Olexander Scherba

BULLDOZER WAR

“WE’RE ALL SOVIETS NOW”

In 2024, the renowned British historian Niall Ferguson, a Stanford and LSE professor, published an essay, “We’re All Soviets Now,” drawing parallels between the contemporary United States and the late Soviet Union. His main thesis was that the world has entered a new “cold war” between the U.S. and China, but that China is the more energetic and consolidated force in this tandem, while the U.S. plays the role the USSR once played: a depressed giant, entangled in its own problems and contradictions.

As an illustration, Ferguson used, among other things, the high American statistics on so-called “deaths of despair” (deaths from drugs, alcoholism, chronic depression and suicide), as well as Americans’ distrust of their own institutions and the state in general. To be convinced of the latter, in principle, one does not even need statistics. It is enough to skim social media – of right-wing and left-wing Americans alike. Or to watch their films and TV series, in which the role of the world’s chief evil has long been firmly assigned to their own government.

Clearly, Ferguson dramatized somewhat. On the eve of the 2024 elections, he – a conservative and a Trump-supporter – needed a picture of American decadence from which only a strong leader could save the country. Nevertheless, there is something in his parallels. Not only statistical but also intuitive.

WHY NATIONS DECLINE

A sign of a nation’s decline is when its own citizens stop believing in its mythology. Older Ukrainians remember what it was like in the late USSR, when most of the population developed a lasting revulsion toward Soviet reality. Sadly, conversations with Western societies of the present era – top and bottom, university professors and “blue-collar” workers, politicians and anti-globalists – produce something akin to déjà vu.

And this is not only about the United States. An era of economic prosperity, multiplied by the atomization of society, multiplied by social media algorithms, has produced the same result in different countries: a generation of children that cannot find its place in the new world, and a generation of parents that is unhappy because of the unhappiness of their children. But they do not blame themselves. They blame the politicians who built this new world. They blame political reality.

Western societies possess priceless things – freedom, democracy, a certain measure of justice – but in only three decades these things have moved in the public mind from the “highest value” column to the column “big deal, so what?”

Resentment has descended on the West like a heavy cloud. People began to live by the “me first”principle  and, within a single generation, became not-happy (though not necessarily un-happy), filled with a well-fed cynicism which, sadly, is a sign of the era.

Besides “me first,” they readily accepted other postulates that Hollywood, academia and social media had long and persistently sold them. That “the world is darkness” (everyone does evil, only not everyone admits it), and that “there is no truth” (everyone has their own; the so-called “truth” is nothing more than an interpretation of reality). In our Ukrainian terms, this picture of the world is called “Putinism.”

ORIGINAL SIN

Europeans’ and Americans’ revulsion toward their own political systems is undoubtedly generated by those very systems – by their hypocrisy, self-infatuation and, ultimately, their lack of self-preservation instinct. And although today the main cynicism is displayed by parties of the nationalist and far-right kind, it is the liberals who deserve criticism first and foremost – because it was them who created the crisis.

On the one hand, modern man owes many positive things to the liberal world in which we still live – the golden European era after the Second World War, a united Europe, social protection programs, the protection of minority rights, and so on. Moreover, we Ukrainians must understand that were it not for European liberals and centrists, Europe would long ago have thrown Ukraine under Putin’s tank. Because European anti-liberal nationalists have, for the most part, long since settled firmly into the camp of Russia’s fans.

And on the other hand, the liberal world has also given birth to all kinds of bombastic nonsense. Above all, “cancel culture,” “culture wars” and “identity politics,” whose main mission became driving a wedge between the social majority and minorities. On social media it produced an entire stratum of people whom the American commentator Bill Maher aptly called professionally offended.

For decades they circled the ocean of life like sharks in search of a drop of blood, waiting for a carelessly spoken word or a politically incorrect act, after which people would be destroyed emotionally online and have their reputations torn to shreds. In a word – “cancelled.” As a result, free societies turned into a dictatorship of political correctness, which turns freedom into its opposite. And this, too, became a sign of the era.

THE CRISIS OF LIBERALISM IS A CRISIS OF PRIDE

But the most important thing is that the liberal world, for all its positive features, was deaf to the desires of its own societies. And those societies didn’t want much: just common sense. Modern diversity, but not the dissolution of their countries’ identity. Respect for the rights of sexual minorities, but not sixty “genders” and other madness. Environmental awareness, but not environmental fanaticism and a total rejection of nuclear energy. Controlled and limited migration, but not Merkel’s “we will take everyone in!”

For example, the 2024 American election would have gone quite differently had the administration of the time done the necessary, obvious and – above all – lawful thing: closed the border with Mexico to illegal crossings. But it did not. Because it feared the “professionally offended” more than it feared the law and its own voters.

Fear and arrogance – for this original sin, Western societies pay the price, and, sadly, so does Ukraine. Because, in fact, the split in the liberal world is a split in our support.

Citizens feel revulsion toward traditional political parties because traditional political parties, for too long, felt no respect for citizens. This, I hope, will change, but before that we will have to watch non-traditional parties fight their way to power in many European countries – parties which find United Europe repugnant, which profess the principle of “me first,” and which will do everything to destroy what was built after the Second World War.

A BULLDOZER IN THE SWAMP

The West’s political crisis is a crisis not only of liberals but also of conservatives and nationalists. With the latter, things are fairly simple. They are opportunists, as, indeed, are most politicians. Exploiting public resentment, they agreed – and even gladly volunteered – to play the role of the bulldozer that will demolish the tiresome political reality.

The problem is that neither the citizens nor the “bulldozers” themselves know what to build in place of what exists, or how. And also that, at this stage of history, the interests of the “bulldozers,” who think they are doing good for their countries, coincide with the interests of those who ferociously hate those countries.

Both the Western far right and Putin’s Russia share a common aspiration: to break the political system that exists in the West. Hence the mutual attraction, hence the shared priorities and rhetoric, hence the shared hatred of Ukraine.

Both they and the Kremlin want to “drain the swamp.” The only difference is that for the far right the swamp is the existing political class, while for Russia the swamp is the West as a whole. But the “bulldozers” do not give it too much thought. At this stage they are Moscow’s allies and fellow travelers.

THE ALTERNATIVE FOR DECENCY

The far right instinctively wants to “clear the site” and return to the past. Where the word of the white man was law. Where each new generation was richer and more successful than the last. Where everything was simpler. Deep down they probably suspect that things will not be as they were, but to suspect something does not always mean to have intellectual honesty.

It is notable that in Germany the role of the bulldozer has been taken on by a political force called Alternative für Deutschland. The symbolism is that Vladimir Putin, the inspirer of “bulldozers” around the world, has long and persistently been profiling Russia as a kind of “Alternative für Europa.” That is, a reality in which everything is as it used to be. Where one can be an imperialist, a homophobe, a racist, an aggressor – and not be ashamed of it. On Europe‘s eastern edge, Russia has emerged as anti-Europe – and many Europeans have found it to their liking.

But therein lies also the weakness and the short life of all the “alternatives” Putin pushes into the reality of decent countries. Without confrontation, they are nothing. The alternative to the cynical reality they offer is an even greater cynicism. From using “Christian values” for killing of hundreds of thousands of people in Ukraine, to the aforementioned commandments of a “post-truth world”: non-existent truth and a world that is nothing but darkness.

This is not an ideology but the dark shadow of an ideology. It may help win an election once or twice. But it will not kindle the hearts of Europeans for long.

AFTER THE TWILIGHT

These “alternatives” have no substance. Resentment is their only inspiration. They are a walking void that feeds on the disillusionment of people who have been pushed aside or squeezed out in the modern world, but which will inevitably bring them even more disillusionment. These black holes quickly turn into white dwarfs. In space that does not happen, but in politics – easily. We saw it in Hungary, where the Shambhala of global anti-liberalism crumbled like a sandcastle. And in Austria too, where the far right began coming to power as early as the 1990s – and distinguished themselves only with the loudest corruption scandals.

This darkness will pass. But the question arises: what will it leave behind? Will the “bulldozers” destroy the Western world? Will Niall Ferguson’s ominous forebodings about parallels between the old and new Cold War, the late Soviet Union and the late West, come true? And, most importantly, how should Ukraine behave at this crossroads between bewildered humanists and resolute bulldozer drivers?

The arrival of non-systemic parties in Western societies will be like the recent mudflow in Nepal: dark, brutal and fast. It will leave in ist wake a lot of destruction. And dirt. And dead bodies. And the same question as before: how to fill the void in the soul of the West. Probably, not only the West.

THE NATURE OF EMPTINESS

Despite all technological breakthroughs, humanity today remains what it was two hundred and three hundred years ago: a large group of beings who lack answers to the main questions. Who are we? Why are we here? What will happen to us next? Consciously or subconsciously, these questions live in each of us, influencing both our actions and our happiness. There are no atheists in the face of death.

Like it or not, these questions are the cornerstone of our sense of self and of the world. For centuries the only force that at least tried to answer them was the church. Then came the new world, which, in its pride, said it had no need of the church. The paradox is that the basic components of this world (the European Union, for example) were the very embodiment of Christian values: forgiveness, the humbling of the strong, their service to the weak.

We are used to seeing the European Union merely as a successful bureaucracy, but in fact it is the most important political achievement in human history. It is a sign of hope that even after millennia of mutual bloodshed, a world of hatred and war can become a world of forgiveness, a world of peace, a world without borders. It is a project that is, unquestionably and obviously, not only for Christians, yet it is Christian in spirit. And it could only have been born in a Christian world.

So why is it politically incorrect to say this out loud? Why may Christian Europeans not take pride in having given the world hope? Why have the world’s bloodiest killers, such as Putin, and the most cynical slimeballs, such as Orbán, appropriated a monopoly on “Christian values,” while those who truly live and work by the commandments are afraid even to mention them? Political correctness separated not the church from the state but the church from the man – and, for that matter, the man from the church. And this too became a factor in global loneliness.

The void in the soul of the West arose when faith left it. Perhaps it is worth trying to bring it back. And this is not about a return to clericalism. It is about a return of the language of meaning. The language of good and evil, which resonates in human souls and which is bigger than “me first.”

The paradox of the European political world is that on its far-right wing there is emotional charge but no ideology, while in the center there is ideology but in a truncated, even bureaucratic form – and therefore it does not give birth to emotion, to a spark. How to strike a spark is something Europeans could learn from some American Democrats, who have made faith an integral part of their liberal platform, draw passionate audiences and – quite possibly – will do well in the November elections. The time of America being inspiration to the world will yet return.

“WINTER IS COMING”

Against the backdrop of a possible political winter in Europe, Ukraine has become the place where the future of both the continent and the Western world is being determined. And, given the global significance of the European project, the direction of world democracy as well. If the crisis of the West is a crisis of disbelief, then Ukraine is giving it its faith. It is giving it the sense of a frontier between good and evil. It reminds lonely, sad people with smartphones that their lives are not only about their daily coffee and a fresh croissant.

Hence the intensity of emotion around the “Ukrainian question.” Ukraine is either admired or hated furiously, selflessly. For some it is a sign of hope; for others it is the one that prevented them from merging with Russia’s “Anti-Europe” in a paroxysm of passion.

Be that as it may, on the results of the past four years one can say: thank God there is a Europe in the world. One that did not give in to temptation. One that did not throw Ukraine under the bus. One that acted in a Christian way, though not without self-interest.

But self-interest, too, comes in different kinds. How easy it would have been for them to send to Moscow some spineless European “mediator” who would grovel in Moscow and feign concern in Kyiv. How easy it would have been, “in the name of global peace,” to leave Ukraine defenseless and earn staggering dividends from Russia – into their own pockets and for European corporations.

The European economy would have moved into the black. The media and social networks would quickly have found new, more pleasant subjects of attention. Life would have gone on in its simple, well-worn rhythm, over the bones and blood of Ukrainian freedom (and isn’t European soil saturated with blood and bones of so many already!). The war chatter would have ended for a while.

All what they needed to do was betray Ukraine. And yet, United Europe did not do it. It took a vow and kept it. And this is yet another sign that United Europe is, in essence, a Christian space, however much it may deny it.

For Ukraine itself, everything is for now simpler on the one hand and more frightening on the other. More frightening – because of war, death, blood. Simpler – because there is no sense of loneliness and no temptation of betrayal anymore, which hung over us in 2022 and took the form of the so-called “Istanbul agreements,” when we were in a void, one-on-one with an insolent and seemingly insurmountable enemy. Today, four years on, the insolence has somehow flown off the enemy, as has the aura of invincibility. Today we are not alone. We have something and someone to hold on to. In place of the temptation of betrayal has come the temptation of fatigue, but Ukraine will overcome that too.

It’s time we supported fervently those who supports us – decent European and world politicians, decent people of the world. In the last 4 years the divide shaped up rather clearly. On one side, opportunists and hypocrites; on the other, Ukraine and liberal-centrist Europe, with all its ballast and problems. And if the Western world is going through a crisis, then rather than mocking it, we Ukrainians should help it overcome that crisis. Be courteous and honest. Understand that in today’s world Ukraine is, on the one hand, a pupil and, on the other, a teacher.

And keep faith, in spite of everything. Because faith is now the most important thing. Perhaps the West, too, will find it again one day.