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Fight for Ukraine
If we do nothing else, we must bear witness to the horror thrust upon the people of Ukraine. Unflinchingly. We will document, share and remember the senselessness of the violence one man has chosen to inflict upon a neighbouring nation. We must remember the terror unfolding in Europe as a reminder that our species retains the capacity for inflicting unspeakable suffering upon our fellow humans. We must know that history is future, that we must constantly curtail tyrannical tendencies—wherever, whenever they occur.
After the fall of the Berlin wall, we told ourselves that liberal democracy had triumphed over the rule of dictators, autocrats, and strongmen. No free people would again subject themselves to the rule of such evil.
The tearing down of the wall became a physical emblem of this hard-won collective insight. We understood the damaged character of men who sought and wielded all-consuming power. We knew their ambitions would never be sated by wealth and territorial expansion. It would not be allowed to form again.
We concluded that as enlightened people, we had emerged from ignorance—that we would never go down this path again. The notion was documented in Francis Fukuyama’s 1992 book The End of History and the Last Man.
It was always wishful thinking. It was an idea blinkered at the time, ignoring the simmering conflicts in Africa that would go on to claim more than a million lives in Rwanda and five million more in the Congo in the decade after The End of History was published. Even as the theory was gaining traction, a dictator was systematically exterminating the Isaaq people in Somalia.
Rather than a linear progression as Fukuyama had postulated, history remains a more circular phenomenon. That is not to say our species hasn’t progressed in how we organize ourselves, but rather the forces seeking authoritarian power continue to lurk under the surface. And something about our nature continues to make us vulnerable to their appeal, while simultaneously wishing it weren’t so.
We are, also, seemingly hardwired to want our leaders to project strength. Wisdom and prudence in our current political discourse are so often characterized as weakness. Polling data illustrates vividly that Trump voters weren’t looking for thoughtful or reasoned leaders. They wanted a fighter—a strongman.
Of course, many factors can provide fertile ground for a would-be tyrant, but chief among them is a short memory. We tend to forget the lessons of the past. We tell ourselves that this time is different. Furthermore, we are easily distracted. We want to focus on our own lives— on things we think we can control. We tell ourselves we have neither the capacity nor the duty to remain vigilant against the rise of faraway tyrants. It’s none of our business.
All that is needed is to nurture the rise of another strongman is indifference.
A better guide to these uncertain days is Robert Kagan’s 2018 book The Jungle Grows Back. Kagan warns against America’s— read most Western liberal democracies— inclination toward isolationism. Like a jungle that continues to grow back after being cleared, the world has many dangerous actors eager and willing to fill the void.
Syria. Hong Kong. Afghanistan. The west has been shrinking for two decades. As such, the world has become a more dangerous place. When will we draw a red line? This far and no further—and mean it? Taiwan? Estonia? Finland?
As America’s isolationists learned on December 7, 1941, when left untended, the jungle eventually reaches your shores and can no longer be ignored. By then, the ensuing conflagration had become so fierce and threatening that the US calculated that nuclear weapons were needed to wipe out hundreds of thousands of civilians.
This is our business. It requires our vigilance. It requires our collective memory.
Until our family moved to Prince Edward County nearly 20 years ago, Remembrance Day held little significance in my life. We were busy. There was little time to ponder events so long ago, so far away. Endured by people I never knew.
That changed when I was privileged to witness this community stop what they were doing at 11 a.m. on November 11. Neighbours put their lives aside for an hour or two to gather to consider those who had sacrificed so much to liberate others, an ocean away, from the evil of unbridled power. They came to remember.
It was a duty. As it is ours now. To observe. To remember.
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