The cliff like 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union and end of the Cold War helped propagate a mythic conclusion in the West that the battle between competing versions of humanity and destiny had been won in favor of “liberal democracy”.  The illustrative argument was put forth by Francis Fukuyama in his treatise The End of History and the Last Man in 1992, in which the ascendancy of liberal democracy over other forms of societal projection was not just an linear progressive outcome of post world war struggle but, literally, the “end of history” itself.  More primitive expressions of hierarchical government from authoritarian to totalitarian dominant over thousands of years had been subsumed by the civilized shared “rule” of the people through democratic expression.  The relative benefits of diversity of thought, opportunity, and challenge flexibility of democratic government were too overwhelming historically in the information age to the rigid and brutal tactics of the primitive overlords to allow such alternative means of governance to sustain.  The gift would be the progressive dissolution of borders, globalization of vision, and equity of resources that would forever reduce the strains and competitions that contributed  to thousands of years of strife and tribal confrontation.  Liberal democracies were said to better focus their attention on deliberation and compromise rather than warring against each other. The faster and more proliferative conversion  of authoritarian regimes and vestiges of stubborn nationalism to democracy, the more likely the permanent denouement  of a peaceful, post- historical world.

The myth in the West allowed ever more globalist elite redirection of humanity’s tendency for confrontation.  The new enemies would be carbon and covid, with new righteous global struggles against global warming and pandemics.  The democracies would “share” resources and approaches to best defeat these new devils, and marshall their armies, the citizens of their democracies, into appropriate sacrifice and unified submission to the clarity of “settled science”.

The myth of the supposed post historical peace faced an almost immediate alternative reality that required constant aversion of focus and subjective denial in the West. A burgeoning resistance and  revanchism almost immediately sprung out of the supposed “losers” in the historical arc.  In the middle east, reactionary Islamic radicals rejected the pressures to conform to post religious global standards and attempted to “restore the Califate”. Harsh multi-decade battles drove dramatic losses on both sides; the two desert battles in 1991 and 2003 crushing Saddam Hussein and his expansionary Iraq, and the devastating terrorist success on September 11, 2001, striking and inflicting great damage upon the first exemplar of the liberal democratic ideal, the United States.  Radical Islamic elements from the Sunni Taliban of Afghanistan, the ISIS hordes destroying Syria and threatening Iraq, the proxy armies of the theocrat dictators of Iran, the Huttis’ of Yemen, Hezbollah of  Lebanon, and Hamas of Gaza  left trails of death and destruction in an effort to restore pan-Islamic power over the previous territories of the previous caliphates.  In China, the totalitarian CCP committed genocide against the Uyghurs and old fashioned brute overlording and cultural repropriation and subjugation of the native populations  of Tibet and Hong Kong, with intent on using direct force upon the prize of Taiwan.  Finally the revanchist regime of Vladimir Putin, facing a demographic collapse of population and stagnant economy of a country of 6.7 million square miles, ruthlessly worked to restore the borders and populations defining the empires of the Czar and the Soviet, by crushing Chechnya and absorbing former territories in Georgia and Crimea.

The myth prevaricated  that these battles were on the periphery of the powerful West, and that ancient perceptions would be subsumed by the obvious bounty of a common borders and free markets.    In a post historical Europe, conflict could never again engulf the core.

It took a real investment in the delusion of this significant myth to ignore the ongoing reality – the brutal calamity of the Balkan wars of the late 1990s which resulted in a staggering 140,000 deaths and nearly pulled the entirety of Europe into the quagmire.

And now regular infantry, artillery,  and tanks backed by airplanes and missiles propelling across European plains and demolishing fighters, facilities, villages and cities, ruthlessly killing Ukrainian citizens without remorse. The Russian tyrant uses Nazi like tactics to aggressively invade and seek out supposed Nazi imbued enemies, irrationally identified as such by Ukrainian unwillingness to accept his interpretation of right and history. In three short weeks the deaths on both sides approach tens of thousands and mirror the horrors and losses, atrocities, and massive refugee crises associated with  World War II. This time, even the post historical elites in Europe can not divert to their illusion of a post history consensus of peaceful redirection by treaties, sanctions, and consumerism.  It turns out, nothing has changed, and the darker forces of human competition always eventually express themselves in violence, if not prepared for and defended against with strength.

Ukraine is paying a massive penalty for seeking an alternative vision to their history.  The mistakes and corruptions have been building to a pressure pot intensity over time with no one willing to recognize the baser truths that, when ignored, have resulted in the characteristic mistakes that have defined history’s conflicts for all time.  Ukraine hoped to re-establish itself along the lines of a modern European state not through careful time deliberative development of institutions and careful diplomacy, but through alienation of their historical bretherin in Russia and by bribing the increasingly corrupt West.  Warning signs from Russia of a return of paranoia regarding Western threats , through detachment of former subservient states under the umbrella of both NATO and the European Union, antithetical to Russia’s perceived national interests were ignored.  The casual disarming of the West, smug in the settled conviction of a post war world,willing to evangelize their war on carbon by removing all forms of energy independence in an effort to become “carbon neutral’,and coalescing their single interim energy sources exclusively from  Russia through the Baltic Sea Nordstream 2 pipeline, made the perception to Putin of a weak, placid enemy too vulnerable to resist an attack.  The myth of vibrant liberal democracies as the zenith and final expression of government has been unmasked, progressively corrupted by massive centralization through the European Union, and the United States love affair with executive overreach and debt spending of olympian proportions.

Ukraine saw the corruption in the West and recognized it as standard corruption they had always lived under, capable of the most mundane manipulation, straight out bribing of decision makers through history.  It is no small coincidence that the aristocratic families of the United States, Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, John Kerry, and Mitt Romney have had family members placed for large compensations on  the board of directors of Ukraine companies.  It registered to Ukraine as an old fashioned shakedown when then Vice President Joe Biden threatened to hold up US financial support to Ukraine if Ukraine did not fire one of its prosecutors, the prosecutor threatening to investigate Burisma,  the Ukraine company providing massive compensation to Hunter Biden.  It was clear an investigation  could  potentially expose the “Big Guy”.  Ukraine saw to it that when President Trump threatened Ukraine’s ongoing Washington influence with candidate Joe Biden  by demanding President Zelinsky investigate Burisma and Hunter Biden, Ukraine was able to rapidly turn the threat against the President himself.  By using their asset in the State Department, Lt. Colonel  Vindman, to reveal conversations he overheard in private conversations  between the two head of state, Vindman was able to deliver to Pelosi the seeds for a politically motivated impeachment of Trump, attempting to fatally wound him  just prior to the election. It is no small coincidence that the chairman of the Nordstream pipeline company and critical member of the oligarch Russian energy company Gazprom is former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder.  Both Ukraine and Russia believe they know how the game has always been played, and what the vaunted “liberal democracies” of the West have become.

Now the dangers of history violently encroaching on a passive post-historical world are being lived out in the massive destruction and slaughter of Ukraine.  German Field Marshall Helmuth Von Moltke in the 19th century stated that “no battle plan survives the first day of combat.”  Putin’s ruthless, premeditated attack on Ukraine, designed to be overwhelming,  has met with unexpected, stubborn, and extremely costly Ukraine resolve and resistance.  The placid West has sudden found some backbone. This is epitomized by Germany, who unilaterally shut down their nuclear reactors and willingly became subservient to Russian oil and gas, and  haughtily laughed at Trump’s demand to elevate their NATO contribution to 2%GDP and modernize their collapsed defense forces, now, suddenly in the face of the return of European war, has reversed course and advocated a 100 billion dollar defense spend.  Finland and Sweden are contemplating joining NATO.  Poland is buttressing the Baltic states.  Great Britain, out from the shackles of the EU clutches is vigorously supporting Ukrainian defense.  The United States, leading from behind with its compromised and senile inflected octagenarian leadership, struggles to reassert itself.  Putin’s own egomania and paranoia is resulting in progressive ranting and actions against his own leadership team, and is escalating the use of  weaponry that could expand the containment of the conflict and civilian casualties greatly, through thermobaric weaponry, indiscriminate artillery, and hypersonic missiles.  Even the dread “nuclear” option has been mentioned.  There is no way of knowing where this calamity could end up.

Clarity is coming through the hell in Ukraine.  The West has allowed its institutions, the source of its strength for 200 years, to suffer.  The breakdown in integrity of elections. The loss of judicial independence and fairness.  The bloating of government and the loss of real debate, review and oversight, and consensus. The corruptive influence of the monied elite to direct “progress” and pick their winners.  The moral deterioration and comfort with  loss of core principles of a healthy society. Putin and Xi are at least observers of history and perceive the pendulum has swung back toward the authoritarian grip.  The calcified West, which has thrown away so many of its enormous advantages, led by sclerotic leaders who have corrupted their own positions to the point of incoherence and personal stain, stands at a very pivotal place.  There’s no doubt, our indolent, inward absorbed societies, who put such people in position to lead the great western experiment in freedom, had it coming.  Let’s see if we can restore our backbone and get the West where it needs to be, sure of its destiny, reliant on its inherent strength of shared principle, proud of its national diversities and distinct talents, and ultimately capable of surviving and thriving in an eternally hostile world.