oh, for Gandhi … woe for Gandhianism

Russia on a rampage.

Ukrainians can’t help but to get riled up and want to fight.

I believe lives would be saved via passive instead of active resistance.

It’s 2030 and Fate has run two experiments:

1) After six years of ghastly fighting Russia wound up with 32% percent of the territory, a frozen conflict, and 150,000 casualties; Ukrainian casualties numbered 200,000. Half of the countries in the world primarily impugned Russia, half primarily impugned Ukraine/NATO/US.

2) Ukraine offered token resistance. It solicited armaments and aid only from countries in the region which had a potentially direct self-defense interest in resisting Russian aggression. Russia swept through 65% of Ukrainian territory and managed to install a pro-Russian junta in Kyiv. The populace resisted passively. They refused to work and many refused to eat. Russian soldiers bullied as many as they could into the fields, the factories, and the offices to produce under coercion. But the GDP of Ukraine dropped precipitously by 80%. Russia tried to move some its own citizens into Ukraine but few people wanted to move into a calamity zone. World opinion was incensed and 80% of the countries impugned Russia as thousands of Ukrainians died from starvation and scarcity. Pressure was brought to bear on Russia such that it had to enter into negotiations. The end result, as of 2030, was that Russia was ceded 26% of the territory. The warfare ended. Casualties on each side numbered about 50,000.

* * * *

I liked the key value ‘Nonviolence’ and had the idea that the Greens were the first significant international political movement to interpret it in a Gandhian way.

With passive resistance many will die. I feel certain that fewer will die than when violence is met with violence.

But we can hardly abide the idea of a group being passive in the face of aggression (I don’t mean in a personal physical attack situation; of course one has the right of direct personal self-defense).

War is hell. People never seem to be able to fathom the hell beforehand. They always regret the hell afterward. Going to war is never worth it. Violence always begets violence. Escalation begets escalation.

Yet … when attacked, the adrenaline says: Fight back! It seems like the righteous thing to do. It seems cowardly not to do it.

I think with mostly passive resistance and avoiding being viewed as a NATO collaborator, Ukraine would suffer fewer casualties, gain world sympathy, and ultimately lose less territory. But (no matter) they’re in zealots mode to defeat the Russians and achieve vindication.

We can’t run two experiments. It’s all but certain that massive destruction and hundreds of thousands of deaths in glorious active resistance will be preferred to less destruction and tens of thousands of deaths in cowardly passive resistance.

Someday Greens might try to represent a new alternative to All That.