{"id":21566,"date":"2022-02-26T11:31:46","date_gmt":"2022-02-26T19:31:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=21566"},"modified":"2022-02-26T11:31:48","modified_gmt":"2022-02-26T19:31:48","slug":"we-have-never-been-here-before","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2022\/02\/26\/we-have-never-been-here-before\/","title":{"rendered":"WE HAVE NEVER BEEN HERE BEFORE"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Feb. 25, 2022 (NYTimes.com)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
A Soviet-era statue in Oleksandriya, Ukraine, titled \u201cKnowledge Is Strength\u201d was transformed a few weeks ago to include a Ukrainian flag.Credit\u2026Brendan Hoffman for The New York Times<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Thomas<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

By Thomas L. Friedman<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Opinion Columnist<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The seven most dangerous words in journalism are: \u201cThe world will never be the same.\u201d In over four decades of reporting, I have rarely dared use that phrase. But I\u2019m going there now in the wake of Vladimir Putin\u2019s invasion of Ukraine<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our world is not going to be the same again because this war has no historical parallel. It is a raw, 18th-century-style land grab by a superpower \u2014 but in a 21st-century globalized world. This is the first war that will be covered on TikTok by super-empowered individuals armed only with smartphones, so acts of brutality will be documented and broadcast worldwide without any editors or filters. On the first day of the war, we saw invading Russian tank units unexpectedly being exposed<\/a> by Google maps, because Google wanted to alert drivers that the Russian armor was causing traffic jams.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You have never seen this play before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes, the Russian attempt to seize Ukraine is a throwback to earlier centuries \u2014 before the democracy revolutions in America and France \u2014 when a European monarch or Russian czar could simply decide that he wanted more territory, that the time was ripe to grab it, and so he did. And everyone in the region knew he would devour as much as he could and there was no global community to stop him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In acting this way today, though, Putin is not only aiming to unilaterally rewrite the rules of the international system that have been in place since World War II \u2014 that no nation can just devour the nation next door \u2014 he is also out to alter that balance of power that he feels was imposed on Russia after the Cold War.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That balance \u2014 or imbalance in Putin\u2019s view \u2014 was the humiliating equivalent of the Versailles Treaty\u2019s impositions on Germany after World War I. In Russia\u2019s case, it meant Moscow having to swallow NATO\u2019s expansion not only to include the old Eastern European countries that had been part of the Soviet Union\u2019s sphere of influence, like Poland, but even, in principle, states that were part of the Soviet Union itself, like Ukraine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I see many people citing Robert Kagan\u2019s fine book \u201cThe Jungle Grows Back<\/a>\u201d as a kind of shorthand for the return of this nasty and brutish style of geopolitics that Putin\u2019s invasion manifests. But that picture is incomplete. Because this is not 1945 or 1989. We may be back in the jungle \u2014 but today the jungle is wired. It is wired together more intimately than ever before by telecommunications; satellites; trade; the internet; road, rail and air networks; financial markets; and supply chains. So while the drama of war is playing out within the borders of Ukraine, the risks and repercussions of Putin\u2019s invasion are being felt across the globe \u2014 even in China, which has good cause to worry about its friend in the Kremlin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Welcome to World War Wired \u2014 the first war in a totally interconnected world. This will be the Cossacks meet the World Wide Web. Like I said, you haven\u2019t been here before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been less than 24 hours since Russia invaded Ukraine, yet we already have more information about what\u2019s going on there than we would have in a week during the Iraq war,\u201d wrote Daniel Johnson, who served as an infantry officer and journalist with the U.S. Army in Iraq, in Slate<\/a> on Thursday afternoon. \u201cWhat is coming out of Ukraine is simply impossible to produce on such a scale without citizens and soldiers throughout the country having easy access to cellphones, the internet and, by extension, social media apps. A large-scale modern war will be livestreamed, minute by minute, battle by battle, death by death, to the world. What is occurring is already horrific, based on the information released just on the first day.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
A Ukrainian volunteer paramedic at a base in Pavlograd on Thursday sharing a video of the Ukrainian military using anti-aircraft weapons.Credit\u2026Lynsey Addario for The New York Times<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"A
A woman recording fragments of a downed aircraft in Kyiv on Friday.Credit\u2026Lynsey Addario for The New York Times<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The outcome of this war will depend in large part on the will of the rest of the world to deter and roll back Putin\u2019s blitzkrieg by primarily using economic sanctions and by arming the Ukrainians with antiaircraft and anti-tank weaponry to try to slow his advance. Putin may also be forced to consider the death toll of his own comrades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Will Putin be brought down by imperial overstretch? It is way too soon to say. But I am reminded these days of what a different warped leader who decided to devour his neighbors in Europe observed. His name was Adolf Hitler, and he said<\/a>: \u201cThe beginning of every war is like opening the door into a dark room. One never knows what is hidden in the darkness.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Putin\u2019s case, I find myself asking: Does he know what is hiding in plain sight and not just in the dark? Does he know not only Russia\u2019s strengths in today\u2019s new world but also its weaknesses? Let me enumerate them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Russia is in the process of forcibly taking over a free country with a population of 44 million people, which is a little less than one-third the size of Russia\u2019s population. And the majority of these Ukrainians have been struggling to be part of the democratic, free-market West for 30 years and have already forged myriad trade, cultural and internet ties to European Union companies, institutions and media.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We know that Putin has vastly improved Russia\u2019s armed forces, adding everything from hypersonic missile capabilities to advanced cyberwarfare tools. He has the firepower to bring Ukraine to heel. But in this modern era we have never seen an unfree country, Russia, try to rewrite the rules of the international system and take over a free country that is as big as Ukraine \u2014 especially when the unfree country, Russia, has an economy that is smaller than that of Texas<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then think about this: Thanks to rapid globalization, the E.U. is already Ukraine\u2019s biggest trading partner \u2014 not Russia. In 2012, Russia was the destination for 25.7 percent of Ukrainian exports, compared with 24.9 percent going to the E.U. Just six years later, after Russia\u2019s brutal seizure of Crimea and support of separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine and Ukraine\u2019s forging of closer ties with the E.U. economically and politically, \u201cRussia\u2019s share of Ukrainian exports had fallen to only 7.7 percent, while the E.U.\u2019s share shot up to 42.6 percent,\u201d according to a recent analysis<\/a> published by Bruegel.org.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If Putin doesn\u2019t untangle those ties, Ukraine will continue drifting into the arms of the West \u2014 and if he does untangle them, he will strangle Ukraine\u2019s economy. And if the E.U. boycotts a Russia-controlled Ukraine, Putin will have to use Russia\u2019s money to keep Ukraine\u2019s economy afloat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Was that factored into his war plans? It doesn\u2019t seem like it. Or as a retired Russian diplomat in Moscow emailed me: \u201cTell me how this war ends? Unfortunately, there is no one and nowhere to ask.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But everyone in Russia will be able to watch. As this war unfolds on TikTok, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, Putin cannot closet his Russian population \u2014 let alone the rest of the world \u2014 from the horrific images that will come out of this war as it enters its urban phase. On just the first day of the war, more than 1,300 protesters across Russia, many of them chanting \u201cNo to war,\u201d were detained, The Times reported<\/a>, quoting a rights group. That\u2019s no small number in a country where Putin brooks little dissent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And who knows how those images will affect Poland, particularly as it gets overrun by Ukrainian refugees. I particularly mention Poland because it is Russia\u2019s key land bridge to Germany and the rest of Western Europe. As strategist Edward Luttwak pointed out on Twitter, if Poland just halts truck and rail traffic from Russia to Germany, \u201cas it should<\/a>,\u201d it would create immediate havoc for Russia\u2019s economy, because the alternative routes are complicated and need to go through a now very dangerous Ukraine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anyone up for an anti-Putin trucker strike to prevent Russian goods going to and through Western Europe by way of Poland? Watch that space. Some super-empowered Polish citizens with a few roadblocks, pickups and smartphones could choke Russia\u2019s whole economy in this wired world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n