Politics
Ukraine: Does the End Justify the Means?
Exactly how far will a sane person go to justify achieving an objective? If there’s no limit, then does that indicate insanity?
The moral question
This old question has been on my mind for a few days now as I read about the action of Putin’s forces in the Ukraine.
I’m not really sure it’s a question of morality, but that’s how I see it, with my now atheistic outlook following a Welsh non-conformist upbringing.
Apparently it’s something to do with teleology:
Teleology or finality is a reason or an explanation for something which serves as a function of its end, its purpose, or its goal, as opposed to something which serves as a function of its cause. — Wikipedia
It seems a bit deep reading it like that, and reminds me a little of the definition of ‘recursion’. If you have been a computer programmer then you’ll know what that means. Recursion: For definition see recursion.
But this question is much more serious than disappearing up your own rear end, and a post on Telegram from Ukraine led me to put fingers to keyboard:
The text of the message is:
⚡️Russia plans terrorist attacks on its own territory to force anti-Ukrainian hysteria and to mobilize people
“Russian special services are planning a series of terrorist attacks to mine and blow up residential buildings, hospitals and schools in the Russian settlements. As well as rocket-bomb attacks on the city of Belgorod or one of the cities of Crimea”
Source: Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine
I have no way of knowing whether that is ‘true’ or not, but I have come to a point where I can quite believe it.
Putin has a dubious history
There are strong suspicions that a series of apartment block bombings in Russia in 1999 were orchestrated by Putin as a trigger for the second Chechen War.
There is “no serious doubt that Putin came to power as the result of an act of terror against his own people,” says David Satter, who has investigated the apartment bombings perhaps more thoroughly than any other Western journalist. “Someone capable of such a crime is capable of anything”. — Yahoo News (among other sources)
The result of that war was that in 2003 the United Nations called Grozny the most destroyed city on earth. Russian forces also perpetrated several massacres, tortured and forcibly disappeared thousands, and engaged in other grave abuses in “mop-up” operations (The Guardian).
Here’s Mariupol on 15 April:
The question
The ‘end justifies the means’ was not a question, but a statement made by Sergey Nechayev, the 19th century Russian revolutionary. Yes, Russia again. It means that if a goal is morally important enough, any method of getting it is acceptable.
And that’s the nub of it: ‘morally important enough’.
However, this thinking has also been attributed to writers such as Ovid and Machiavelli (in The Prince). Machiavelli asserted that the aims of princes — such as glory and survival — can justify the use of immoral means to achieve those ends.
This branch of political philosophy is referred to as rule-consequentialism. Throughout history, “The ends justify the means”, has provided a justification for the unjustifiable. … For example, Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin used consequentialism to justify their murderous political acts. — psichologyanswers.com
Maybe ‘the end’ (whatever that is) is morally important enough to Vladimir Putin and some of his fellow countrymen. I guess we could argue all day about what ‘morally’ means in this context, but let’s skip it for now.
Russian leaders have a history of deploying this argument, as indeed do many other despots that have come to power in their countries. Power corrupts etc., but maybe there is a propensity to corruption in the individual before power is acquired, probably starting in the school playground.
Putin was, in the words of the author Alex Goldfarb, “a schoolyard thug” who escaped prison only because of his talent for judo. — The Guardian
Understanding
Know your enemy (for that’s what any despot is as far as I am concerned) but try as I might to follow Sun Tzu’s advice, I cannot begin to understand or imagine what it must be like to order mass-murder in order to achieve an objective.
Surely these people are pyschopaths?
As a non-medical person I thought I’d better check the definition of ‘psychopath’ as I’m using it freely:
A mentally unstable person especially : a person having an egocentric and antisocial personality marked by a lack of remorse for one’s actions, an absence of empathy for others, and often criminal tendencies — Merriam-Webster
Is Putin mentally unstable?
I’m not qualified to judge. And even if I were, how would I get enough information to form an opinion other that what I read in the news media (variable veracity).
By his own statements Putin has started a ‘special military operation’. To anyone else it is a war.
Is there another explanation?
Perhaps Putin is not a psychopath and has now painted himself into a corner in Ukraine, the south east corner known as Donbas. He’s achieved this feat by the glorious failure of his army to invade Ukraine.
He has to save some face (and probably his head) within Russia and so he could do almost anything to achieve that.
Almost anything.
Is he mad enough?
Is the end morally important enough to him?
What means will the end justify?
Stage a mass killing of his own people? He’s had practice, it seems, with the Chechen war. Would he do that to justify the use of a tactical nuclear missile in Ukraine, thinking he could get away with it?
It’s would be only one small missile to send a message, he might reason. That’s hardly worth starting WWIII over, is it NATO?
Perhaps Putin is frighteningly sane as well as morally bankrupt.
And now the flagship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet has sunk. Moscow admits it, claim an accidental fire. I note that Russia is saying that all crew were evacuated to safety — no casualties have been reported.
Ukraine says it was hit by one of their home-built Neptune missiles.
And now the major assault in Donbas has started.
What will I be writing tomorrow?
Coda
Putin may be the man in charge, the person who started this war. But what about the grunts on the ground, all the Ivan the Terribles who are perpetrating this abomination?
What is their end that justifies these means, these mass killings which need never have happened?
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…states of mind I cannot begin to understand
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