The Roman Philosopher Lucius Anneaus Seneca (4 BCE-65 CE) was perhaps the first to note the universal trend that growth is slow but ruin is rapid. I call this tendency the "Seneca Effect."

Monday, March 20, 2023

Putin Must Die! How to make sure that the war will not end soon





As a comment to the recent decision of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague to issue an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin, I propose here an excerpt from the chapter titled "The Evil Side of Collapse" of my book, "Before Collapse," (2019). In the book, I argue that there is a way to reduce the impact of systemic collapse that I call the "Seneca Strategy," which consists in accepting an unavoidable decline in order to soften a later crash. Conversely, there exists also an "anti-Seneca" strategy that consists in forcing the system to resist decline at all costs. The result is that the collapse is postponed but, when it comes, it is rapid and disastrous. It may be applied in a military conflict when the objective is the utter and total destruction of one's enemy. It consists in making it clear to enemy leaders that they will be treated as criminals if they surrender so that they will keep fighting to the bitter end. It was applied by the Allies during WWII, as I briefly discuss here. 



From "Before Collapse,"  di Ugo Bardi, Springer 2019 (*)


In military matters, there exists an “anti-Seneca” strategy that consists in disregarding Sun Tzu’s principle of minimum effort, aiming instead at continuing the war all the way to the complete military defeat, or even the annihilation, of the enemy. Such a plan could be based on ideological, political, or religious considerations leading one or both sides to believe that the very existence of the other is a deadly threat that must be removed using force. In ancient times, religious hatred led to the extermination of entire populations, and there is a rather well-known statement that may have been pronounced after the fall of the Albigensian city of Béziers, in Southern France, in 1209. It is said that the Papal legate who was with the attacking Catholic troops was asked what to do with the citizens, which surely included both Catholics and Albigensian heretics. The answer was, "Kill them all; God will know His own." 

That war, just like most modern wars, was an “identity war” where the enemy is seen as not just an adversary, but an evil entity to be destroyed. These wars tend to be brutal and carried on all the way to the total extermination of the losing side. In some cases, though, wars may be prolonged simply because they are good business for some people and companies on both sides.

A possible case of this kind of “anti-Seneca” strategy may be found in the campaign that was started in the US in 1914 to provide food for Belgium during the First World War. The campaign is normally described as a great humanitarian success, but in the recent book Prolonging the Agony (2018),  the authors, Docherty and Macgregor, suggest that the relief effort was just the facade for the real task of the operation: supplying food to Germany so that the German army could continue fighting until it was completely destroyed. This interpretation appears to be mainly speculation, but we can't ignore that Belgium was occupied by the German army at that time, and so it could be expected that at least part of the food sent there would end up in German hands. 

Something more ominous took place during the Second World War. By September 1943, after the surrender of Italy, it must have been clear to everybody on both sides that the Allies had won the war; it was only a question of time for them to finish the job. So, what could have prevented the German government from following the example of Italy and deciding to surrender, maybe ousting Hitler, as the Italian government had done with Mussolini? We do not know whether some members of the German leadership considered this strategy, but it seems clear that the Allies did not encourage them. One month after Italy surrendered, in October 1943, Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin, signed a document known as the “Moscow Declaration.” Among other things, it stated that:

At the time of granting of any armistice to any government which may be set up in Germany, those German officers and men and members of the Nazi party who have been responsible for or have taken a consenting part in the above atrocities, massacres and executions will be sent back to the countries in which their abominable deeds were done … and judged on the spot by the peoples whom they have outraged.

… most assuredly the three Allied powers will pursue them to the uttermost ends of the earth and will deliver them to their accusors in order that justice may be done. … <else> they will be punished by joint decision of the government of the Allies.

What was the purpose of broadcasting this document that threatened the extermination of the German leadership, knowing that it would have been read by the Germans, too? The Allies seemed to want to make sure that the German leaders understood that there was no space to negotiate an armistice. The only way out left to the German military was to take the situation into their own hands to get rid of the leaders that the Allied had vowed to punish. That was probably the reason for the assassination attempt carried out against Adolf Hitler on June 20th, 1944. It failed, and we will never know if it would have shortened the war.

Perhaps as a reaction to the coup against Hitler in Germany, a few months later, on September 21, 1944, the Allies publicly diffused a plan for post-war Germany that had been approved at the Quebec Conference by the British and American governments. The plan, known as the “Morgenthau Plan,” was proposed by Henry Morgenthau Jr. secretary of the Treasury of the United States. Among other things, it called for the complete destruction of Germany’s industrial infrastructure and the transformation of Germany into a purely agricultural society at a nearly Medieval technology level. If carried out as stated, the plan would have killed millions of Germans since German agriculture, alone, would have been unable to sustain the German population. The plan was initially approved by the US president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. 

Unlike the Moscow declaration that aimed at punishing German leaders, the Morgenthau plan called for the punishment of the whole German population. Again, the proponents could not have been unaware that their plan was visible to the Germans and that the German government would have used it as a propaganda tool. President Roosevelt's son-in-law, Lt. Colonel John Boettiger, stated that the Morgenthau Plan was "worth thirty divisions to the Germans." The general upheaval against the plan among the US leadership led President Roosevelt to disavow it. But it may have been one of the reasons that led the Germans to fight like cornered rats to the bitter end.

So, what was the idea behind the Morgenthau plan? As you may imagine, the story generated a number of conspiracy theories. One of these theories proposes that the plan was not conceived by Morgenthau himself, but by his assistant secretary, Harry Dexter White⁠. After the war, White was accused of being a Soviet spy by the Venona investigation, a US counterintelligence effort started during WW2 that was the prelude to the well-known “Witch Hunts” carried out by Senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s. According to a later interpretation⁠, White had acted under instructions from Stalin himself, who wanted the Germans to suffer under the Allied occupation so much that they would welcome a Soviet intervention. It goes without saying that this is just speculation, but, since this chapter deals with the evil side of collapse, this story fits very well with it.

There is no evidence that the Morgenthau plan was conceived by evil people gathering in secret in a smoke-filled room. Rather, it has certain logic if examined from the point of view of the people engaged in the war effort against Germany in the 1940s. They had seen Germany rebuilding its army and restarting its war effort to conquer Europe just 20 years after it had been defeated in a way that seemed to be final, in 1918. It is not surprising that they wanted to make sure that it could not happen again. But, according to their experience, it was not sufficient to defeat Germany to obtain that result: no peace treaty, no matter how harsh on the losers, could obtain that. The only way to put to rest the German ambitions of conquest forever was by means of the complete destruction of the German armed forces and the occupation of all of Germany. For this, the German forces had to fight like cornered rats. And it seems reasonable that if you want a rat to fight in that way, you have to corner it first. The Morgenthau plan left no hope for the Germans except in terms of a desperate fight to the last man.

We do not know whether the people who conceived the plan saw it in these terms. The documents we have seem to indicate that there was a strong feeling among the people of the American government during the war about the need to punish Germany and the Germans, as described, for instance, in Beschloss’s book The Conquerors. Whatever the case, fortunately, the Morgenthau plan was never officially adopted, and, in 1947, the US changed its focus from destroying Germany to rebuilding it by means of the Marshall plan.

There have been other cases of wars where there was no attempt to apply the wise strategy proposed by Sun-Tzu, who suggests always leaving the enemy a way to escape. Nowadays, wars seem to be becoming more and more polarized and destructive, just like the political debate. Once a war has started, the only way to conclude it seems to be the complete collapse of the enemy and the extermination of its leaders. The laughter of the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, at the news of the murder of the leader of Libya, Muammar Gaddafi, in 2011 is a case in point of how brutal these confrontations have become. It is hard to see how the trend in this direction could be reversed until the current international system of interaction among states that created it collapses. At least, it should be clear that the anti-Seneca strategy is an especially inefficient way to win wars.




(*) This is a lightly edited text from an early version of the book. 

13 comments:

  1. "How to Make Sure that a War Will Last for a Long Time - [by] Threaten[ing] Enemy Leaders with Criminal Charges" ?

    No - but rather the leaders of the enemy themselves should be implanted in power first - to play enemy-leaders - well before a war is started....

    It cannot be that Lenin and his comrades have been assisted by the West to acquire power in Russia in 1917, but Putin in 2000 has managed to set up himself free from the control of the West...

    It cannot be that Mao and his party have been assisted by the West to acquire power in China during the 1940s, and retain it for that long, but Xi is now a free leader and not controlled by the West...

    Nasir, Khadhafi, Saddam, Khomeini, too, and the list goes on and on...

    In 1988, Iraqis couldn't believe that Iran agreed to stop the 8 years-long Iraq-Iran war...

    They didn't know that after only one year or so, their country will be destroyed by another manufactured war - the 1991 Gulf War, and further destroyed by 2003 US Invasion and more destroyed in 2014 ISIS War...

    Now, they understand well why Iran has agreed to stop the war in 1988....

    The readers of this blog will never be able to imagine how the coverage of the 20th anniversary of the 2003 US invasion of Iraq by the media in the ME - has been intense and harsh on the US - all last week and still...

    In 2003, Iraqis were not believing that the US is so honest to acknowledge that no WMDs have been found in Iraq, but at the same time - the Americans have killed so many innocent Iraqi civilians and destroyed that much in the country...

    Something was not quite right - the double personality of the US honesty and brutality at the same time - sounded similar to 1988 when Iran strangely agreed to stop the Iraq-Iran war....

    Now one guesses that the "No WMDs" has been intentionally left embedded in the events of the 2003 - to be used later, probably soon, to implode Iraq from the inside out...

    And probably that is also similar to not dusting the legs of the moon-landing module - prior to producing the infamous NASA photos - where the gear strangely appeared clean, pristine, shiny as if the landing happened in a semiconductors-making clean-room...

    ...intentionally leaving an event (or a leader) in the past that helps imploding a nation or nations - down the track, in the future - is scary, indeed...

    Fossil fuels are so energy-dense and the West has burned so much of them - since James Watt - all events in the future appear to have become long pre-decided and choreographed...

    This far, fossil fuels kill the future, rendering it a history before the future even born...

    The more the future becomes highly violent (France's ongoing riots), radical, dramatic (the mighty Credit Swiss goes bankrupt), accelerated (the ongoing Banking crises is even unfolding and progressing during weekends) - the more one understands that less and less producible fossil fuels are remaining in the ground...

    Humans were not ready morally, ethically and intellectually to start mass extraction of finite fossil fuels with the advent of the steam engine 300 years ago...

    "In any system of energy, Control is what consumes energy the most"

    Wailing.

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  2. And what happens if the side making the threats comes out defeated? In the current conflict, the informational warfare is so high, that I confess my inability to come up with the faintest idea of who might win the war. I don't even know how to define victory in this case.

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    1. Good question. Would the Nazis have hanged Churchill or Bomber Harris for war crimes if they had won the war? The only thing that we can say is that, nowadays, the typical punishment for the leaders of the losing side is hanging.

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    2. At first, the Russians threatened a criminal court for Ukrainian leaders. After the confession of Merkel and Hollande, they were also promised a trial. Of course, this means little, because all these people decide nothing. But why did Merkel admit to signing Minsk2 only to make the war possible? Was it to show that the West cannot be trusted? To make negotiations impossible? Whose idea was that?
      In Ukraine, it was mainly the weapons of the Red Army that were destroyed. No problem for NATO. Their capacities are greater than those of the Russians. In the long run, Russia loses. The point may be to get Russia to the point where they can only use a nuclear weapon. Then the U.S. can be the good guys if they respond nuclear.

      Mit Grüßen von Marcus aus Berlin

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    3. Marcus, could you give a hint what you are consuming?

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    4. Whats the problem?
      Marcus

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  3. It's going to be a real shock for most 'Westerners' - so US citizens & those of their European and other vassals - when Russia wins the war undeniably. Most of us have no clue how brainwashed we are by the MSM propaganda megaphones and haven't even noticed how alternative sources of news have been discouraged. RT to state one example is banned/blocked in places as if we were a dictatorship, yet if others' claim to be the truth are a lie, then those accusing them of lying should prove it; don't just remove access to it thus allowing the possibility of a conspiracy. Truth is always the first casualty in war, but it is wise to not automatically believe your 'own side' because most times they aren't acting in your best interests, their need to control their own people is far greater than attempting to influence the enemy's.

    Human nature is strange when in war after war, we later find out 'our leaders' lied to us, yet it somehow still never occurs to most people to at least think about it next time instead of blindly believing again. This is a good reason for our masters to keep starting wars to maintain their control over us while enriching themselves at the same time ......we do get the rulers we deserve.

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    1. Not that I don’t disagree. I still try to “balance” the media I see as I don’t trust main stream anymore (I obviously follow this blog) but at the same time I still don’t trust other sources any more.

      I think Putin knows what he is doing (he has a phd basically about commodity security so he is at least on paper an informed person even if by chance he got it by political means) but I do think the “winner” in all of this is still ultimately holder of a shrinking pie

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    2. Agreed, all I am asking of people is to think for yourself, at least by the time you become an adult in age and check for evidence in any claims, the more important the issue in your life, the more you should research the facts. Whatever Putin may be, he has out-played his opponents more or less every time in whatever occasion there has been rivalry, his greatest strength seems to be our arrogance in dealing with him, never learning to take him seriously, because that would mean admitting 'we' were wrong.

      As the global hydrocarbon stocks are squandered by our wasteful lifestyle, the resource pie is indeed shrinking - rapidly at that - but the winner in competing for it is still happy to have a smaller pie than nothing which is what the rest will have. History is most often an account of fighting to the death to obtain, retain or increase you nation's slice. As far as Russia is concerned, they are in a great position of natural luck relative to others, not landlocked, a significant amount of the world's remaining concentrated hydrocarbon fuels, fertilisers, minerals, agricultural production, metals, forests, water supplies....etc., etc., etc.

      That is why the US are advancing nato-by-proxy (using Ukrainians as cannon-fodder) up to their borders to provoke a war, to destabilise them to obtain their resources. But they are not a small or medium-sized opponent like Iraq & can actually fight back, leaving the real winner the US military-industrial complex as the rest of the world is intimidated by this war into escalating the ever-enduring arms race.

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  4. Joe Tzu (google image memes) is playing 4-D Chess with the Russians. We are in good hands folks!

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  5. A continued war diminishes the ability for the EU to have an electrical grid with prices and capacity enabling wide spread electric car adoption. In other news Fords electric vehicles aren't ready for production until 2024. Global semi conductor shortage still scheduled into 2024.

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  6. It will be interesting to see the balance of power now that Germany has no cheap Russian gas as the foundation for its formidable manufacturing industrial sector. Energy underpins any economy, not the paper IOUs we call cash or the digital equivalent shown by blinking lights on a computer screen. (which themselves illustrate this by needing energy to print or illuminate) With no cheap energy, Germany's economy in general and industrial sector in particular will stagnate like all the other European countries. Will it then still be able to dominate the rest any more if the financial muscle to bully them is no longer available? Having the largest population, but with less means to support it well turns into a disadvantage, so maybe this will be a consolation for European unity and quality of life, we'll be poorer, but with less neoliberal cruelty, so ironically, possibly a better society. Clearly, US-style mindless destructive consumption that destroys our own environment hasn't brought most of us happiness.

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  7. One of the obstacles to understanding the motives of Western leaders is the assumption that they are somewhat normal people with a shred of decency and would not intentionally plan the slaughter of countless innocent people. If we were led by psychopaths, what role do we play as individuals in passively approving their actions? Fundamentally I think this is the advantage state authors of propaganda have which allows relentless bold faced lies to roll out day after day. I believe Goebbels was known for advocating this approach and it is revisited in Orwell's 1984. We are having a hard time getting a handle on what is happening because we can't admit to ourselves that our own intelligence agency are unflinching liars 100% of the time.

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