The unbearable cluelessness of (many) Western leaders

Excerpts from an important post by Nicolas Tenzer and pertinent excerpts from letters by Sri Aurobindo (1940–1943)

Nicolas Tenzer has once again published an excellent piece, clear-eyed as usual and highly relevant.

Nicolas Tenzer has had a long career as a senior civil servant in France. He is a senior expert in international and security issues. A non-resident senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis, he is guest professor at Sciences-Po Paris.

What is most depressing in Tenzer’s analysis is the cluelessness of many Western leaders, talking heads, and public intellectuals about what is at stake.

In the first part of this missive, I take the liberty to quote freely from Tenzer’s post. (All emphases are his.) The second part contains quotations from letters by Sri Aurobindo written between 1940 and 1943. Excerpted from letters already quoted in previous posts, they deal with an analogous situation and exhibit the clear vision which the aforementioned leaders, talking heads, and public-facing members of the intelligentsia lack.

Part 1: Excerpts from “The Trouble, the Noise and the Message: Do the Allies Want to Win the War?” by Nicolas Tenzer

Although Joe Biden, Emmanuel Macron and Ursula von der Leyen were all careful to point out that Ukraine remained their priority, and that it was unthinkable that Russia would win, noises to the contrary emerged in the quite respectable media, without the source being identifiable, that Washington in particular was starting to push Kyiv again to negotiate, ultimately to give up certain territories. These rumors were clearly denied by both President Zelenskyy and the American side, albeit more indirectly, and probably not explicitly enough, as if President Biden’s aides did not perceive the harm these rumors had done....

The fact remains that the Ukrainian President’s statements are becoming more tragic in tone and expression by the day....

Ukraine is basically on its own in reclaiming its Russian-occupied territories. Admittedly, it has benefited from powerful weapons supplied by the West, notably American HIMARS, French Caesar howitzers and German Leopards, albeit in smaller numbers than originally planned, and, more recently, British Storm Shadows, French SCALPs and a few American ATACMS, although several of these weapons are bridled. It also benefits from more ammunition, albeit still in insufficient numbers, and better air protection, although not enough to destroy all the missiles fired by Russia in flight. Ukraine is also stepping up its own production of ammunition and various [weapons] and has demonstrated its ability to develop innovative military technologies, which is the only way to compensate for the deficiencies or refusals of the Allies, but this will not be enough for the counter-offensive....

For its part, the Russian enemy has moved into a war economy, thanks also to components supplied by certain countries which most often are circumventing sanctions and towards which we are not severe enough, as well as Iranian drones and ammunition and weapons from North Korea.... The reality, then, is that the Allies provided Kyiv with far too few and too late resources, and were unwilling to participate, even indirectly, in this reconquest, even though Article 51 of the UN Charter authorized them to do so. American F-16 aircraft are still slow to arrive in Ukrainian airspace. We know, moreover, that their real added value would be to hit military targets on Russian territory, in other words behind the battlefield, even more than on it. The German Chancellor is also stubbornly refusing to deliver the Taurus, which all military experts consider to be of crucial importance for heavy targets—the Kerch bridge is often cited as an example. Olaf Scholz’s pretexts of the danger of escalation, co-belligerence and a form of direct involvement do not hold water, either legally or strategically. There are also regular rumblings that part of his entourage is still inclined not to “commit the irreparable”, as they put it, in view of a possible peace agreement with Russia, as if this were an acceptable possibility.

A Slow Advance (English subtitles)

What is increasingly reflected in President Zelenskyy’s speeches, but also in the feelings of many Ukrainians, is this feeling of extreme loneliness, which had already struck me during my visits to Kyiv in May and July of this year. Sadly, this impression seems well-founded. The Ukrainians have never been so determined to continue the offensive, because it’s an existential choice for them and a legal obligation for us, but that doesn’t prevent them from becoming exhausted. The blame must not lie with the Ukrainians, but solely with us, the Allies....

[N]either we experts and analysts, nor journalists, nor a fortiori our Ukrainian allies should have to wonder whether the USA or this or that European ally was going to let them down, push them into infamous negotiations, or even conjecture about the forthcoming delivery of this or that decisive weapon. It should be self-evident that the Allies would never do this, that they would never give in on demands for punishment of criminals, or indeed for the return of deported children or payment of war damages. It should be clear that the Allies’ objective is the total and unconditional defeat of Russia, first in Ukraine, then everywhere else. It should be axiomatic that all possible weapons would be delivered to Ukraine, and their production increased in proportion to the Russian threat and the need to save Ukrainian lives.

But this is precisely not the case. Obscurity in the actual resolution always seems to herald treachery and perjury. In the dark, one is always led to consider that there is no smoke without fire, in other words, no rumor without at least a shred of reality. Any denials seem all the more insincere as the proofs of love seem all the more tenuous. So I don’t know for sure whether some of the Allies are trying to push Kyiv into negotiations and territorial compromises—which, let’s repeat, would mean leaving a few million Ukrainians in the hands of Russian torturers and executioners, not to mention the fact that it’s hard to see how Putin and his band of criminals could be punished, reparations paid, or children returned to their families. I can see serious people, some of whom I know quite well, supporting opposing theses on this subject. In the fog of this unwar for Westerners, the one they didn’t have the intelligence to fight, I can no longer distinguish the probable from the improbable. The Ukrainians feel the same way....

So the Allies let the Ukrainians go on the offensive without giving them the means they themselves would have used if they’d had to commit to it.... They don’t even give them a clear indication of when they might finally go all the way in their support.... [T]his also means that Western leaders accept, without really thinking about it, that Russia can continue its crimes against humanity in the years to come. And they will do nothing....

The hands of the clock turn relentlessly, attaching ever more deaths to their headlong rush. But there comes a time when time runs out too. Ukraine could die. It will be our fault, and then the death bell will toll for us.

Part 2: Excerpts from letters written by Sri Aurobindo between 1940 and 1943

You should not think of [the War] as a fight for certain nations against others…; it is a struggle for an ideal that has to establish itself on earth in the life of humanity, for a Truth that has yet to realise itself fully and against a darkness and falsehood that are trying to overwhelm the earth and mankind in the immediate future. It is the forces behind the battle that have to be seen and not this or that superficial circumstance. It is no use concentrating on the defects or mistakes of nations; all have defects and commit serious mistakes; but what matters is on what side they have ranged themselves in the struggle. It is a struggle for the liberty of mankind to develop, for conditions in which men have freedom and room to think and act according to the light in them and grow in the Truth, grow in the Spirit. There cannot be the slightest doubt that if one side wins, there will be an end of all such freedom and hope of light and truth and the work that has to be done will be subjected to conditions which would make it humanly impossible; there will be a reign of falsehood and darkness, a cruel oppression and degradation for most of the human race such as people in this country do not dream of and cannot yet at all realise. [July 29, 1942, Autobiographical Notes, pp. 463–464]

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We made it plain in a letter which has been made public that we did not consider the war as a fight between nations and governments (still less between good people and bad people) but between two forces, the Divine and the Asuric. What we have to see is on which side men and nations put themselves; if they put themselves on the right side, they at once make themselves instruments of the Divine purpose in spite of all defects, errors, wrong movements and actions which are common to human nature and all human collectivities. The victory of one side (the Allies) would keep the path open for the evolutionary forces: the victory of the other side would drag back humanity, degrade it horribly and might lead even, at the worst, to its eventual failure as a race, as others in the past evolution failed and perished. That is the whole question and all other considerations are either irrelevant or of a minor importance. The Allies at least have stood for human values, though they may often act against their own best ideals (human beings always do that); Hitler stands for diabolical values or for human values exaggerated in the wrong way until they become diabolical (e.g. the virtues of the Herrenvolk, the master race). [September 3, 1943, Autobiographical Notes, pp. 465–466]

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• The textual basis of the following statement of 1940 [Autobiographical Notes, pp. 455–462] was an essay written by a disciple and submitted to Sri Aurobindo for approval. Sri Aurobindo thoroughly revised and enlarged the first four paragraphs and added several new ones, transforming the disciple’s essay into an entirely new piece that may be considered his own writing. In revising, he retained the disciple’s third person “Sri Aurobindo”.

Sri Aurobindo’s decision to give his moral support to the struggle against Hitler, which was made at the very beginning of the war, was based like all his actions on his inner view of things and on intimations from within. It was founded on his consciousness of the forces at work, of their significance in the Divine’s leading of the world, of the necessary outer conditions for the spiritual development in which he sees the real hope of humanity....

The English believe that they are defending not only their empire but their very existence as a free nation and the freedom also of other nations conquered by Germany or threatened by the push to empire of the Axis powers; they have made it a condition for making peace that the nations conquered shall be liberated and the others guaranteed against farther aggression. They believe also that they are standing up for the principles of civilisation which a Nazi victory would destroy....

It is in fact a clash between two world-forces which are contending for the control of the whole future of humanity. One force seeks to destroy the past civilisation and substitute a new one; but this new civilisation is in substance a reversion to the old principles of dominant Force and a rigid external order and denies the established values, social, political, ethical, spiritual, altogether. Among these values are those which were hitherto held to be the most precious, the liberty of the individual, the right to national liberty, freedom of thought; even religious liberty is to be crushed and replaced by the subjection of religion to State control....

The other Force is that of the evolutionary tendencies which have been directing the course of humanity for some time past and, till recently, seemed destined to shape its future. Its workings had their good and bad sides, but among the greater values it had developed stood the very things against which the new Force is most aggressive, the liberty of the individual, national liberty, freedom of thought, political and social freedom with an increasing bent towards equality, complete religious liberty, the humanitarian principle with all its consequences and, latterly, a seeking after a more complete social order, which will organise the life of the community, but will respect the liberty of the individual while perfecting his means of life and helping in every way possible his development....

At present the balance in the development of human thought and action has been turning for some time against the larger evolutionary force and in favour of a revolutionary reaction against it.... It is ceasing to be possible for national egoisms to entrench themselves in their isolated independence and be sufficient for themselves, for all are now dependent on the whole…. [N]ations which tried to isolate themselves in a self-regarding neutrality have paid the penalty of their blindness and the others who still maintain that attitude are likely sooner or later to share the same fate....

There remains the objection that all War is evil and no war can be supported; soul-force or some kind of spiritual or ethical force is the only force that should be used; the only resistance permissible is passive resistance, non-cooperation or Satyagraha.¹ But this kind of resistance though it has been used in the past with some effect by individuals or on a limited scale, cannot stop the invasion of a foreign army.... The question then arises whether a nation can be asked to undergo voluntarily the menace of a foreign invasion or the scourge of a foreign occupation without using whatever material means of resistance are available....

War is physically an evil, a calamity; morally it has been like most human institutions a mixture, in most but not all cases a mixture of some good and much evil: but it is sometimes necessary to face it rather than invite or undergo a worse evil, a greater calamity. One can hold that, so long as life and mankind are what they are, there can be such a thing as a righteous war,—dharmya yuddha. No doubt, in a spiritualised life of humanity or in a perfect civilisation there would be no room for war or violence,—it is clear that this is the highest ideal state. But mankind is psychologically and materially still far from this ideal state. To bring it to that state needs either an immediate spiritual change of which there is no present evidence or a change of mentality and habits which the victory of the totalitarian idea and its system would render impossible; for it would impose quite the opposite mentality, the mentality and habits on one side of a dominant brute force and violence and on the other a servile and prostrate non-resistance.

1. In the Indian national movement, “Satyagraha” was the name given to the non-violent resistance advocated by Mahatma Gandhi and others.