To grasp latest fears concerning the doable escalation of Russia’s struggle on Ukraine right into a nuclear battle, we should revisit its beginnings, the place the groundwork for this disaster was laid. Dmitry Medvedev, a former Russian president and now deputy chairman of Russia's Safety Council, articulated the wager underpinning Russia’s aggression in early 2023:
“I consider that NATO wouldn’t instantly interference within the battle even on this situation,” Medvedev stated, referring to the opportunity of Russia utilizing nuclear weapons on Ukraine. “The demagogues throughout the ocean and in Europe will not be going to die in a nuclear apocalypse.”
Medvedev’s assertion assumes a basic precept: the complete sovereignty of a state is dependent upon its residents’ willingness to die for it. On this view, Western societies, consumed by commercialism and hedonism, have deserted this precept. In contrast, Russian President Vladimir Putin has asserted that true sovereignty requires such a dedication:
“In an effort to declare some form of management — I’m not even speaking about world management. I imply management in any space — any nation, any individuals, any ethnic group ought to guarantee their sovereignty,” Putin stated. “As a result of there isn’t any in-between, no intermediate state: both a rustic is sovereign, or it’s a colony, it doesn’t matter what the colonies are referred to as.”
To Putin, Ukraine falls into the latter class — a pseudo-entity of a non-existent nation undeserving of sovereignty.
This angle invitations an surprising philosophical parallel. Putin’s and Medvedev’s rhetoric echoes Hegel’s “Phenomenology of Spirit,” particularly the dialectic of grasp and servant. In Hegel’s framework, when two self-consciousnesses interact in a life-or-death wrestle, if each are prepared to threat all the pieces, no victor emerges — one dies, and the survivor lacks recognition. Historical past and human tradition rely on an preliminary compromise: one facet “averts its eyes” and turns into the servant. Medvedev assumes the “decadent, hedonist” West will avert its eyes. Nonetheless, because the Chilly Struggle taught us, in a nuclear confrontation, there are not any victors — either side perish.
"Medvedev assumes the 'decadent, hedonist' West will avert its eyes. Nonetheless, because the Chilly Struggle taught us, in a nuclear confrontation, there are not any victors — either side perish."
The continuing battle between Russia and the West thus has profound philosophical dimensions. Anton Alikhanov, governor of the Russian exclave Kaliningrad, not too long ago claimed Immanuel Kant, who lived within the area, has a “direct connection” to the struggle in Ukraine. Alikhanov blamed Kant’s “godlessness and lack of upper values” for creating the sociocultural circumstances that led to World Struggle I and the present battle:
“At this time, in 2024, we’re daring sufficient to claim that not solely did the First World Struggle start with the work of Kant, however so did the present battle in Ukraine. Right here in Kaliningrad, we dare to suggest — though we’re really nearly sure of it — that it was exactly in Kant’s ‘Critique of Pure Cause’ and his ‘Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals’… that the moral, value-based foundations of the present battle had been established.”
Alikhanov described Kant as a “non secular creator of the fashionable West,” chargeable for concepts equivalent to freedom, the rule of legislation, liberalism, and the European Union. If Ukraine resists Russia in protection of those values, Kant’s philosophy not directly helps Ukrainian resistance. Such statements, nonetheless outlandish, spotlight the metaphysical stakes of the struggle.
Patriarch Kirill of the Russian Orthodox Church equally invoked non secular rhetoric, dismissing fears of nuclear apocalypse. In a stunning show, Kirill praised Russian scientists for growing “unimaginable weapons” and claimed that concern over such points is “not good for non secular well being”:
“We await the Lord Jesus Christ who will are available nice glory, destroy evil, and choose all nations.”
The phrase “spirit” needs to be used right here with out irony: the continuing struggle isn’t merely a wrestle for territorial management or financial energy. It’s also greater than an effort to annihilate a nation, although it carries a transparent genocidal dimension — not within the literal sense of killing each member of a nation however in depriving survivors of their ethnic id and assimilating them as Russians.
It goes past signaling a worldwide geopolitical shift. It is a struggle of spirit towards spirit, pitting two mutually unique visions and practices of what it means to be human. Maybe we must always return to Nietzsche, who, in “Ecce Homo” close to the top of the nineteenth century, supplied a grim imaginative and prescient of the subsequent century:
“For when Fact battles towards the lies of millennia there will probably be shock waves, earthquakes, the transposition of hills and valleys such because the world has by no means but imagined even in its desires. The idea of ‘politics’ then turns into fully absorbed into the realm of non secular warfare. All of the mighty worlds of the traditional order of society are blown into house — for they’re all based mostly on lies: there will probably be wars the like of which have by no means been seen on earth earlier than.”
Earlier than dismissing these strains as obscure brooding, we must always notice that Alain Badiou, although removed from a Nietzschean, arrives at related conclusions in his booklet “The Century.” Badiou makes use of the metaphor of the twentieth century because the wounded physique of a beast — an idea he borrows from Osip Mandelstam's 1923 poem “The Age.” The beast of the nineteenth century lived in relative consolation, lulled by the phantasm of regular financial and political progress. However within the twentieth century, the beast grew weary of incremental progress, selecting as an alternative to confront historical past instantly, making an attempt to satisfy the guarantees of the nineteenth century by means of acts of brutal voluntarism.
As Friedrich Nietzsche foresaw, this shift gave rise to a brand new form of "non secular warfare": two unprecedentedly damaging world wars, accompanied by violent revolutions. But these upheavals merely wounded the beast, failing to supply the envisioned "New Man." What, then, follows this distinctive mixture of hope and brutal disillusionment that outlined the twentieth century? In “The Will to Energy,” Nietzsche speculates concerning the twenty first century, predicting “the entire eclipse of all values” alongside the emergence of “barbaric nationalistic brotherhoods”:
“No person needs to be shocked when… brotherhoods with the purpose of theft and exploitation of the nonbelievers… seem the sector of the longer term.”
Right here we are actually, and the irony is that those that name for a return to conventional values are sometimes probably the most ruthless of their “theft and exploitation of the nonbelievers.” We should all be ready to threat our lives, however the important thing distinction between Russia and Western Europe lies of their views on demise. As we’ve seen, Russia claims it doesn’t concern demise, believing in a divine energy that can redeem its individuals within the afterlife. In distinction, Western Europe operates with the data that there isn’t any greater assure — demise is just the top.
Our hope rests on the likelihood that Russia’s proclaimed readiness to die is merely a bluff, a part of a strategic façade. But, even a bluff can have actual and harmful penalties. The one God that appears becoming for our period is one among all-encompassing indifference, an idea that Clarice Lispector captures in her chilling description of such a deity:
“What nonetheless frightened me was that even the unpunishable horror can be generously reabsorbed by the abyss of never-ending time, by the abyss of never-ending heights, by the deep abyss of the God: absorbed into the center of an indifference. So in contrast to human indifference.”
Editor’s Notice: The opinions expressed within the op-ed part are these of the authors and don’t essentially mirror the views of the Kyiv Unbiased.
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The Kyiv IndependentKatie Marie Davies