Sociopolitical Background of the Ukraine Crisis.

A Psychoanalyst’s Point of View

Few weeks before the onset of the military action in the Ukraine I published several postings on issues that pertain to ‘group psychology’ like self-deception, hate, projection., etc. I was trying to use the psychoanalytic way of understanding matters, which could be initiated by ‘group psychologies too, to highlight the use of analytic thinking outside the Clinique. Soon after the start of the crisis in the Ukraine it became clear  that not only analysts, but an astonishing range of people-including politicians (active in the politics of Europe at this time) did not realize or understand the basic-background- of this crisis. The difficulty this lack of knowledge creates is making the ordinary citizen prone to being misled by politicians-intentionally or unintentionally- if they are ignorant as the case is in the Ukraine war. Politics and history of political crises were and still are of major interest to me since I was politically active in my youth, in my country Egypt.

Two years ago, I finished reading a very intelligent book on the history of the rise and fall of empires. It started with the Babylonian empire, ending with the Western, or the European  Empire, which is now an American extension of the vanished British Empire. The evolution of the human race, and the recent vanishing importance of distance and time in our Globe earth, facilitated the emergence of several centers of power in the world, after long centuries of the dominance of one or two empires at a time, at most. All that led to a major...major change in the concept of coexistence on ‘earth’. The Western or the European Empire, that owned the world by hock and crock and now with the USA as its extension exploited most of the world for six long centuries. After three wars of its own making in one century this empire destroyed itself while the rest of the world was constructing a worldwide concept of coexistence. The European Empire was created by the West occupied and established colonies all over the world, exploiting their wealth, fought among themselves, but uniting against the exploited colonies and helping each other in keeping the grip of domination.

After the two big wars Western Europe in Europe the west was looking for ideological thought to stay floating. The two wars made Europeans become politically more mature and improvise defined socio-political programs to be govern accordingly. The political parties-including the communist parties- created political democracy from those conflicting ideologies. Yet, one overriding idea (value) remained and protected democracy from being stifled by another Hitler, i.e., “reform and not change”. Western Europe -which is now named The European Union, is the modern and more civilized image of the old, outdated concept of an empire. The USA helped the old empire to get the time to rebuild and renew itself. Russia was not part of that movement on the road to the unity of Europe because it was building on its revolution in 1917 when WWII started. It was devastated by the WWII more than any other European country because they all had colonies that were lifesavers while Russia did not have any. Nevertheless, the West considered Russia a dangerous adversary (because of communism) and adopted with it the same attitude it took from Nitze Germany. They were not yet completely recovered from WWII to attack her, so they created NATO. It is a military face of a dying empire that could not surpass the Russian’s speed in recovering from the war.

NATO is the last breath in the dying Western Empire. I must explain why what is happening since the end of WWII is manifestation of the gradual death of this Empire. The death of empires is preceded by the birth of small political entities and the weakness of the central authority. Just to make it brief, the weakness and end of the great ruling families (the Romanovs, the Hapsburgs, etc.)  was the onset of the decline of the old Europe and the beginning of the last phase in that decline.  

The war in the Ukraine is one of the results of the decline and the falling of the Euro-American empire. After the Second World War; the Western European-American empire denied and avoided facing up to that three things: A. They are not anymore, the socio-cultural-moral power they were before for  several centuries, B. They do not have an enemy to hate and endeavor to crush, so they had to find one or create it.  C. Communism, after succeeding in getting both China and Russia out of their old decayed political states, has changed to become the basis of stronger and more advanced capitalist countries; it made social justice a fundamental component of governing whether it was conservative or liberal.

As was explained in previous postings, two senior employees (von Leyen and Stoltenberg) in the European Union, who were also a bad mix of ignorance and arrogance, took on themselves to revive a dying Western Empire and the disappearance of the need for NATO. NATO was created by a dozen countries to protect the European union from communist Russia. Russa is not a communist country anymore and it did not object to its precious allies to join NATO. So, creating from Russia an imaginary danger lets politicians play a game of public opinion that misleads the subjects of that empire. And that is what is happening now in sometimes vulgar ways.

The danger of communism does not exist anymore. The links between the West and Russia is evident and undeniable in the industrial integration between the two old enemies. Human mutual interests are not hampered anymore by political conflicts. Russia cannot be ignored as different from Western Europe in all aspects of life {do not foul yourselves with the notions of dictatorship. Russia once had a bad political politician named Yeltsin who was as comic as Trump is}. Therefore, the war in the Ukraine is understandable as a residue of the vanishing Western Empire and concepts like democracy, social values, our this and that, have to gradually and even better quickly  to disappear because we are already few steps inside a less narcissistic world and a more global meaning of world.