A 48-hour rule for Russia-Ukraine
In the fog of war it can take some time for the truth to come out.
For some time, I’ve seen people propose a “48-hour rule” everyone should follow when a news story is going viral. The story might very well be true. Or, it could be missing crucial context, based on a misleading or incomplete video, or could be totally fabricated. Before launching a social media blitzkrieg, one should wait a decent period of time to make sure the story pans out, to make sure you don’t ruin an innocent person’s life and/or ruin your own by destroying your credibility and possibly getting sued.
48 hours is usually long enough to see the bigger picture (and is not to be confused with the five second rule and especially not the three second rule).
That goes double when we’re talking about a war. And Robin Häggblom, writing for The Cosmopolitan Globalist, argues that we don’t know nearly as much about Putin’s “special military operation” in Ukraine as we think we do:
You might think, if you tune in on Twitter, that every aspect of Putin’s war on Ukraine is being live-streamed. In earlier wars, we’ve seen embedded journalists get close access to combat units. These days, professional journalists—local and foreign, with both demonstrating great courage—are joined by countless civilians who share images, texts, and videos from their neighborhoods. Because of this, people outside of Ukraine (and to some extent, inside) risk mistakenly thinking that they know exactly how the war is going.
It’s easy to fall into this trap. This leads to bias, chiefly because reporters, bloggers, and other people who like to hear their own voices have a tendency to tell stories about what they know, rather than explain everything they don’t. In a war full of remarkable people and events, there are certainly more stories that deserve to be told than there is bandwidth.
Ukraine’s remarkable effectiveness in shaping the information space distorts reality, too. The Ukrainian political and military leadership has skilfully set the agenda, and Ukrainian civilians are surprisingly OPSEC-savvy: They don’t share a whole lot of images depicting Ukrainian movements or losses.
Finally, the fog of war usually gives us a false picture of events. We often think we know something that later turns out to be untrue.
[…]
Our picture of the operations is still fragmented. We can indeed say that some Russian ideas have proven less than stellar—like sending tanks unsupported into urban combat and conducting airborne operations without adequate support. But in truth, we already knew those ideas were stupid; it’s been proven many times.
There are some interesting and unexpected developments worth noting, such the problem Russia’s had in establishing air superiority, including its inability to stop he relatively limited force of Ukraine’s Bayraktar TB2s (According to the Oryx blog, the Bayraktars have scored confirmed hits on 36 vehicles and two fuel trains.) But we don’t yet have the full picture: Which weapons, exactly, have been responsible for the spectacular images we’ve been seeing of Russia’s most-modern armored vehicles reduced to burnt-out scrap metal?
Ukrainians, to an extent, are feeding us a curated version of the war. In the years after the conflict, veterans and eyewitnesses at every level will be interviewed. Then we’ll begin to get a complete picture of what worked and what didn’t in Putin’s latest war. Then we can start arguing about which lessons have general applicability and which were particular to this war’s circumstances.
As of now, we don’t yet know which lessons to learn.
I strongly support Ukraine in this conflict, as do most of you, and I sincerely hope reports about Russia’s shocking under-performance on the battlefield are accurate. (That Putin’s initial goals haven’t been met is beyond dispute, but that doesn’t mean the fight has been as one-sided as Telegram channels and TikTok accounts would have you believe.)
Of course, it’s reports of alleged atrocities and war crimes by Russian troops that really get the bile rising. As I write this, videos purporting to show the shooting of unarmed Ukrainian demonstrators are going viral.
These are the things we have to be doubly careful about, precisely because anger and outrage are the ultimate motivators. If we’re going to, say, impose a no-fly zone over Ukraine (which is strongly endorsed by my heart and opposed just as strongly by my head) we’d better be sure we have a good reason. I’ve already been burned once this century by supporting a destructive war launched for reasons that turned out to be untrue.
More importantly, the line between punishing Russia and its government, and punishing Russian people regardless of their station in life or position on the war, has been badly blurred, often by the same people who’ve been warning us not to blame all Muslims for 9/11 or Chinese people for COVID-19.
Even publicly opposing Putin, at potentially great personal cost, won’t necessarily save you from cancellation:
When it cancelled a young Russian's piano performance this week, the Montreal Symphony Orchestra was reacting to a wave of protest from the Ukrainian community.
But after announcing the decision, it was suddenly buffeted by a new wave of protest -- in the opposite direction, as hundreds of people argued this wasn't a useful reaction to the invasion of Ukraine.
"It's absurd," said one person reacting on social media, while others called it "gross," "dangerous" and even "bigoted."
If virtuoso Alexander Malofeev isn't sponsored by or representing his state, many argued -- which he doesn't appear to be -- then he should be left alone, as an independent citizen who's only well known because of his musical talent.
What further upset many critics is that Malofeev, 20, has been outspoken against the invasion, which carries serious risks right now in Russia. The news also came amid a spate of stories of regular Russians, such as restaurant owners in New York, being punished over the Russian state's actions.
Even a U.K. performance of Tchaikovsky, a long-dead Russian composer, was nixed.
[…]
Those who have studied and organized major sanction campaigns, such as those against Israel and South Africa, say they don't consider boycotting people like Malofeev a constructive or ethical way to pressure a state.
Others pointed out the long history of ethnic discrimination against broad groups, like Japanese Canadians during World War II, for state actions unrelated to them.
But Montreal Ukrainians said this week that to them, it's more a matter of taste and timing than creating political pressure, let alone condoning a long-term slippery slope.
"I think that right now is a very sensitive time," said Michael Schwec, the head of the Quebec branch of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, which also called for Malofeev not to appear.
"To celebrate Russian achievement... it's not appropriate."
He said it is meaningful to him that Malofeev has spoken against the war. "I think it's extremely important, you know, when people dissent, that they express themselves," he said.
But he thought it still wouldn't have been sensitive to let him play this week, and that he was annoyed to be asked if he "feels bad" for Malofeev.
"Think of all the Ukrainian pianists who just got bombed, you know what I mean?" he said.
If I were Ukrainian I’d probably feel the same way. But this was literally the logic behind internment. (“Why should I feel bad for these Japanese people after the Rape of Nanking?”)
Putin and Russia should be sanctioned, and innocent (and even anti-Putin) Russians will be unavoidable collateral damage. But sanctions should be wielded like a scalpel, not a chainsaw.
The always thoughtful Conor Friedersdorf sets forth some useful ground rules:
The first rule of canceling Russia should be: If a given action is likely to harm innocents without any meaningful benefit to Ukraine, that’s a needless excess, not a necessary evil.
Violations of the rule are popping up everywhere. The Washington Post reports that “in the Czech Republic, where people still recall the trauma of the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, recent social media posts have suggested Russian citizens ‘should be visibly marked, maybe with a red star.’ The morning after the invasion, a Prague university professor wrote on Facebook that he would not teach or test Russian students.” The New York Times reports that “Russian restaurants in New York City have a public relations problem. Even though many of the owners are openly against the war, or are even Ukrainian, they are getting burned by reservation cancellations, social media campaigns and bad reviews.”
Treating Russian nationals in this way is cruel. And as Dan Kois persuasively argues in Slate, it also undermines Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s efforts to appeal directly to individual Russians’ honor and desire for peace. “Many Russians living abroad despise this war and the regime that has instigated it,” Kois notes. “Those Russian émigrés are a direct line to the Russian citizens whose resistance to the conflict and recognition of the rights of Ukraine could be crucial in bringing the war to an end.”
[…]
Last month, the European Broadcasting Union barred Russia from the Eurovision Song Contest, a popular televised competition in which musicians compete not as individual artists but as designees of their home country. This decision abides by a second rule: In sports, the arts, and other cultural fields, don’t discriminate against people who merely happen to be from a sanctioned country, but when artists or athletes are officially representing that country, those activities can be more justifiably constrained.
[…]
Our ability to tolerate contrary views brings us to a third rule: In our zeal to punish Russia, we in the United States should strenuously resist the reckless but seemingly inevitable calls to impinge on Americans’ core civil liberties, including free speech. How perverse that such general protections are so often attacked during war––if honored, they are among our most reliable bulwarks against wartime excesses, because they help conscientious skeptics challenge mobs so convinced of their own righteousness that they lose sight of their fallibility. So no more frivolous treason accusations aimed at people engaged in lawful, constitutionally protected speech. And no more calling for American pundits “to be tried at The Hague as a disinformation agent in Putin’s war.” Critics of any approach must get their say.
When your second child is born, you don’t divide up your love between your children. You multiply it.
We have to do the same thing with our compassion for people caught up in this horrible war - and, yes, that includes some Russians who never wanted this or have been brainwashed and threatened into thinking they do want it.
If one is going to indulge in virtue signaling, which is what at least some of this cancellation stuff amounts to, one should perhaps be sure of his own virtue first. The desire for reprisal and retaliation are quite human and understandable. But they are based on emotion and not reason and are anything but virtuous when pursued absent reason, common sense or moral clarity. And especially when they are sought as nothing more than a balm for a self-righteous ego and will produce no result other than that, and harm, financial or otherwise, to someone undeserving of it.
True virtue is about walking the walk, not talking the talk. So, for example, if you don't want to eat borscht in a restaurant owned by a Russian-American or a Russian resident, don't. That's your prerogative. But unless you can prove those people support Putin's evil or that the money spent there is going to help advance it in some way, don't get in the way of those who don't share your desire to engage in thoughtless behavior, and who'd like to patronize an establishment owned by folks who just may be their neighbors and are not, in fact, our enemy.