukraine has no sovereignty and no individual rights. They should accede to whatever Russia wants because Ukraine might join NATO. But Ukraine knows it cant join NATO. We do too and so does Russia.
Steve
Pierre Lemieux
Mar 15 2022 at 11:00am
Steve: RE: your last paragraph. My point is that a state that is not effectively constrained (a Leviathan-to-be, at best) like current Western states are is much more dangerous as a neighbor than a strictly limited state. “Our” own states are not exactly smiling sheep, even for their own subjects. My Econlib review of Bertrand de Jouvenel’s On Power contains more explanations.
E. Harding
Mar 14 2022 at 4:05pm
“It is a strange thesis that organizing the defense of a group of individuals can be viewed as an aggressive activity.”
This is how literally every protection racket works. Governments are right to crack down on them.
Pierre Lemieux
Mar 15 2022 at 11:28am
E.: You raise a good question but your argument is not valid. One simple way to see that is to ask yourself what is the difference between a mafia’a protection racket and a government’s protection racket. If you think, like Lysander Spooner, that there is no difference (see his The Constitution of No Authority), then your argument (last paragraph) is contradictory. If you do not think so, that is, if you think that Western states are somehow legitimate (at least in some of their activities), then NATO or other such defense treatise is not necessarily a protection racket.
If what you are mean to say is that the question of the legitimacy of the state underlies all those issues, you are right. But even if we argued that Western states are only slightly less illegitimate than the Putin autocracy, we could still argue that a defense alliance among the former to protect their subjects against Gengis Khan is legitimate (just like it is legitimate for an illegitimate tyrant to forbid murders, at least against its own agents). On some of these issues, see Michael Huemer.
Thomas Strenge
Mar 14 2022 at 4:38pm
I oppose Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and salute the heroism of the Ukrainian defenders. That said, the US carries blame in starting this war. We know that since the days of the early czars, Russian strategic thought has sought to push potential aggressors away as far as possible due to the lack of natural defensive borders. NATO is not viewed as defensive when you have US National Guard training Ukrainian troops in Ukraine, when DoD appears to fund bio weapons labs, and when the VP’s son has personal business of a dubious nature in Ukraine. We should have pushed for Ukraine to become Switzerland, not NATO’s eastern flank. But there are US foreign policy analysts cheering the mutual killing in Ukraine, because Russia is declining demographically and this will only accelerate the trend. Russia is terrible, but we ain’t the good guys for goading them.
Craig
Mar 14 2022 at 4:57pm
“NATO is not viewed as defensive when you have US National Guard training Ukrainian troops in Ukraine, when DoD appears to fund bio weapons labs, and when the VP’s son has personal business of a dubious nature in Ukraine. We should have pushed for Ukraine to become Switzerland, not NATO’s eastern flank”
Fair enough but doesn’t anybody find it amazing that as the Russians withdrew from the Elbe the former buffer drifted into NATO?
Could you even imagine Quebec joining the Warsaw Pact?
See? There’s a kind’ve a rub there. You can blame NATO expansionism, but the Russians also need to look themselves in the mirror that they have historically acted in a way where their neighbors would want to join NATO to begin with.
Thomas Strenge
Mar 14 2022 at 9:21pm
Of course, the Russians can be vicious. I believe they killed my Mom’s parents and one of my Father’s uncles. That said, I think the way we treated Russia after 1991 is reminiscent of the way France treated Germany after 1919. Russia had legitimate grievances against Ukraine, such as heavy taxes leading to the construction of Nordstream Two, or the status of Crimea, a traditional Russian territory. Instead, we resolved nothing and just poked the bear. Now they are resolving legitimate issues in illegitimate ways.
Pierre Lemieux
Mar 15 2022 at 10:46am
Thomas: You write: “Russia had legitimate grievances against Ukraine.” Do you mean that all Russians had legitimate grievances against all Ukrainians? Or do you mean that some past rulers of the Russian state had some legitimate grievances against the rulers of some past rulers of the Ukrainian state? Looking at these issues in an individualist way reveals some issues otherwise opaque.
Thomas Strenge
Mar 18 2022 at 11:37pm
Nordstream 2 is a great example of the legitimate grievances the Russians have vis-a-vis Ukraine. Nordstream 2 does not increase the amount of nat gas going from Russia to Germany. It does cut out the Ukrainian middleman who takes a big cut. I’m not saying that this justifies an invasion, but US opposition here has been odd. Why oppose Germany getting cheaper gas and Russia keeping more of their money?
Jose Pablo
Mar 14 2022 at 10:11pm
Who would you prefer to be: poor Lena separated from her delicious wine or the 6 years old girl that died from dehydration in Mariupol?
https://www.reuters.com/world/ukraine-president-says-child-died-dehydration-besieged-mariupol-2022-03-08/
The suffering of the innocent liberal intellectuals living in Moscow should be for them a price worth to pay if it serves to save the lives of many innocent people in Ukraine. Particularly if they are liberal and intellectual. Afterall, you don’t die of not drinking wine (on the other hand if you don’t have water …)
Unfortunately, once Putin decided the invasion of Ukraine the goal shifted from “avoiding the suffering of innocent people” to “minimizing the suffering of innocent people”.
If the measures taken minimize the suffering (and certainly a killing is much more “suffering” that temporarily lacking access to delicious wine) they make total sense.
Unfortunately, avoiding the suffering of innocent people was taken out of the table by Putin aggression.
Pierre Lemieux
Mar 15 2022 at 10:58am
Pablo: The sort of intuitive accounting of sufferings that you are suggesting has some moral value (according to your opinion and mine) but it is of limited value and usefulness. Otherwise, you and I would never drink wine as the price of a case of wine can save many lives in very poor countries. Indeed, we would give all our incomes to the poorest people in the world until we are just above their level (or perhaps at their exact level).
Jose Pablo
Mar 15 2022 at 11:34am
As you are well aware, Pierre, I totally agree with the “impossibility” of this “accounting” (Arrow, De Jasay and yourself did, indeed, a great job).
And yet when we are talking about atrocities like the ones we are witnessing in Ukraine and the possibility (even if slight) of the total destruction of the planet, somehow the “accounting” is easier to make.
Whether we like it or not, we live in societies where somebody is doing this accounting for us. Big time. And even worse, since 2008 (at least), “bigger time” by the day.
The very existence of tyrannic states is one of the driving forces behind this tendency to more “accounting the Leviathan way”.
Following this reasoning the first step down the path of individual liberty is getting rid of the tyrannic states. Ukraine wonderfully illustrate this necessity and what a terrible mistake it was reinforcing them by facilitating their economic integration with the west. We were hoping for they to move to more democratic regimes. Our forecasting capacities definitely need to be improved!!
I am afraid that if we want a “this kind of accounting free” world tomorrow, we need to accept the “not so bad” accounting (granted, still an “accounting”) I was referring to in my comment.
Pierre Lemieux
Mar 16 2022 at 11:01am
Jose: Here is, I think, an alternative and more fruitful, path. The fact that a scientific-economic weighing of costs and benefits cannot be done does not mean that moral value judgements cannot be made. On the contrary, the latter are necessary because the former is impossible. (This is a conclusion of traditional welfare economics.) This opens a window for moral weighing. The use of violence in self-defense against violence is one instance of that. Saying that such an activity must be based on moral values is the same as saying it must be based on moral rules or principles. (You see Buchanan’s influence there? There is also a Hayekian influence.) This doesn’t however, as long as one’s values are classical-liberal or libertarian, allow for the intentional punishment of innocent individuals for the evils committed by their tyrants. At the very least, collateral harm to innocent shields (on that, see Nozick’s Anarchy, State and Utopia) must be minimized.
Jose Pablo
Mar 15 2022 at 10:18am
“We have to somehow escape the logic of state power and war, but it is not easy to go there from here.”
We certainly have to. After all, the “first attempt to secure individual liberty by constitutions has evidently failed”. We certainly need to try again and better.
The problem is not only that it is not easy to go there from here. It is impossible to arrive “there” on time to save the Ukrainian people being killed now.
The other lesson we have learned here is that we cannot go “there” walking along governments like the ones of China and Russia. The first step getting “there”” (truly securing “individual liberty”) is to get rid of undemocratic governments. They are a threat that feeds our own Leviathans. Even the most liberal Ukrainian would be happy now of having had a bigger and more powerful “Leviathan” before Russian invasion.
Cutting the countries governed by these unacceptable regimes from the “economic western world” (banning any trading with them) would have a temporarily (I hope) negative impact on individual liberties and sure would punish some innocent people. But it is the most reasonable way of moving ahead. Far better than waging a nuclear war against tyrants or accepting their impositions.
We have tried to incorporate the tyrants into our “not totally free but much better” western world. The try has been a total failure and has strengthened the undesirable.
Let’s put them now behind an iron curtain and forget that their exist. They will die of starvation within their own untenable regimes. The individuals living on those states will fly out of them by the millions (some of them would be killed at the borders by their own government). The western world should receive them with open arms.
We have seen this happening before. It will happen again. It is the best way ahead to get “there”. Otherwise, as you correctly notice, the “very bad Leviathans” will keep pushing the “less bad Leviathans” down the wrong path.
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