How to write about this iniquitous invasion that is going so fast, when we do not yet know what will happen? Will NATO jump into the fray, will Putin trigger World War III by doing so?
Posted at 9:00 a.m.
But how NOT to write about this war? The topics that occupied us 13 days ago suddenly seem old, vain, empty. The pandemic; not finished but relegated to limbo. The Merry Guys of the freedom : become inaudible overnight, in view of the Ukrainians who fight courageously for their freedom. Climate change, more worrying than ever according to the recent IPCC report, is still behind.
But what to write? That we have the impression that a new world order is playing out, that History is once again becoming tragic? To write about the feeling that History (that of which Francis Fukuyama said in 1992 that it had reached its end with the triumph of its completed model; liberal democracy) has just started up again? Or on the sequel to the clash of civilizations announced by Samuel Huntington in 1996, which described international relations in the post-Soviet world? Nobody knows. Everything will depend on the sequence of events. It could just as well be a frightful local fratricidal war as an international inferno setting fire to everything. Because we have a feeling that Putin lives in a parallel universe, but with very real means…
How to speak of these dangerous times then? With images, which we know, however, should be wary of in these times of fake news and misinformation. These photos of children, women, old people wrapped up and refugees. Haggard, worried, with their suitcases on wheels, heavy with the summary of a life. These Instagrams of young men and women who yesterday had a drink at a trendy bar in a modern capital and who today pose, proud and a little surprised, with guns.
So, we speak with our emotion. Because Ukrainians look a bit like us. But it’s suspicious, this closeness. Some, moreover, reproach us for being “caucasian” and for sinking into the easy way out. Moralizing judgment a little heavy in the circumstances, when Quebecers and Canadians have welcomed Syrians, Afghans and Haitians with open arms and, yes, it is perfectly normal to feel a closeness with these European people that we rub shoulders with here .
Empathy is not a limited and compartmentalized reserve, nor an ideological bias. She has her arms wide open to all dramas.
There is also much opinion about the Russian invasion. Commentators last month, still “specialists” in COVID-19, ventilation and masks, are now licensed Ukrainian specialists. The arbiters of elegance between wokism and yesterday’s conservatism now specialize in military strategy. Opinionators who would struggle to draw a map of Europe from West to East in order now handle the names of Ukrainian cities and provinces like virtuosos and even suggest that the victims capitulate! In this great market of volatile opinions, it is better to listen to and read the foreign correspondents of the major media here and elsewhere, who put testimonies into context and who explain. Also, with avidity, to drink in the knowledge of real specialists and experts brought to light by this conflict: strategists, diplomats, geopolitical pros, historians, soon philosophers and connoisseurs of the Russian-Orthodox world. Their enlightening work is increasingly needed.
No, we don’t really know in what tone exactly, nor with what definitive perspective to talk about this war, nor if it will be short or if it will deeply mark our time. She is 13 days old, a sigh on the scale of history. We fear the worst, general conflagration, nuclear fire, and we find ourselves too emotional. We are wary of our impressions, but we rage.
It looks for the moment like a war of the XXand century, which would have its roots in the very 19th century dreamand of a great Russian empire to be reconquered, and which we live through the communication tools of the XXIand century, live and in fast motion. Very clever would be the one who can predict where all this is heading.
We are touched, shocked, amazed, revolted, scared, but powerless. Emotion and thirst for knowledge are for the moment our only two ways of appropriating these tragic events, of taming irrationality, of putting words to horror and reason in the chaos. We are overflowing with empathy and dread at the same time. The XXIand century is already well under way, but we now realize that someone forgot to send us its instructions…