CIRCUSES AND CYNICISM
The early 2nd century poet Juvenal coined the phrase “bread and circuses” to describe how Roman emperors distracted their public from governmental shortcomings. The rash and ultimately short-sighted ploy echoes today in the form of crises. The danger is that crises can be lethal if mishandled, a distinct possibility when they are seasoned with cynicism.
Ukraine is the current front-runner. Russian President Vladmir Putin surely knows war will have an enormous cost to his own country. His apparent willingness to risk and even embrace the prospect is central to his dream of a restored Russian empire. In the short term, a war posture serves to distract his increasingly restive population from their hopes for democracy as opposed to oligarch-owned kleptocracy, while enhancing — if only in his own mind — his bare-chested macho image.
If Juvenal’s Romans are any example, the West just needs to hold out long enough and Putin may end up as an emperor with no clothes.
HOPE IN NEED OF A REALITY CHECK
In the meantime, to help keep the Ukrainians from being Putin’s present punching bag of choice, they are being lavished with what Washington calls “lethal aid” — a contradiction in semantic if not moral terms.
According to his Twitter feed, Ukraine Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba is also convinced NATO will help his country hold its “red line” of “no concessions on sovereignty, territorial integrity within internationally recognized borders.”
Before he takes that to the bank, Minister Kuleba might want to ask the Palestinians about UN Resolution 242.
Passed in November 1967, it “calls for the withdrawal of Israeli troops from the occupied territories, acknowledges the claim of sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every state in the region and calls on the UN Secretary-General to appoint an Envoy to facilitate an acceptable solution to the conflict.” Instead, Israel’s control over the West Bank could serve as a model for Putin in Ukraine.
‘RHETT BUTLER MODE’
Nations and governments who need or ask for help only get what they want if the consequences of not getting it might adversely affect the self-interest of potential donors. Otherwise the response is summed up by the famous line in “Gone With the Wind”: “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn.”
Even when they do give one, the powerful have a long and inglorious history of choosing the wrong leaders for dubious reasons as their darlings, or proxies.
The coalition that bombs children in Yemen gets away with it because it’s fighting rebels backed by Iran and is led by Saudi Arabia, a major oil producer. That also accounts in part for why little more than lip service is paid to the Saudi’s brutal and repressive practices, including the treatment of women.
Coincidentally, protecting women’s rights was one of the reasons the U.S. said it was fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan. Until it wasn’t.
Afghan children are now in a genuine life-threatening crisis, on the verge of starvation because the West objects to giving aid to the Taliban. The mullahs, in turn, cleave to policies based on a strict (and some consider incorrect) interpretation of Islam, rather than easing off enough to enter the modern world.
Does anyone remember that Washington gave the Afghan mujahadin, from which the Taliban grew, Stinger missiles simply because they were fighting the Russians?
BAD FRIENDS AS BEST FRIENDS
In the spirit of never letting a short-sighted opportunity go to waste, the U.S. happily offered Saddam Hussein military intelligence when he invaded Iran, based on a 4th century BC Indian Sanskrit proverb: “The enemy of my enemy is my friend”.
After ten years, more than a million killed and wounded on both sides and widespread economic destruction, no significant chunk of territory changed hands.
Saddam turned out to be the evil man Washington knew he always was and the Islamic State jihadist movement emerged from the U.S. invasion that overthrew him.
Iraq is close to being a failing state.
Iran, on the other hand, is now a prominent regional power with outsized influence in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen…and Iraq. It is also a crisis. The seemingly Sisyphean task of convincing Tehran to forsake dreams of nuclear capability has its roots in the days when Washington embraced the Shah and ignored his repressive domestic policies. The Islamic Revolution that overthrew him has survived despite gross economic incompetence and unpopular religious strictures, in part by using resentment of the U.S. as a symbolic circus. Flouting a potential nuclear capability is the crowd-thrilling high wire act.
THE ONES EVERYONE LOVES TO HATE
Similarly, North Korea punches, or at least jabs, above its weight, building and testing ever more powerful missiles it knows full well if it fires in anger will result in national destruction. The U.S. Indo-Pacific Command described a recent launch as posing no immediate threat to the United States or its allies and called on North Korea to “refrain from further destabilizing acts.”
A rigidly-controlled state media ensures that Kim Jun-Un’s theoretically adoring people won’t ever hear such heresy. If they did, one of Donald Trump’s favourite dictators wouldn’t be able to strut, pose and revel in the world’s attention, the circus he offers his people instead of bread.
Whether he meant it cynically or otherwise, all that was neatly summed up by the late President John F. Kennedy: “When written in Chinese, the word crisis is composed of two characters — one represents danger, and the other represents opportunity.”
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3 thoughts on “CIRCUSES AND CYNICISM”
forget juvenal…
circa 2022 the bread is stale, if available…
the circus folded its tent and left town…
the west is weak, the east is strong…
democracy is in the crosshairs…
autocrats cock their weapons…
i despair…
Final quote is a great one.
Wow! To compare Putin controlling Ukraine as Israel controls the West Bank–fascinating. But I don’t think the world would allow or tolerate Putin killing and dominating Ukrainians…Ukraine being a nation, a fully respected country… as Israel does the West Bankers. The Holocaust gives Israel the right to dominate the West Bank.