The Sunday News
Under the sun and the moon, “is there any way of delivering mankind from the menace of war?” This a stubborn question with which Albert Einstein began his letter to Sigmund Freud, Why War? in 1933.
With all the depth and width of his mind, somehow, Einstein was troubled that war might be an inevitable part of the journey of mankind on earth. What bothered Einstein more was that with advanced technology that scientists like himself were producing in the world mankind was in danger of annihilating himself and the planet. Ever the psychologist, Freud’s reply began thus: “you begin with the relations between Might and Right, and this is assuredly the proper starting point for our enquiry.” Freud could not help observing that once mankind had power, Might, the temptation to use it to full advantage against opponents was too strong hence the inevitability of large-scale violence and war.
Here was a nuclear scientist who contributed to the invention of the atomic bomb engaging a psychologist that pioneered psychoanalysis, the investigation of the unconscious drives of the human mind, about the problem of war, world war, specifically. The engagement between Einstein and Freud is achieving new relevance as the present world powers look set to sleepwalk the world towards a nuclear Third World War. Einstein was to be quoted offering the chilling warning to world powers against a Third World War in the age of the atom bomb: “I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones”. What he meant is that a nuclear Third World War will take the planet back from its current civilisation to the Stone Age. As Freud feared, the world powers that possess nuclear weapons look like they are succumbing to the strong temptation to use them even if using them will not be morally right. World powers look intoxicated by the right of might as opposed to the might of right.
The big idea of war
The big world news of the past week was about tanks and war. European countries were falling on top of each other announcing the size and the number of battle tanks they are sending to Ukraine to help the embattled country defeat the Russian Federation. We read of Challenger 2 tanks and the Leopard 2 tanks. It was the arms race and the Olympics of war where each country had to show its love for Ukraine, as in an auction, by bidding in weapons.
Some western political analysts are already describing the size and the colour of Ukraine’s victory against Russia. What a defeated Russia will look like, and what a world without Russia is going to be, are already vividly pictured by energetic analysts. The obituary of Russia and that of President Vladimir Putin are already on the wall. For some days, Germany, dragged its feet pondering if to send or not to send the storied tanks to the Ukrainian battlefronts.
The powerful countries involved are all pretending that there is no alternative to escalation in the war. And that is the problem for the world. The philosopher of liberation, Enrique Dussel, decried the enchantment with war in the western mind, “from Heraclitus to Karl Von Clausewitz, and Henry Kissinger, war is the origin of everything.” The western mind is intoxicated with war and the burning desire for conquest and victory. That victory may not necessarily come but its opposite, defeat, might be coming does not seem to be a consideration.
Dussel noted how the war is always a cold one for those that make it, that sell the weapons, and a hot one for those that are forced to use the weapons and die from them.
The big trouble with wars, especially world wars, is that the powers that have the power to stop them seem neither to be willing nor able to stop them. The stampede in the West to supply more tanks is in total ignorance of what is supposed to be an obvious fact that the other side will also escalate the size and power of their own arsenal, and that other previously neutral powers may be forced to take sides militarily, leading to a nuclear world war in earnest. Alexander Dugin, the Russian philosopher considered to be President Putin’s ‘mind’ recently stated that “there are two possibilities. First, it will end when we (Russians) win. It’s not too easy though. And the second possibility is that this fight will end with the end of the world.
Either we win, or the world will be destroyed.” The fantasy in the West that the Russians, who believe in the truth and justice of their cause, are going to lie down and marinate themselves for the NATO lions to come and enjoy the meat is exactly that, a fantasy. Dugin speaks for Russia and many other countries of the world when he says “so, the war is for a multipolar world order against unipolar world order. It’s nothing either about Russia, Ukraine, or Europe; it’s not against the West and the rest; it’s humanity against hegemony.” That is the thinking and the belief that NATO politicians should be engaging with and not pumping money and tanks into an escalating war that looks set to end badly. But world powers, in their mighty and superpower wisdom, are sleepwalking the world to a nuclear World War Three that might at best take the world back to the Stone Age and at worst reduce all existence to ash and smoke.
It should be clear by now that as the NATO alliance believe in the truth and justice of their cause, the Russian federation also believes in the truth and justice of its cause. Escalation in such a scenario can only be explained in the Freudian terms of a ‘death drive’ where a certain psychology, working like a demonic possession, forces human beings to run towards their own certain death. Its something worse that a suicidal drive.
The solution is Machiavellian
Philosophy, including political philosophy, is celebrated for its valorised search for the true, the powerful and the beautiful. The Philosophy of liberation adds the search for the fair and the just. To the escalating war in Ukraine a beautiful, powerful, true, fair and just solution is possible. And the solution is much Machiavellian. In his classic, The Art of War, Niccolo Machiavelli makes many compelling observations concerning war, making it and ending it. In that, “to try to end with arms what may be ended with words will lead to the peril of the commanders” Machiavelli counsels political dialogue as the beautiful, true, powerful and just end to war. The powers of the world that are sending tanks to Ukraine should be sending diplomats. Tanks will lead not only to the peril of the commanders but to the end of the world as we know it.
n Cetshwayo Zindabazezwe Mabhena writes from the university of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg in South Africa. Contacts: [email protected].
