The Lamentable State of Intellectual Discourse about the Russia-Ukraine War
In recent days, I have been in email dialogue with several friends and associates in the Alternative Narratives camp on the issues of the Russia-Ukraine War. The question I posed relates to the value or futility of public debate with standard bearers of the Washington Narrative.
During the course of the last nine months of intensive propaganda barrage from official Washington and its minions in the major media across Europe if not the world over the Russia-Ukraine War, righteous belief in the ‘good versus evil’ framing of the conflict in otherwise enlightened and well educated people has hardened so as to be nearly impenetrable to new facts or points of view. Meanwhile, the whole level of discourse has descended into the gutter. Name calling and vicious ad hominem attacks are now the rule.
A case in point arrived on my desk late last night Belgian time when I opened the “Comments” section of my website and found the newest addition.
Quote
Anatol Lieven
More on Electromagnetic Pulse warfare
I’m convinced you have Down syndrome.
If the Russians had this Harry Potter weapon, why would they blow their load and fire off nearly every Iskander in their inventory? Why would they buy ballistic missiles from Iran?
Who needs magical weapons when you have useful idiots speaking to audiences reaching dozens of people?
UNQUOTE
Who is Anatol Lieven? His biographical sketch on the website of The Quincy Institute, a widely followed Washington-based think tank founded several years ago tells us about his successful career as war journalist in Chechnya and other hot spots in the 1980s and ‘90s, followed by a successful career as professor in the Quatar branch of Georgetown University. What you will not find there is that he was appointed to the Quincy Institute in the capacity of Director, Eurasia Program to fill in an important lacuna in the skills set of Institute co-founder and Chairman Andrew Bacevich, an academic who earned a reputation as nonconformist historian of America’s 20th century wars of aggression but who has zero knowledge of the number one international affairs challenge of the day, Russia, to which Lieven can rightly claim outstanding expertise.
In a similar time frame, Anatol Lieven was invited onto the Board of Katrina vanden Heuvel’s reorganized American Committee for US-Russia Accord, to compensate for the knowledge and authority the Board lost with the death of her husband and Board member, Stephen Cohen. But while the Quincy Institute strives to present itself as politically balanced on issues of critical national importance by granting Non-resident Fellow status to the nonconformists John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Harvard’s Stephen Walt, ACUSA is positioned as a showcase for the Progressive wing of the Democratic Party to which its funder, vanden Heuvel firmly belongs.
On the basis of his journalistic reputation and institutional affiliations, Anatol Lieven is widely published almost weekly in academic journals and the mainstream press. As the French say, he is ‘incontournable,’ meaning you cannot miss reading him. He is notable for alternating between loyal dissemination of the news and views coming from Mr. Blinken’s office and other articles tweaking the nose of official Washington.
It bears mention here that Anatoly is the brother of Dominic Lieven, whom I have in the past when reviewing his magnificent Russia Against Napoleon declared to be the best living historian of Imperial Russia in the West. More to the point, both brothers are descendants of the German-speaking barons who ruled what we now call the Baltic States under the tsars up to 1917. Noblesse oblige? Judging by Anatol Lieven’s remarks on my website, I conclude that this cultural tradition no longer obtains.
That I supposedly have just “dozens of people” in my audience (the actual numbers are in five digits, not six or seven digits, but also not two) is a scurrilous and intentionally insulting remark. What I can say is that Mr. Lieven is among those readers, as I see several times a week from the report on ‘company affiliation’ of readers in my LinkedIn account where I re-post my articles. So, for one reason or another, Mr. Lieven is finding value in my reporting on the Russian media and other topics utterly ignored by mainstream. I trust he will not cut his subscription as a result of my push-back today.
Before closing with Mr. Lieven, I mention that the Harry Potter wonder weapons were not my invention. They were brought to my attention by an article in the 9 November issue of The Financial Times: “Putin’s nuclear threats may hint at an electromagnetic pulse strike” by Roger Pardo-Maurer.
My disappointment at finding Lieven’s foul-smelling bouquet on my website was heightened by impressions earlier in the evening over dinner at my social club, which I have previously described in my reports on their gala dinners on the occasion of Russian New Year’s going back to the pre-Covid days. The membership of this 175-year-old club, which bears the designation ‘royal’ and is a nest of Brussels’ Francophone aristocracy and intellectual elites, had impressed me as especially sympathetic to Russian culture and open to hearing nonconformist views of Mr. Putin’s Russia. After all, three years ago I was invited to speak about Putin & Co. by the chairman of what was their Geopolitics Group, himself a ranking employee of the European Commission.
The Geopolitics Group within our Cercle, which, in principle, is now more needed than ever, has been disbanded. But my tablemates at the long dinner table set for members of the Cinema Group which I also frequent remembered my speech back then and asked what I make of the current situation. And then we were off to the races, as they say.
It was utterly shocking for me to hear their remarks on how horrible it is that borders may be changed by military force, that one country can invade and destroy another, etc. My mention of the illegal invasions and violence perpetrated by the United States and its NATO allies in Iraq, in Libya, in Syria, in Afghanistan over the past couple of decades was rejected out of hand as ‘whataboutism’ which has no relevance to the ongoing crimes against Ukraine. My remark that my interlocutors know nothing whatever about Ukraine, not its geography, not its history, not its ethnic composition other than what they read in their Libre belgique or Le Soir fell on deaf ears. They need all that they want to know, and therein is the tragedy.
The only saving grace, and I call it out with all due gratitude, is that there was no name-calling at the table, no show of disrespect. In this regard my club remains what it always was – an oasis of tolerance in an age of vicious partisanship. But my tablemates cannot and will not be won over by intellectual persuasion. As the Russian folk wisdom tells us, the hunchback straightens out only in the grave.
All of this brings me to very personal questions: Why write? Why participate in news analysis shows on Iran, Algeriean, Belarus, Turkish or Russian television, which are among the few to invite on air spokesmen for the Alternative Narratives? It is an issue to which I have given due attention and am satisfied with this answer: to give comfort to those many intellectually curious and still open-minded people in Europe, in the United States and around the globe who otherwise find themselves surrounded by the smug bearers of the mainstream narrative. Each day my website readers are from 50 or more countries. Positive feedback from these readers regularly assures me that the effort is worth making.
©Gilbert Doctorow, 2022