Africa-Press – South-Africa. When the wannabe Russian Empire first launched its attack on Ukraine, almost all observers and political analysts predicted a quick win for Vladimir Putin’s men, writes Joe Kitchen.
I suppose this is a rather banal comparison, but Russia’s failure to convincingly beat Ukraine in a war has been as big a shock as the time when Japan beat the Springboks in 2015!
Banal, indeed, because you can’t compare the outcome of a rugby game to this immense human tragedy.
There’s a reason why I am using this rather flippant example, though. It simply goes to show how difficult it is to predict history ahead of time. When the wannabe Russian Empire first launched this attack, almost all observers and political analysts predicted a quick win for Vladimir Putin’s men. Everyone expected that this process euphemistically labelled a ‘military operation’, would be over within a week or two.
A major war
And look what’s happened. The Russians have gotten themselves stuck in a major war from which they will simply not be able to extract themselves unless they are prepared to suffer a major embarrassment. What a humiliation this must be for those loonies in the Kremlin.
Putin makes me think of a lorry driver who has accidentally turned into a dead-end street and doesn’t know how to back out again. Or like that guy who got his truck stuck under that bridge in Muizenberg recently.
I’m going to try another comparison, and this one, I’m afraid, is not much better than the comparison with a rugby game. It’s starting to look as if Russia made the same mistake in 2022 as the United States in 1954.
Is the war in Ukraine turning into Putin’s Vietnam?
I was born in the year that armed conflict began. By the time the Americans realised that they had been well and truly beaten, I was celebrating my twenty-first birthday.
Of course, there were many circumstances of that war which made it a different ball game than this situation. Yet, the similarities cannot be ignored either.
Quick victory expected
In the first place, no-one expected that conflict to turn into such a long, drawn-out affair. As Putin expected with Ukraine, the Americans expected a quick victory in Vietnam.
Secondly, that war caused tremendous division in the United States. And though one cannot say that most ordinary Russians are against this conflict – they are being misinformed, after all – it is probably a fact that the Ukrainian problems are causing massive turbulence at least among the members of Putin’s inner circle. This is speculation, of course, but I’m sure it’s true.
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Another similarity between the Ukrainian war and the Vietnam war is the generally known fact that, like in Vietnam, Putin’s soldiers are suffering from low morale. Many of them simply don’t want to be in this war. Likewise, the American soldiers, especially during the 1960s, were influenced by the youth protest and by Woodstock. The spreading of the “make love, not war” message certainly did little to help America’s cause.
We hear about it all the time: Russian troops fighting half-heartedly, deserting their posts, feeling betrayed by their military commanders.
If this mutiny grows, it will spell trouble for Russia in the long term, in spite of the partial successes they have achieved after so much effort.
Nuclear war
Well, then again, I’m probably as bad with predictions as with making comparisons. After all, I’m just another columnist, and columnists are proven wrong all the time about just about everything.
Not long ago, I published a column in an Afrikaans publication in which I predicted that the world being destroyed by a nuclear conflagration sooner or later is a just about inevitable scenario. Too many people already have the technology, I argued. There are simply too many crazy people out there. What about North Korea? What about Iran? All we need is some idiot pushing the wrong button at the right time, and everything might just go to hell.
That column made me feel extremely despondent when I read it again later.
But, as I said, I’m only a columnist, and columnists are often wrong.
Who will win?
So let’s end this column with a different prediction, just for the sake of balance. Of course, this prediction may also be wrong.
But here’s the thing; for every single power-hungry politician or megalomaniac world leader on this planet at the moment, we have at least a thousand people, maybe more, who really don’t want such a war. And for every Putin there are lots of peace-loving organisations which are actively pursuing the ideal of a better world. Just think of Greenpeace. Just think of Gift of the Givers.
Is our civilisation on its way to a bloody end, or are there enough of us to help the world wake up and overthrow these tyrants? Who is going to win? Will the idealism of ordinary folk carry the day, or will we be swamped by insane ideologies and escalating violence?
Will things get better or will they get worse?
For as long as we are still alive, for as long as the unthinkable has not yet happened, we should all strive and hope and work towards world peace.
– Joe Kitchen is a South African musician, singer, songwriter and writer who sometimes goes by the name of Koos Kombuis, André Letoit and/or André le Roux du Toit.
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