The first lesson of International Relations 101 – whose Princeton equivalent, POL 240, for some reason, evades the typical 100-level nomenclature – is that the world exists in a state of anarchy. With its etymological origins in the ancient Greek words αν, the prefix denoting absence, and άρχον, the noun for leader, anarchy in international relations describes the lack of a global sovereign. But anarchy also means chaos. In 2022, Ukrainian villages and cities, once homes to graying couples and TikTok teens, turned into shaded regions in operational maps as the entire country morphed into a battlefield. This week’s assigned material pokes holes at the veil of chaos that covered Ukraine after the Russian invasion.
The BBC top-down analysis included a commentary by Professor Timothy Garton Ash of Oxford University which framed the Ukraine war as a contest of worldviews. Connecting current events to critical points of disjuncture in European history, namely the 1945 Yalta conference and the 1975 Helsinki Final Act, Ash interprets this war as a competition between the Yalta world of spheres of influence, and Helsinki’s world of transnational democratic solidarity. Though the conflict in Ukraine is itself unprecedented, it is underpinned by timeless items of the European geopolitical agenda. Allan Little’s piece was overall focused on high politics; yet, the closing paragraph quoting former Defense Secretary Rober McNamara, made me realize just how little actual control exists over a war. “Robert McNamara explained how the world had avoided destroying itself. Was it skilled diplomacy? Wise leadership? No. “Luck,” he said. “We lucked out.” These phrases made me wonder how lucky we have been during this war. Has a nuclear catastrophe already been averted? And how much longer will our luck last?
As a student of geopolitics, delving deeper into the worlds of Hobbes, Grotius, and Kant, often means seeing the real world grow increasingly distant. History, not the one with a capital H, but rather ordinary narratives, is often overlooked. It is accounts like Munachi and Alyona’s as presented on the This American Life podcast or reports like Lindsey Hilsum’s that can restore humanity, this time with a capital H, both in the study and conduct of international affairs. Those two pieces made the story of Ukraine personal. They also humanized it, and for me, the way they did that was through the use of humor. Conventional conflict coverage tends to focus on the grimmest and most brutal aspects of wars (which are obviously necessary to document so that justice can be pursued in the future). But scenes like the one in the WBEZ prologue where the dog pees on the Russian tank, or when Katia, refers to Zelensky as a sex symbol and his speech as ASMR for Westerners, or when Munachi says “I’m not a refugee bro, maybe you are, but not me,” and even when the hospitalized boy writes “‘Putin is a dick!’” on his iPad, stood out. Not only did they offer comedic relief, but importantly they were a portal to our shared humanity. They make the reader realize that Ukrainians are not unidimensional characters, mere protagonists in a faraway tragedy, but people just like us. People who still crack jokes.
