A Definition of Civilization and War in Eastern Europe

A Broken Promise of Peace and Stability

8 min readFeb 27, 2022

One way to measure the degree of civilization is to look at how anxious the people living within it are. Do they have to fear for their lives? Or for their economic livelihood? Are they secure in their daily lives and routines? Is the environment stable so that everyone has the opportunity to leverage their unique capabilities and take charge in writing their own life’s story? One thing that has defined Europe since the second world war is that the level of civilization by this definition has been very high if not the highest relative to other places on earth.

I’ve had the privilege to grow up in a middle class family in the Netherlands and from my perspective, by this definition, modern civilization in Western Europe is nearing perfection, especially when viewed in a historical context. Although I acknowledge that not everyone over here has had it as easy as I do — I am very lucky and grateful for it — the stability in Europe for the past 75 or so years does seem remarkable. It is one of the defining features of the idea that is Europe.

As we all know in the past week Russia has invaded Ukraine in a vain attempt to restore some of the former Soviet Union’s former glory. It is reminiscent of Germany invading Czechoslovakia in 1938. At the same time there are threats being made by Russia against other non-NATO members marking them as targets for future invasions¹. Anyone who dares to interfere has been warned that they can expect nuclear retaliation². At first it seemed as if Russia was only interested in occupying the Donbas region, similar to what happened to the Crimean peninsula in 2014. But by now it is clear that they are intent on fully subjugating Ukraine and installing a puppet government in the style of Belarus. It seems like Russia is willing to do whatever it takes to achieve this and an all-out long-lasting war seems at hand, given that the Ukrainian population (and most of the world) seems enraged and rallying to their defensive cause. A lot of innocents who never asked for this will lose their lives and their blood is on Russia’s hands. And we must not look away. If the Russian regime is not stopped now what will be next after Ukraine?

Putin seems to have surprised most of the western world with this blatantly aggressive attack. Myself included. Most of us living here today have not vividly experienced war on their continent. It is a thing we read about in history books. This has made us complacent, and it is clear that Europe has been caught completely off-guard. Western capitalists have been doing business with the Russian regime since the fall of the Soviet Union and supporting their cause ever since. They are only interested in making money and do not care about human values. Regardless, nobody would have considered an invasion of this scale a realistic scenario several weeks ago, yet here we are. Of course the world has always been at war, even during my short life, so in that sense yet another war is not out of the ordinary for humanity. But in my mind war in Europe was always far away, as if we had managed to create a peaceful, understanding, and stable system here based on humanitarian values.

With modern technology everyone in the world is directly connected. If something happens in a war, the entire world immediately knows of it. This is a big difference compared to historic wars, and to me this has always seemed like a huge deterrent to being the aggressor in modern warfare, as surely the entire world would be able to take a glance and see the intent? However I can see now that this does not have to be the case. The Russian censors and propaganda machine are strong enough to counteract this effect. The excessive use of force against any kind of opposition and protest also contributes to making the Russian people apathetic about the war. Russia is sending their unknowing young conscripts into the frontlines to die, and they cannot make the decision to desert as it would cost them their lives anyway. They have managed to create a system where the authorities, police, and military are all aligned to the war goal and they are willing to go against their fellow citizens to achieve it.

Another Perspective

Of course my perspective of the events as I have written down in the above paragraphs is not how Russia sees things. From their point of view they are the defenders. The NATO has been aggressively expanding toward the east, and no other countries nearby Russia can be allowed to join the NATO, or otherwise they would destroy Russia (despite NATO being a defensive pact³). There are many Russian citizens in the Donbas region (most of which have only very recently been given a Russian passport⁴, seemingly with the sole purpose to support this spin), and they need to be protected as Ukraine is committing genocide against them according to the Russian propaganda⁵. From Russia’s viewpoint they are purging the nazis from the Ukrainian government which have been terrorizing the population⁶, and it makes sense that anyone who has convinced themselves of that would support aggressive intervention (“a peace mission” or “special military operation” as Putin spins it). It is clear that the image painted by Russian officials is insane and one that has completely lost any semblance to reality. And anyone who truly believes in it might as well be psychotic.

Deeply troubling to me is that even in Dutch national politics there are parties openly siding with Putin and cheering on Russia on this war⁷. They believe the Russian narrative which justifies the invasion so that they can purge the Nazis from Ukraine. I’m not as familiar with other western nations’ politics but it would not surprise me if there are similar movements there. A significant portion of the Dutch population supports these lunatics and that is a worrying trend (over half a million people voted for them in the house of representatives elections last year). These people have completely lost trust in the democratic system and will side with the counterparty not for the ideology, but just out of principle and spite. They would rather believe the conspiracies than trust the other side. No matter how insane the theories, a large portion of the population seems so susceptible to misinformation that they will take anything people say on the internet for fact. A worrying lack of critical thinking skills can be observed. This is the failure of an education system focused purely on quantifiable results. There is also the responsibility of the established politicians who should be building trust rather than destroying it.

Luckily most nations seem to oppose Russia’s viewpoint and side with Ukraine as evidenced by the large amount of sanctions being introduced against Russia. It feels like the invasion has brought the world together more than it has divided it. China is clearly the odd one out. They are not explicitly siding with Russia but also not condemning or sanctioning them. I think they mostly see an economic opportunity to profit off of the events. If everyone else boycotts or fully isolates Russia, then China will become their main economic partner (even more so than now). China must also be taking notes, because they would really like to play copycat and do the same to Taiwan at some point.

Sacrifice

Let me start by saying that the real sacrifice is the one being made by all the brave men and women willing to give their life to defend their country against the Russian invaders. All those who have died and will die defending democracy will have made the ultimate sacrifice and should be remembered as heroes for generations to come. In my opinion the world should place the heaviest sanctions possible on Russia, and on all those supporting Russia directly or indirectly. Of course this will also hurt innocent Russians, and citizens in the sanctioning countries as well. But at this point there are higher values at stake (peace, democracy, stability). And if the Ukrainians are willing to sacrifice their lives to defend them, then surely we can sacrifice some of our (excessive) welfare to do what we can to support them. We should not hold back on sanctions or reactions just because it would affect us negatively. Anything should be done to prevent Russia from completing their mission of subjugating Ukraine and other European countries afterwards. The European promise of peace and stability is broken and this cannot be accepted. We must be willing to make sacrifices to mend it.

Opportunity

I would like to try to end positively by highlighting an opportunity that this event presents with regards to the climate crisis. In the figures below it can be seen that Europe is currently extremely dependent on Russian oil and gas exports. To get rid of this dependency cold-turkey might be a huge shock to the economy, but it would be a blessing for Europe and the world when we look beyond capital into ecology. The skyrocketing prices and resulting energy crisis would drive innovation like nothing else. We have seen with Covid what results we can achieve in the short term when there is no alternative as the result of a crisis. We must remove this dependency on oil and gas as soon as possible to ensure a livable earth for future generations. Now an opportunity presents itself to cut off a huge chunk off the cancer that is oil and gas dependency, and I think we should take full advantage of it.