A Walk Down Sanction Street

 A Walk Down Sanctions Street

The West has leveled severe and somewhat unprecedented sanctions against Russia.  In the most optimistic permutation, the Russian people will oust Putin from power and a new regime will withdraw completely from Ukraine, admit the error of their ways, and we will all hold hands on the banks of the Dnieper River and sing Kumbaya together.  I mean this when I say I think the majority of us would like the Kumbaya part of this dream while many of us would like the political outcome of this dream.  So, let’s have a look at the history of US sanctions, which has usually been accompanied by sanctions from other nations, to see how effective they have been.  In doing so, I will not make moral judgments as to whether the sanctions were justified.  All I wish to do is examine the effectiveness of the sanctions themselves in the full illumination of history.

 

As we stroll down Sanctions Street, our first stop is Japan.  The United States leveled crippling economic sanctions against expansionist Japan in the late 30’s and early 40’s strangling Japan’s oil supply.  The result of these sanctions was that the USA was dragged into World War II when Japan, backed into a corner, attacked Pearl Harbor in an attempt to break the American stranglehold on their economy.  I believe it was ultimately good for the USA to be dragged into World War II, but the point we must consider here is the end result of those sanctions was that America was dragged into a world war.

 

We continue our walk down Sanctions Street and arrive next at Fidel Castro’s Cuba.  The US hit Cuba with hard sanctions after Castro seized power from his fellow revolutionaries who all seemed to have had accidents.  Castro was a prominent figure in the Organization of Non-aligned Nations though he was as neutral as a fanatical MAGA adherent.  There was a brief lessening of sanctions under President Obama but Trump reversed those when he became president.  The net result of these sanctions is that Castro died of old age over 50 years later with his Communist party still firmly in control.

 

And as an aside, can I say that the Bay of Pigs invasion planned an executed by anti Castro Cubans and backed by the US government, failed because JFK refused to provide our Cuban allies with air support.  I am beginning to feel decidedly uncomfortable at this point with regard to the present crisis in Ukraine.

 

As a completely irrelevant aside, I am a Seventh-day Adventist and I have it on good sources that Fidel Castro not only owned and possessed a very large set of Ellen G. White books in his library, he read most of them.  SDA friends of mine will understand this reference.

 

We leave Cuba and continue our walk down Sanctions Street until we arrive at Nicaragua.  The United States occupied Nicaragua in the 1930’s and in 1961, a group of Christian socialists founded the FDSN which we call the Sandinistas.  The Sandinistas overthrew the US backed Somoza government in 1981 to assume power.  The Sandinista Party believed in gender equality, universal literacy and massively boosted healthcare.  But they sere Socialists allied with the Soviet Union so the United States helped to form, fund, and train the Contras so they could fight a civil war which lasted for nine years.  Sanctions were leveled against the Sandinistas.  Meanwhile the Contras failed to overthrow the Sandinistas in the civil war because the United States refused to provide air support and ground troops to the Contras.  We did not want to become directly involved.  I am really starting to feel uncomfortable now.

 

The result of these sanctions was that the Sandinistas lost power democratically in 1990 though they still controlled the Nicaragua legislature.  As of 2006, however, the Sandinistas are back in power and continue to wield sole power today.

 

We leave Nicaragua and move toward the Axis of Evil, a term first used by George W. Bush, the 43^rd President of the United States, in 2002.  The Axis of evil consisted of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, Iran, and North Korea.  Sanctions were leveled against them.  Of the three original founding members of the Axis of Evil, Iran and North Korea still wield absolute power in their respective countries.  Only Saddam Hussein is no longer in power.  The ineffectiveness of our sanctions in the long term is further demonstrated by the fact that the only reason Saddam is no longer with us is because of two Iraq Wars led by the United States.  It did not help that the sanctions leveled against Saddam between the two wars were undermined by a corrupt United Nations who made sure Saddam kept getting money for oil.  Elizabeth and I witnessed the effect of these sanctions first-hand and I hope and pray never to see such misery again.  The poor rural Iraqi people we met were beyond belief by our rich standards.  The only people hurt by those sanctions were the poor people of Iraq.

 

We will leave Sanctions Street for now and try to absorb what we have learned.  Basically, sanctions generally failed to yield desired results.  There are two reasons for this in my opinion.  First, sanctions only served to harden the resolve of the governments sanctioned, and often of the people themselves.  Second, those sanctioned had allies who dulled the effect of sanctions.

 

Now let us look at this current situation.  So far, Putin is doing a pretty good job of convincing his people he, and the Russian people are the good guys.  Many Russians see what is really happening, but many more do not.  There is every chance that sanctions alone will only serve to harden the resolve of the Russian people.

 

So far, China, Iran, a number of Middle Eastern nations, and Israel have not joined in the Sanctions party.  There are other nations who have not joined as well, but these are the major ones.  Thus, Russia has allies who can help dull the effect of sanctions.

 

Sanctions alone do not generally work.  This is why I believe it is inevitable that NATO will become directly involved, whether they want to or not.  Ukraine wants assistance now.  They cannot afford to wait for sanctions to possibly work.

 

Some argue that these sanctions are the severest sanctions ever wielded by the West.  I counter this argument with the argument that sanctions we leveled in the past were just as severe relative to the ones we sanctioned.  Put another way, Russia is a big country, so big-time sanctions are required.  Nicaragua, on the other hand, is a small and somewhat poor country so the sanctions the US leveled were scaled accordingly.

 

Bottom line:  history shows that sanctions alone do not work.  It also shows that sanctions plus military aid, without direct involvement are also ineffective.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gaming Non Nuclear Scenarios

 Gaming Non Nuclear Scenarios

Although my nuclear escalation gaming conclusion is to deploy Intermediate Range Nuclear Missiles IRs into Ukraine, it is not my intention to provoke a nuclear war but to prevent one.  Normally, when gaming is done, there are a lot of people in the room so in my view, this is turning into a good discussion.  This was my first gaming scenario but I’ll explain my thinking a little more.  Let us assume for now that no nuclear escalation occurs.

 

If the West continues on its course now, there are five possible outcomes.  They are:

1.       Best case for the West – Russia withdraws from Ukraine either because Ukraine beats them or because of regime collapse in Russia and the new regime decides to withdraw.

2.       Stalemate – The war bogs down into a stalemate most likely with Russia grinding out ground slowly.  This will result in high casualties both in the military of both sides, and in civilian casualties.

3.       European Afghanistan – Putin wins the war and sets up a government to his liking, but Ukraine turns into a European version of Afghanistan complete with grinding poverty, war, and casualties.

4.       Putin total victory – Putin achieves total victory in Ukraine.

5.       Dirty peace – Some sort of agreement is reached which results in Ukraine being carved up somehow.

 

From the point of view of the West, scenarios two through four are clearly bad, while scenario 5 is also bad, in my opinion.  Bottom line, if the West continues on its present course there is an 80% probability of a bad outcome.  The figure is actually not 80% because not all alternatives are equally likely but I believe I have established my point.

 

Let us now look at the long term ramifications of any bad outcome for the West.  Morale, which is high at the moment, will be dashed.  NATO will likely fracture in that individual countries will seek to come to an accommodation with Putin.  Western credibility will be shot to hell and I believe efforts to supplant the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency will accelerate.  It won’t just be Russia, China, and North Korea who look to break the economic stranglehold the US has as the holder of the world’s reserve currency.  Any of the bad outcomes mentioned above will strengthen ties between Russia and China with more nations joining in.  China might be emboldened to attack Taiwan leaving the US as the only real defender of that country. 

 

Meanwhile the resolve of OPEC will be strengthened leaving Europe and the West with high oil prices.  This will cause current leadership to lose power and the prospect of this happening will cause them to make an accommodation with Putin on the least favorable terms possible. 

 

On the war front, Ukraine will be resolved and even if we assume Putin needs some time to recover, the West will find itself with an aggressive Russia.  Putin would not have to attack Moldova to absorb it because in this scenario, if their leaders had any IQ at all, they would accommodate Putin knowing they could not count on the West to prevent them from suffering the same fate as Ukraine.

 

This leaves Putin with an option to attack a NATO nation.  The conventional wisdom is that Putin would not do this because of Article 5.  But is that wisdom accurate?  Remember, by now, the morale of NATO is fractured.  Germany is strangling under high oil prices and Putin still has nukes.  Putin could once again threaten nuclear escalation if NATO invokes Article 5.  The only option NATO has at this point is to risk nuclear escalation and invoke Article 5, or stand by and sacrifice more nations.  NATO must call Putin on his threat.  In either case, we now have World War III except that China may see enough weakness in the West to throw its lot in with Putin and attack Taiwan or other Asian countries forcing the US to fight a war on two fronts in very large theatres of war.  And, there is every threat of nuclear escalation which would certainly occur if NATO gains the upper hand.

 

Another piece of conventional wisdom is that the crippling sanctions will bring Russia to its knees either by causing the oligarchs to topple Putin, or cause the Russian people to revolt.  These are possibilities.  However, let us remember that the Russian people are tougher in this regard than Western people and particularly the people of America.  They don’t scream like a baby if someone tells them to wear a mask in a shopping mall.  There is more tangible evidence.  This is not the first time Russians faced crippling economic conditions.  They faced these in the 90’s after the fall of the soviet union.  The reasons they had to face such crippling conditions differ, but face them they did.  I have had many Russian friends of mine, and some Ukrainian ones too, tell me what life was like in the aftermath of the soviet union.

 

To give one example.  Imagine you are driving to work and you realize you need gas.  You see the price is $4.50 a gallon which is pretty high, but you decide traffic is bad and you risk being late to work if you stop to fill up so you decide to fill up on your way home.  On your way home, you discover that the price of gas has gone up to $27 / gallon.  This is exactly the sort of thing that happened to average Russians during this transition period.  Many Russians lost their jobs.  There was no unemployment insurance, no medical insurance and food was scarce in the shops.  Many Russians who did have jobs went for six months or more without being paid.  They kept working in the hope that if they kept their job, they would eventually get something.  When McDonald’s opened in Moscow in 1990, working there was one of the most coveted jobs because of all this.  Combine this with 4 times more deaths in World War II than the entire West combined, and then even more suffering under Stalin, and you have a very tough people.  If the Russian people feel they are unjustly crippled with sanctions, they are very tough indeed.  This means that sanctions may take a very long time to have their desired effect.

 

Before I sat back and started gaming, I wondered whether Putin was mad.  Was he suffering a neurological disorder as was reported?  Perhaps he is.  But after I gamed this out, I now believe Putin is anything but mad.  Up until the invasion, Putin has out-foxed us all.  He should not be underestimated.  If this were chess, Putin has white and the West’s queen is threatened.

 

The bottom line as I see it is that if the West continues on its current course, there is an 80% chance of a bad outcome for the West and only a slightly less chance of a nuclear escalation.  There is every chance Putin will force NATO to invoke article 5 and there is every chance NATO will not do so.

 

As I write this, morale in the West is as high as it will ever be.  Most of the world by a large margin believes Russia engages in an unprovoked war and that Putin is a war criminal.  In this case, perception is what counts.  NATO and the West is as united as it will ever be at this moment.  Since there is an 80% chance of a bad outcome if its current course is pursued, it’s only viable option is to do what I said when I gamed nuclear escalation.  Yes, there is every risk of a nuclear escalation, but my belief is that the West is at its strongest point now.  The longer it waits, the weaker it will become.  There is less risk of nuclear escalation now because NATO is at its strongest point.

 

If NATO goes in conventionally, without deploying the IRs, Putin has the option of keeping the war conventional.  But as NATO is at its strongest point, he is more likely to lose that war and be driven out of Ukraine.  He is therefore more likely to start nuclear escalation.  This is why we need the deterrent of IRs.  This is why I concluded this move must accompany any NATO involvement.  This was certainly not my view before I started this gaming exercise.

 

Note 1

Russia does not use gallons.  I used gallons to allow me to paint a scenario Americans can relate to. 

 

Note 2

I believe the US dollar as the reserve currency will be under threat regardless of what happens.  The UN  has been trying to come up with their own but so far without success.  Therefore, America may face a choice of a soft landing with a new reserve currency, or a hard landing.  If the US continues to endorse the current course of the West, it is most likely the US will experience a hard landing in this regard.

Gaming Nuclear Escalation

Gaming Nuclear Escalation

We hear a lot today about the fear of the Ukraine war becoming a nuclear war.    For most of us, this is a vague concept which usually results in us believing this means the end of the world very quickly.  I thought it would be useful to apply some game theory to understand the most probable course nuclear escalation might take.

 

There are three types of nuclear weapons.  These are:  battlefield tactical nukes (BTN), Intermediate range nuclear missiles (IR) for short, and ICBMs, which we all know stands for intercontinental ballistic missiles.  I will include nuclear weapons launched from submarines in the ICBM category.

 

The First Escalation – BTNs Advantage Putin

The most likely first step of a nuclear escalation scenario is the use of BTNs.  These have limited range but can also cause contamination of the soil and of the local water supply, not to mention the atmosphere.  All of these can last for decades.    These would be limited to the theatre of war, which is at the time of writing, limited to Ukraine.  This will present the allies with two problems.

First, how do we retaliate?  In order to retaliate with BTNs of our own, we would need to provide them to Ukrainian forces and train them.  Provision might be possible while training would be difficult and time consuming.  The only other option we have is to use them ourselves which means sending ground troops in.  This leads to a direct confrontation with Russia, which is what the allies are trying to avoid now.  Therefore, we would almost certainly be unable to retaliate in kind.

But even if we did figure out a way to use BTNs on Russian troops ourselves against Russian forces, these would be limited to the theatre of war and serve only to cause further nuclear devastation to our friend Ukraine. 

The most likely outcome of this escalation is that Putin takes Ukraine and avoids an Afghanistan situation because Ukraine would have no realistic way to engage in gorilla warfare without doing serious damage to their own homeland.

The Second Escalation – IRs Advantage Putin

IRs would allow Putin to strike other countries, some of whom may be part of NATO while some might not.  There is almost a 100% probability he would strike a nonnuclear nation with IRs rather than the United States, Brittan, France, or any other nuclear power in Europe.  NATO would be forced to invoke Article 5, but would we?  The problem we face in this scenario is that although we have IRs, we have only two options.  We could attack Russian forces in the theatre of war, or we could strike Belarus.  We cannot attack the Russian homeland because that would trigger Armageddon.  This means that for all practical purposes, we would attack the theatre of war, which under this scenario now includes Ukraine, and any other country struck.  This would do catastrophic environmental damage to our allies while leaving Russia and the nuclear powers untouched.  The only realistic escalation from here to Armageddon when ICBMs come into the picture.

The most likely outcome in this scenario is a peace treaty with Putin in which Putin gets much of what he wants even some NATO nations.  Again, advantage Putin.  Putin wins this scenario just as he wins the first scenario.

Armageddon – ICBMS Advantage no one

Here I use Armageddon in the common sense referring to World War III.  As a student of Bible prophecy, I do not believe the actual Armageddon prophesied refers to this.  It is obvious that no one wins Armageddon so I will not belabor that point here. 

My Conclusion

Since Putin wins the first two escalation scenarios, the only realistic way to prevent escalation is to do the following.

1.       Go into Ukraine

2.       Deploy IRs in Western Ukraine and other NATO countries ASAP.  I will assume here we obtain Ukraine’s permission.

The most likely outcome, by a long shot is these actions will force Putin to withdraw and he can do so in a face-saving manner because he can tell his people he does not wish a nuclear war.  He can even tell them his prophecy of IRs pointed at Russia has come to pass.  But who cares what he says?  The effect of this action will be to end the war in Ukraine.  There is a risk of escalation but since the most likely outcome is Armageddon, Putin will not escalate.  The principles of Mutually Assure Destruction (MAD) which have served us so well is the most likely outcome.    The key here is to get the IRs and BTNs in quickly before Russia can.  This will force Putin to withdraw from Ukraine and eliminate the theatre of war.  The window to do this is closing.  We should take these actions now.

It is also worth remembering that one of Putin’s main justifications for his invasion was his fear that Ukraine would join NATO and that IRs would be deployed there and in other NATO nations.  Putin has clearly done some gaming of his own and deduced that IRs are his gravest threat.  People might despise Putin, but when it comes to gaming and strategy, he should certainly be respected.

 

Note:

The first escalation BTNs also applies to chemical weapons.

Weird Song of the Week - Hot War

 Hot War

Friday 11 March 2022

The world’s attention has been riveted to the war in Ukraine.  I know I have been.  Here in Australia, we have other things to occupy our TV viewing.  Queensland and Northern New South Wales are experiencing a once in a century flood event.  For Queensland, it is their second once in a century flood event in 10 years.  Yes folks, climate change is real.  These floods have been terrible.  I have never seen anything like them here, and I thought the 2011 floods were bad. 

We also experienced the death of a sporting superstar.  He was the Tiger Woods of Cricket, not only in his on-field exploits, but his off field exploits as well.  He died suddenly at age 52 which shocked everyone here in Australia.

Last week my column on Ukraine generated a lot of responses, but ones I did not expect.  The column led to very deep and long discussions with Ukrainians about what is going on, and what could or should happen when this terrible war ends.  Weird Song is not political, so I’ll just say that the situation in Ukraine was very nuanced prior to the war and feelings run strongly in what was and still is a divided country.  Also, thanks to everyone who allowed me, an American/Australian, to get a very in-depth glimpse into this country.  I have been to most of the countries in that region, but not Ukraine.  I hope I can go to a peaceful and prosperous Ukraine one day.

Reader Rowen, who is from Bulgaria, also wanted to correct me on my history of the syllabic alphabet.  Apparently, the two Greek monks began their work in Bulgaria, not Kyiv as I stated, and they did so earlier than I stated.

History has a way of repeating itself.  It has been many years since the cold war, and we forget what it was like.  We read about the era in history books, but books, especially textbooks, generally give you the facts.  What we miss out is how people were feeling at the time, their fears, their hopes, and their emotions in general.  There is nothing like music to do that.  Since this is a column about weird songs, I will turn to the great Tom Lehrer.  His songs have been featured many times before.  This time, I want to examine the issues we face today as we stand at the very edge of the World War III cliff and remind ourselves that we faced these issues before.

Uppermost in our consciousness was the fear of nuclear annihilation.  It was a very real fear back then.  We sort of forgot about it in the 90’s and the 00’s but we are sure remembering our fear now.  Here is Tom Lehrer in So Long Mom (A Song of WW III)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGT6bdlcLPI

I was in a work meeting this week with CNN in the background.  And there, on live TV, was a nuclear powerplant on fire and being shelled. I couldn’t believe it.  We were this close to another Fukushima, and I was watching it live.  It was very hard to concentrate on anything else.  I was like a rat in front of a snake.  This can’t be happening I told myself.  But it did and we dodged a huge nuclear bullet this week.

Of course, a lot of people will die in a nuclear war, and Tom Lehrer reminded us of this with his classic We Will All Go Together When We Go.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvWZ4KcS63E

He wrote this in the style of an old-time gospel revival hymn.

Another issue we dealt with back then were the really grey moral choices we had to make.  One of the biggest and most controversial at the time was the United States putting German rocket scientist Werhner von Braun in charge of the space program.  No one questioned his brilliance.  But was he a good person?  Was he a courageous scientist who opposed Hitler as the government press releases maintained, or was he actually a Nazi who saw the writing on the wall and saved his own skin?  Space was crucial and the United States was in a race with the Soviet Union, who took their own share of German scientists, to dominate space.  Should the government cast aside morality in the name of necessity?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjDEsGZLbio

This was a very painful ethical issue at the time, and you can see this with another great Tom Lehrer satire. It is also interesting that Lehrer slams the moon program because it cost so much.  This is forgotten today as NASA’s moon program is universally hailed as a great thing, well in the USA anyway. 

Before the Ukraine crisis, the hard right leaders of Poland and Hungary were slammed by America and Europe.  Now we’re all best friends.  As I write this, President Biden is trying to persuade Saudi Arabia, led by a psychopathic Crown Prince, to help America and Europe by increasing oil production.  He is also reaching out to Nicolas Maduro, leader of Venezuela whom the US dubbed as evil on two legs to see if we find a way Venezuela can return to world oil markets.  This has really upset the large Venezuelan community in Florida, a close state politically, and could keep Florida in the hands of Republicans.  Hard moral choices, and sometimes immoral choices, are made at times like this.

Another issue facing us today is the notion that Europe must rely less upon the USA for its military defense and more on itself.  I cannot see this happening without Germany rearming.  This is already beginning to happen with Germany sending offensive weapons to Ukraine.  Germany has the strongest economy in Europe, and it is inconceivable to me that Europe defend itself without Germany rearming itself.  Memories of WW II are long, however, and that will make a number of European countries nervous.

During the Cold War, it became increasingly obvious that West Germany would play a vital role in deterring the Soviet Union from European expansion.  The problem was, this meant giving Germany control of weapons and this really made people nervous.  One of the early incarnations of this doctrine was something called the Multilateral Force or MLF.  Tom Lehrer created a satire of the MLF.  I find myself singing this too myself a little too often for comfort.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgA-V67eF2U

This clip features a live performance in San Francisco.  The newspaper he refers to is the San Francisco Chronicle.  Note also the sarcasm when Lehrer calls France a friend of America.  Charles de Gaulle might have resisted the Nazis and rallied the French, but no one liked him, and he didn’t like anyone either and proved to be most irritating to the allies after the war.

Many of the French collaborated with the Nazis so after the war, the country was very divided.  My mother-in-law Erna used to tell us a very interesting story.  She is German and her part of Germany was given to the French.  She says the French came into all the German factories in her area, which was the South of Germany, and took all the equipment and technology to use for themselves.  After their factories were stripped bare by the French, the Germans were forced to rebuild from scratch.  Technology really advanced during the war, however, so when they rebuilt, the equipment they built was much better than what they had before, which the French had taken.  So, with better equipment and better manufacturing capability, West Germany soon surpassed France and this irritated de Gaulle on top of everything else that irritated him, and everything irritated him.  In fairness to the French, it must have been very difficult to allow Germany to be part of the nuclear deterrent.  MLF failed, but eventually the West worked things out.

You might recall a couple of weeks ago we had the satire Don’t Let’s be Beastly to the Germans. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wveW9Tw2JKE

Asking Europe to stand on its own is very difficult, more difficult than many imagine.  We can see from the post war songs just how hard it was.

And finally, another fear we faced back then was the spread of nuclear weapons.  As the world watches what is happening in Ukraine, there must be a number of small nations thinking they need nukes.  In 1994, Ukraine gives up the nuclear weapons they had to Russia in exchange for Russian recognition of their sovereignty.  If Ukraine still had their nukes would Putin have invaded?  Most likely not.  So, I think we can look forward to a scramble for nuclear capability.  In Tom Lehrer’s satire Who’s Next, he addressed this problem.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_DUaYKJCAA

Here we see again Lehrer’s cynicism when declaring France to be a friend.  Personally, what scares me the most is the prospect of Alabama having full control of nuclear weapons.  This simply must never happen.

I love these songs because they remind us of the fears people had.  We also see here what common people were saying and thinking.  Today, as I write this, we literally stand closer to World War III than at anytime in my life.  The Cuban Missile Crisis was a year before I was born.  I’m going to say what we used to say back then.  If we don’t blow ourselves back into the Stone Age, we might just scare ourselves into peace.

May peace return soon, for the sake of Ukraine, for the sake of Russia and the Russian people who were wonderful to me when I visited there twice, even if they laughed at my attempts to speak Russian, and also to the rest of us.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fhJ6XrZ4jg

I leave you today with Dona Nobis Pacem.  Indeed Lord, please give us peace and let it come soon.

And here is an online choir singing this beautiful song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNzBjg2wJeA

No matter what side one is on in any war, peace is infinitely better.

 

 

 

Weird Song of the Week - Ukraine

 Ukraine

Friday 4 March 2022

Throughout the years here at Weird Song, we have featured some national anthems.  So far, we have covered France, England, United States, Israel and South Africa.  I think I mentioned the anthem of Japan as well.  Given what is happening in the world today, I wanted to talk about the National Anthem of Ukraine.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDeQVaoTvJM

 

This anthem has an interesting history and even more interesting lyrics.  The grand and stately music was formally recognized in 1992, but the lyrics did not join the music until 2003. 

 

Videos like this one have gone viral in the wake of the Russian invasion.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GipDG6CWUjU

 

Kyiv has a very long history.  The Russian Orthodox Church began life there and it was there that Greek monks devised the Cyrillic alphabet which characterize the languages of Russia and Ukraine.  But Ukraine as a distinct nation began in the 16^th century when peasants ran away from their Russian overlords and set up shop in the Southern Steppe of Ukraine.  These rebels became known as Cossacks.  They were sort of like bandits who raided and plundered but managed to become a genuine army.  They combined forces with the people of Ukraine that were already in the region and who were themselves oppressed and revolted against their Polish overlords.

 

This culminated in the Polish Cossack war which ran from 1648 to 1657.  A lot of blood was spilled, and a number of other powers were dragged into it, but in the end, Ukraine was forged into a more or less independent nation.  Specifically, Ukraine was a protectorate of Russia but one with autonomy. 

 

In 1962, a Hollywood blockbuster Taras Bulba burst upon the big screen.  Here is the trailer.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGIJM4aO0hw

 

This movie centers around a love story between a Cossack warrior and a Polish lady. 

 

What we now call Ukraine came under Russian control under Catherine the Great who concluded yet another Crimea war in 1783.  In doing so, she brutally slaughtered thousands of Ukrainian peasants who rebelled.  Catherine the Great issued a decree allowing Russian nobility to literally own peasants and the long period of Ukrainian oppression accelerated.  A number of wars were fought in Crimea and Ukraine and the territory passed from one empire to another until it finally staggered into independence in 1991 when the Soviet Union fell.  That is a long period of subjugation. 

 

Here is the National Anthem of Ukraine with English lyrics.

 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHzHlSLhtmM

 

It is when you read the lyrics that you get a true sense of what these people have gone through.  The formal title of the National Anthem is The State Anthem of Ukraine, but its actual title is, in English, “Ukraine has not yet Perished.”  In the English lyrics of the YouTube link above, the lyrics are rendered as the freedom of Ukraine is not yet lost, but based on my limited knowledge of the language, I think it is better understood as Ukraine has not yet perished.” 

 

Just think about that opening lyric for a moment.  Basically, their opening refrain is “we’re not dead yet.”  If you are unaware of their history, this opening line would be considered strange, I might even say weird.  But in light of centuries of bloodshed, brutalization, and oppression, these lyrics make perfect sense.  The rest of the lyrics are telling as well.  They speak of enemies and of freedom.  Now that Ukraine finally has freedom after 400 years of subjugation, they don’t want to lose it quickly. 

 

The song also emphasizes the Cossack heritage of Ukraine and all it stands for.  Apparently, or so legend has it, the Cossacks were fierce warriors and fierce party animals.  One can only hope that the people of Ukraine will be able to stop being fierce fighters shortly, and spend more time being party animals.  We need peace for that.

 

The Russian people have also known brutality and oppression on a scale which is hard for us to imagine here in the West.  I sincerely hope that Russians remember they have more in common with Ukraine than they have differences and stop this terrible war.  In the meantime, Ukraine has not perished yet.”  Let’s hope it stays that way.  Glory to Ukraine!

 

And finally, a musical development due to the current war which probably has next to no bearing on what is happening is worth noting.  Twisted Sister has given permission for Ukraine to use their iconic song We’re Not Going to Take It as a fighting anthem.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9AbeALNVkk

 

And speaking of Twisted Sister, I would like to use them to deliver a message to all those who destroy human life for the sake of their own selfish gain.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_atqPcXvcr0