Is it simply too much effort not to have a war?

Examining historical parallels between World War I and the war in Ukraine

Exactly 107 years ago, from mid-August to mid-September, the region of Slovenia in which I took this picture saw some of the bloodiest fighting in the history of warfare, with millions of artillery shells fired and hundreds of thousands killed over the course of only a couple of weeks. In this eleventh offensive out of a two-year-long series of comparably bloody offensives, the attacking Italian army traded the lives of 200,000 young men for a mere 12 kilometres of Austro-Hungarian territory.

Over a million soldiers lost their lives in this beautiful mountain valley. Today, the only visible remnant of the horrors brought upon it are the dilapidated trenches hidden away in the forested mountain slopes and the occasional field of unassuming gravestones. Yet it was but one front of this war, but one of many battlefields in which millions of men both young and old lost their lives in combat or due to harsh weather, hunger, or disease. Many millions more were maimed for life; physically, mentally, and spiritually. As I was hiking through some of the military routes, trenches, and battlefields strewn about the stunning landscapes of Slovenia, my mind started mulling over the causes and consequences of the Great War. One of the main reasons I have always been so interested in learning more about this conflict, which is often overshadowed by the history and mythology surrounding the Second World War, is that I feel that it holds important lessons for understanding the risks and nature of a major war should it break out again.

Sleepwalking into total war
Eerily similar to the time leading up to the First World War, today global imperial powers are losing ground to rising competitors which they can no longer control or push around, and through their uncompromising attitudes and paranoia are creating an international atmosphere of mutual distrust and escalating tensions. Moreover, the logic of empire and great power politics that created that terrible conflict in the first place has never changed in all those years, although it has been neatly obscured by a veneer of human rights and democracy. What history tells us, is that as soon as the towers of hubris that our leaders have so comfortably constructed around themselves come crashing down under the weight their own nonsense, these overgrown infants will exhibit neither qualm nor hesitation in once again sending millions of us to our deaths and destroying everything else that is beautiful and sacred in this world. Human rights are great and all, but not if it comes at the cost of preserving their own power.

In many ways, World War I was a futile conflict that could have been avoided had the parties involved seriously pursued avenues for peace. Yet these went tragically unexplored. In essence, it was simply too much effort not to have a war. There were simply too many territories that needed to be conquered, too many resources waiting to be claimed, and too many historical rivalries that the militaristic nations were itching to settle on the battlefield.

Diplomatic solutions tend to be more difficult to achieve when there is a culture of animosity or rivalry towards the other side. For years, countries like Germany and the United Kingdom had been building up their armies and navies, seeing them as symbols of national pride and essential for their defence. In the decades leading up to the Great War, German power had been growing as it tried to secure its own piece of the global colonial pie. Other empires like France, Britain, and Russia saw this as a threat to their own imperial interests, and therefore formed an alliance against Germany and its ally Austria-Hungary. With the battle lines drawn and each country unwilling to entertain sharing control of the world with anyone else, the stage was set for escalating tensions and conflicts. All it took was one incident, which in the words of German statesman Otto van Bismarck turned out to be “some damned foolish thing in the Balkans”, for this entire powder keg to explode.

Map of the world - By Cookie030307 - Geography and Space, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=113818624

Only winners and losers
As politicians keep telling us that we need to be ‘preparing for war’, accept that we are living in a ‘pre-war epoch’ and that we have to ‘be ready for a conflict that would require wholesale change’ in our lives, it seems difficult to escape the thought that we are indeed on the verge of yet another horrible conflict after which, once again, the world will never be the same. But I think that that will only be the case if a certain way of thinking is allowed to prevail, one that has brought us to the brink of global war in the first place. It is a way of thinking that sees international relations only in terms of competition, as a zero-sum game with only winners and losers. Looking at the world through this lens, through these imperial goggles, you become convinced that it is not enough to simply succeed; you must also ensure that others fail. Wearing these goggles, I finally understand why, as Western politicians have admitted quite frankly, the real goal of the Ukraine war is to “weaken Russia”, if necessary down “to the last Ukrainian”.

A pair of imperialist goggles, guaranteed to ensure you only see the world through an imperialist lens. Proven 99% effective* through centuries-long field-testing. *In rare cases, revolutions may be closer than they appear. Picture by Robert Urbaschek.

Just like 107 years ago, what I see in Ukraine is Western leaders that claim to represent their people, trying the same failed strategies over and over again, throwing more men, more ammunition, and more money at a fight that can never be won. Just like the Russians, they lie and manipulate the media to ensure that most people remain unaware of the disastrous situation on the ground and the incredible risks involved, especially considering that both sides have enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world countless times over. Without following independent media or doing your own research you will likely only learn that the West is involved in a valiant, existential struggle for democracy and international law and that the Ukrainians are, thanks to its unwavering military support, defending their territories and on a path to a victory that is just around the corner.

Whereas the actual reality is that, while Russia has been thwarted from completely running over the country in the first months of the conflict, although it is still unclear whether that was ever its goal to begin with, Ukraine is losing this war and has been for quite some time. Just like in the Great War, the initial phase of mobile offensives has given way to a grinding stalemate, where neither side is able to decisively overcome the other, at least not without also incurring massive losses themselves. In the meantime, staggering numbers of shells and rockets will be fired and people will continue to die every single day.

In such a war of attrition, the side that can afford to lose the most soldiers and resources is at the advantage. In other words, Russia. The latest (13 August 2024) U.S. Department of Defense report confirms as much, stating that “Russia is deliberately exploiting its quantitative advantage to exhaust Ukraine” despite “high personnel and equipment costs”. The Ukrainian army on the other hand, it goes on to state, continues “to suffer heavy attrition rates” and lacks “sufficient capabilities and munitions [...] to overcome Russia’s air and ground advantages” and current U.S. aid will “almost certainly” be insufficient to “match or overcome Russia’s daily fire rate of 10,000 artillery rounds”. Western plans to force Russia to abandon its aims by crippling its economy through sanctions have proven to be wishful thinking.

💡The number of casualties
The exact number of casualties on both sides is difficult to determine, seeing as both the Russian and Ukrainian government are doing everything they can to keep their own casualties secret while undoubtedly overestimating how many the other is taking. Common sense would say the truth lies somewhere in the middle, although where exactly we probably will not find out until many years from now. However, despite what are likely significant losses on both sides, it should not be a surprise that Russia can replace these losses more easily than Ukraine because of its much larger population.

☞On the Russian side 
The Russian government does not share its military casualties, and has as far as I could find not commented on Russian casualties since 2022. Western and Ukrainian estimates of total Russian dead and injured troops are currently somewhere in the range of 300,000 to 500,000, but considering the sources those could very well be exaggerations. 

However, there have been some news outlets which have tried to extrapolate the number of casualties from data that comes from the Russian government itself. Mediazona, an outlet founded by members of the Russian protest band Pussy Riot, together with BBC News Russian confirmed around 66,500 soldiers killed so far, based on “verified, publicly available sources, including social media posts by family members, local news reports, and official announcements from regional authorities”. 

Furthermore, together with the Latvian-based news outlet Meduza, which was founded by Russian journalists, Mediazona estimated an actual soldier death toll of 125,000 based on published obituaries, Russian mortality data and inheritance data. 

Lastly, there is a third Russian-founded news outlet named iStories, which used government data on excess mortality (=mortality that exceeds the expected number of deaths), which the Russian government has since classified, to estimate the minimum number of losses at over 71,000 in 2022 and 2023

☞On the Ukrainian side
Similar to the Russian government, the Ukrainian government does not share any official casualty numbers. However, in February 2024, Ukrainian president Zelensky said 31,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed since the start of the conflict. 

This seems to contradict a statement made 6 months earlier by anonymous U.S. officials who estimated 70,000 killed and 100,000 to 120,000 wounded. In April of this year, Russia said Ukranian casualties were almost 500,000, but this is probably an exaggeration as well.

☞Civilian deaths
The United Nations Human Rights Office has recorded 7,072 civilians killed and 13,001 injured “in territory controlled by the Government” from the start of the Russian invasion on 24 February 2022 to 18 June 2023. There have been no more published reports since this update was published on 19 June 2023, but the U.N. Regional Information Centre for Western Europe reports 11,662 dead and 24,207 injured civilians as of now, as well as an estimated 6.3 million people fleeing Ukraine. I could not find any reference to how they calculated these numbers, but seeing as the dead and injured number is very close to the Human Rights Office numbers published by Statista for the period from 24 February 2022 – July 31 2024, they likely originated there, which means that the Regional Information Centre numbers only refer to civilian casualties on Ukrainian government territory and thus exclude casualties on Russian-controlled territory (including the Kursk region that Ukrainian forces attacked in recent weeks).

While Ukraine continues to try to make up for its losses by expanding its military conscription to include women, prisoners (which Russia has also been conscripting), and dual-citizens, as well as by lowering the minimum age and re-examining medical exemptions, Western countries continue to provide tanks, planes, missiles, training, intelligence, satellite targeting, and just about anything short of sending their own armies (so far). All this is likely to accomplish is a prolonging of the conflict, which means more fighting, more dead, more resources wasted, and nuclear powers ever closer to the brink of mutually assured destruction. Frighteningly, there is no exit strategy accompanying the West’s ‘unconditional’ support of Ukraine. The only alternative to negotiations is further escalation. Now that Ukraine was allowed to attack Russian territory for the first time last month, there is talk of allowing strikes further into Russia.

📖Time and time again Hamilton promised success; again and again he failed. Gallipoli was one of a series of military ‘Easterner’ adventures launched without proper analysis of the global strategic situation, without consideration of the local tactical situation, ignoring logistical realities, underestimating the strength of the opposition and predicated on a hugely optimistic assessment of the military capabilities of their own troops. Not for nothing is hubris regarded as the ‘English disease’.

~British Historian Peter Hart on the disastrous campaign the British fought against the Ottoman Empire in Gallipoli (The Great War, p.185).

Final words
One would hope that lessons have been learned from the catastrophic decisions made both before and during World War I, that the staggering destruction and loss of human lives, or from the all new horrors of the Second World War’s industrial extermination campaigns, or from the Cold War bringing the world to the brink of total destruction. One would hope that all of it, any of it, would make our leaders think twice before so carelessly drifting ever closer to all-out war. But that would ignore decades if not centuries of wars fought not for self-defense or for protecting innocents, but for imperial aims like conquest and profit. That would ignore the ways of thinking that make these conflicts seem like not only a good idea, but a necessity.

Our future? Cave near the Isonzo front used by soldiers during WW1 to escape gas and explosive shelling. Pictures by Robert Urbaschek.

As the Western world’s pursuit of global hegemony clashes with the reality of its declining power, it seems its leaders are refusing to come to terms with a changing world and instead doubling down on imperial fantasies of total victory. Anyone advocating for peace, reporting on factual information, or in general not cheering on their wars with enough enthusiasm gets smeared as an antisemite, terrorist, Russia/China/Iran supporter, and whatever else can be thought of; or arbitrarily arrested under terrorism legislation like the journalist Richard Medhurst; or banned from social media and messaging platforms, whose CEOs risk arrest themselves if they do not sufficiently monitor and police what everybody is saying.

The mask is slipping, our leaders’ cloak of moral superiority losing its last fibres of credibility. The ideals that they claim to represent are being systematically hollowed out and being turned into lifeless husks that scarcely resemble their former selves, like the untold dead bodies of the Somme and the Isonzo river, and those of Gaza and the Donbas. Peace is always an option, but only if enough people have the courage to stand up and demand it.

💡 As an addition to some of the events in Ukraine mentioned in this post, I will go into more detail about the Ukraine war in another post.

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