I once came across a comparison (in the Economist, though that is not important) which might at first blush seem obvious, but the essence of it is something we often tend to forget.A great many of our attitudes are large sub-conscious: we take so much for granted that we rarely question what to use seems beyond question. The comparison in the Economist was made in a piece about the – rather swift – demise of the Soviet Union.
If like me you had grown up in the 1950s (my first decade), the 1960s and the 1970s, the notion of the United States as ‘the leader of the free world’ (as ridiculous a claim as that the Rolling Stones are ‘the world’s best rock band’) pitted against the essentially evil Soviet bloc in ‘the Cold War’ was a mainstay of our lives.
Because both sides had a huge arsenal of nuclear weapons and because both were intimately involved in proxy wars around the world, there was the constant fear that a wrong move by either could lead to ‘global destruction’.
More to the point that particular geo-political fact of life seemed to be a part of all our futures for infinity and beyond. This inability to conceive of any other arrangement was summed up by the comparison made in the Economist.
Imagine, it said, that you lived at the bottom of a very large soup bowl with very high sides. You cannot see over the top and into the world beyond and if you have been living there for a very long time, you cannot even begin to think what life might be like outside the soup bowl.
Many had lived with the reality of the ‘evil’ USSR for so long that they couldn’t conceive of a world in which there no longer was a powerful USSR. Then, it seems almost over night, there wasn’t.
The point of this entry is not to discuss what led to the demise of the Soviet bloc, but to record the surprise of all those living in that deep, high-sided soup bowl that there is an end to everything. That is a comfort to all those suffering when times are bad, but in good times a reminder to all of us not to take the east, the prosperity for granted.
That, too, might seem obvious, but the trouble is we do: we have very short memories. Fourteen years ago (at the time of writing), the world’s banking system was in crisis (though ‘the West’ being rather self-important might not necessarily constitute all of ‘the world’, and I don’t know how the banking crisis affected countries in, say South America). And it was serious.
Essentially, because of the prevalence of bad debts incurred by some banks and other financial institutions, no one felt able to ‘trust’ anyone else. The financial system froze up, banking business came to an abrupt halt and there was a very real danger of many national economies simply collapsing in on themselves.
As it happens swift action — action which was both brave and potentially very dangerous — managed to avert the worst and what might have been long-term disaster was averted. (The ‘dangers’ of the measures taken include what was euphemistically called ‘quantitive easing’ which — I’m more then willing to be corrected — in practice consisted of what amounted to printing money.
And in the long term such a practice devalues the money we have and cause inflation. However, it doesn’t seem to have done so at the time.
I don’t want to come across as some poundshop cassandra, however. I am not suggesting that ‘we are all doomed’ (©Pte Frazer), but events in the past 30 months, mainly the global covid-19 pandemic and, more recently the bizarre decision by Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, have upset the apple cart in a very grand way. Neither event might have been foreseen and both, in different ways, have led to a leap in inflation in the West.
Most European economies seem to have rebounded from the damage created by ‘covid lockdowns’ surprisingly quickly. But it would is wiser to be less sanguine about the war in Ukraine (which, by the way, I ‘predicted’ would not happen. Shows what I know.
I insisted that the build-up of Russian troops on the northern and eastern borders of Ukraine were just a ham-fisted ‘show of strength’ by Putin. I was wrong, sadly). The conventional wisdom seems to be that Putin is physically and possibly mentally ill and is no longer acting rationally. Mind given that our various newspaper ‘commentators’ are obliged to trot out an opinion at least once a day, all week, it is difficult to know just how seriously we should take ‘conventional wisdom’.
My view is that the intelligence services of the countries making up ‘the West’ which are supporting Ukraine will keep well to themselves what they discover in this way and that and what their analysts forecast simply because it is by far wisest for the ‘the enemy’ (i.e. Putin and Russia) not to know what we know or think we know.
With that in mind, there will be no chance of MI6 and their foreign mates to call a daily Press conference to keep the ‘commentators’ up-to-date. And although said ‘commentators’ might speak of — boast about would be a better description — ‘their sources in the security services’, neither they nor we, their readers, will or can know whether they aren’t being fed a lot of hooey by ‘their sources’, for whatever reason.
I stress: if you cannot know whether what you are being told is ‘the truth’ or just a load old bollocks, it’s best to assume it is complete cobblers.
By all accounts — Russia and its armed forces are making complete tits of themselves in Ukraine, and the persistent fear of ‘the mighty Russian bear’ has been shown to be little more than a nursery nightmare. But what is not a groundless fear is that Putin is able and just might use nuclear weapons.
In view of the underlying philosophy of ‘mutually assured destruction’ which in demotic language boils down to ‘you might be able to fuck us, but we will fuck you in retaliation, so you will gain nothing’, we — the West — hope
that Putin, irrational as his decision to invade might now seem, is still not irrational enough to launch his nuclear weapons. But: who bloody knows?
I like to think — that is ‘I’ who confidently predicted that massing more than 100,000 troops on the borders of Ukraine was just a macho ‘show of strength’ — that there is a sufficient number of saner, more rational Russians in the Kremlin who are thinking ‘enough is enough, this bloody loon is damaging our country for no reason at all’.
Certainly, there are a great many nutters and fanatics about, in Northern Ireland, in ISIS, in the US bible belt, among the ultra-orthodox Jews in Israel (who, believe it or not refuse to serve in their country’s armed forces, but don’t at all mind being protected by them), but there is also a substantial number who want little more than a quiet, peaceful and trouble-free life. And I don’t doubt there are as many such Russians as there are Brits, Germans, French, Brazilians and Yanks.
They will understand that although Russia is not perfect — and no country is — things were running just fine for them and their countrymen before Putin decided to invade Ukraine. That has turned into a disaster, so let’s not compound that disaster by allowing the loon to nuke the West. But: who knows?
Like the guys at the bottom of that soup bowl, until December 2019 when we got our first reports of the covid outbreak in Wuhan, China, much was going quite well for most of us. Yes, we had our niggles, and some more than many, but . . .
We did not think that might change. It did, though. So perhaps it might now be best to fear the worst and look forward to being pleasantly surprised, not to say very relieved, when it doesn’t happen. But: who knows?
Love, Cassandra.
PS It’s worth remembering the advice given to Brits in the 1950s as to what to do if your area is targeted by a nuclear warhead: get under a table. It might not do much, but surely it is better than nothing? Surely.
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