A Crimean Shame?

It is difficult not to get drawn into a ‘Russia bad, the rest of the world good’ mentality as the media continue to howl with indignation at the behaviour of President Putin, the Crimean parliament and assorted Russian Ukrainians.  I am very far from being a Putin fan and I don’t believe that his interests in Ukraine are motivated by as much as a thimble-full of concern for the welfare of his ‘compatriots’, but jumping on the media bandwagon obscures what is really going on.

 

‘Patriotism’, Samuel Johnson noted, ‘is the last refuge of a scoundrel’; it is appalling to think that well  over two hundred years after his death it is still childishly simple for ‘leaders’ to play the patriotism (or nationalism) card to get what they want. 

 

Nation States (and many ethnic groups within states) have always acted in ways that their leaders perceive to be in their best interests.  The over-riding concerns are not justice or peace, but, at best, security and economic development and, at worst, power and dominance. Actions are limited much less by ethical imperatives than by a simple calculation of how much intervention is necessary to achieve the desired results. 

 

Almost a century ago the world was plunged into bloody strife, fuelled by patriotic passions.  Two decades after the ‘war to end all wars’ was over an even more brutal and devastating conflict destroyed millions of lives as countless ‘ordinary’ people colluded with crazed despots, allowing themselves to be led by the nose down the road of atrocity, allured once more by the sickly aroma of patriotism. The main motive behind these and so many subsequent wars has been the same: self-interest, more often than not covered by the cloak (or flag) of patriotism. It is easy to see this in ‘other people’s wars’, but devilishly difficult to recognise its influence in our own conflicts, be they in Vietnam, the Falkland Islands, the Gulf or Ireland.

 

Patriotism is fine if it is confined to cheering national sports teams or to bizarre competitions such as the Eurovision Song Contest, but it has been a major bane and curse of the human race over the past few centuries.

 

Leaders know how to manipulate and the greater a grip a leader has on power (or conversely the greater he or she fears losing power) the greater that manipulation is likely to be.  Putin’s actions are just the most recent example of a leader playing the patriotism card for political and personal gain, but I confess that when I look around, I don’t see many other clean hands.