Cogitation in the Time of War #31 - About the discussion on the global public arena

Macron and Scholz at a press conference before a meeting in Berlin, back in January 2022. Image taken from this My India First article.

Today is day #97 of Putin's (Still Failed) Invasion of Ukraine; 551 hours and roughly 39 minutes have passed since my previous cogitation and since I haven't cogitated here about the war lately, I was planning to only write when we reached the 100 days milestone, where I would talk about the situation on that day, the previous assessments and again attempt to forecast what will happen next. But during all this time I continue to follow closely, even though the frequency of the news and the frequency of remarks by the people I follow and that I give credibility have also reduced - this is an evidence of a phenomenon I mentioned before, that time normalises a situation, so the war in Ukraine is not such a hot topic as it used to be.

Still as I was writing, I follow closely and today I ended up writing a much longer thread than I had anticipated about a sort of discussion or debate that is being going one in the Twitterverse but also generally in the public arena, or using the direct translation of the portuguese expression, the public square, so now I copy that here for proper documentation.

As I wrote above, we have the expression in Portugal "a praça pública", the public square, that we use to designate the public discussion of stuff by normal people. When I wrote this on Twitter, and I started writing on my phone initially, I couldn't remember the proper English equivalent expression so I decided to continue using this more literal translation elaborate on my feelings and thoughts of what I've been observing regarding the debate around Ukraine and Russia. I now believe the closest expression, and the correct translation, in English to the Portuguese one is "the public arena", so I will use this one here in the blog, and that will make one difference to my Twitter thread, but let's start with my cogitation.

The Internet is the global public arena and it's populated by all sorts of people. And there are those who create and push a narrative (leaders) and those who just agree and share it (followers). And there are those who simply report on facts and give a sort of neutral analysis. These later ones are the people I prefer to follow and read even though they do share their opinions and forecasts many times, but they usually don't point fingers nor engage in public shaming. And most important, these neutral people don't have what I call a binary mindset and by binary mindset I mean the 2 sides of a coin view, the "right & wrong", "black & white", the "good & bad" sides, the mindset that simplistically divides things (issues, people, countries, ideas, whatever) into 2 opposing sides; this kind of mentality drives me nuts and I tend to dislike these type of argumentation and veer away when I find it online (either in posts or in comments).
However this what usually happens in the "public arena" because, to be honest, people stick to summary points and headlines or one-liners, and it's much easier to have this binary assessment: if this that's being said is a good idea, then all the others are bad.

And after a while this type of division appeared in the debate and discussion about the war in Ukraine. Even discarding the natural pro-Ukraine VS pro-Russian divide, there's a clear division appearing in the West and to me the dividing line can be defined as the language (even though it's deeper than that).
The main language used for debate in the global public arena is English so of course the native speakers have a lead on that. Heck, that's even the reason why I tweet in English and why this blog's URL is "bakano-in-english" even though it has a different name and I refer to this blog as my international one.
But what that means is that anglophones lead the discourse here on the global public arena. And there are plenty of "leaders" (some might say influencers) that are based in the UK and the US, or at least are heavily influenced by the people over there and the trends coming from these 2 countries.
For some reason, that I'm still not sure about but I'm certain that also because historically they were adversaries in many things (in the case of the UK they were a"mortal enemies" for centuries), the English speaking world decided that France IS NOT on the side of Ukraine.
This is caused by the binary mentality, and since the French government is not doing exactly the same things as the UK and the US (the "good" side) it must mean they are on the other side (the "bad" side). Then all those historical misconceptions (France are only good at surrendering) and "bad blood" (France not accepting freely US command or decisions in many NATO affairs) from the past gets added to the current mixture and the result is a convoluted recipe.
I have wrote about this before as you can see in this reply tweet from 3 weeks ago (ignore the typos).

And yes, I am of the opinion that criticism to France is deserved for some of their actions (as a state, but in this case mostly represented by its President, Macron), like some actions from Germany, but it got so bad to the point that people believe today that these 2 countries are actually are pro-Putin! Even after France sending the CAESAR SPGs to Ukraine (and they are deployed), considered to be one of the best artillery systems in the world, this support action is downplayed by the English speaking critics because it's just 12 of them (even though France has less than 80 in total) and the recent announcement they will expedite sending a new batch is criticized because it's not happening already and this new batch will still not be enough!

And then we have all the outrage because Paris and Berlin are still trying to continue with diplomacy. This has been decided that it is an attempt to force Ukraine into accepting a peace deal on Putin's term (thus accepting loss of territory and/or international cooperation ambitions). Again, I'm of the opinion that criticism is due, for the delays in sending or approving support including weapons and for and an apparent lack of pressure applied to Putin (that gives the impression they are appeasing him and I'm not sure if that's really the case), but we have to admit that we can't be talking about having peace and at the same time advocate to stop talking with the enemy. If you're not talking with the enemy, you are only dictating so that that is not really achieving peace, it's a capitulation of the losing side that has to accept whatever the winner imposes to them. Since we're talking about Russia, this is not a viable scenario (does anyone believe that Russia would capitulate?). People might not like it but in reality Peace requires talks to occur.
And actually both countries have conducted talks in the past, and also there were more specific talks mediated by the UN to achieve an agreement regarding Mariupol. These kind of deals become impossible to reach if there are no open lines of communication even when these are done via a third-party.

Did France and Germany made an error back in 2008 at NATO's Summit when they apparently blocked Ukraine's (and Georgia's) entering the Membership Action Plan, in an effort to appease Putin by meeting his demands for no further expansion? Yeah, in my opinion (and hindsight is 20/02 vision) they did, I agree, but would have they actually decided otherwise (and assuming no other country blocked the process) I'm pretty sure we would see some of the same voices then criticizing that decision that was an act of "aggression", I have no doubts about that because some people always say the decisions were the wrong ones... 

And adding to the above, we also have non-EU people complaining about Paris and Berlin wanting to delay Ukraines membership to the EU and not facilitate the process! Even people from a country that wanted to leave, and left, because it considered the EU to be too much regulated, are now demanding that Ukraine should get a facilitated and speedy process so that they join even without their owen regulations or institutions not meeting the minimum requirements (this is a risk to the block's stability and also extremely unfair to other states, knowing there is a new one that is not playing by the same restrictions and rules). In what comes to these demands I have no respect for those opinions. In fact, because Macron knew that EU membership would be long, he suggested a political organization that would be "simpler" (and would also allow the UK to be part of) so that Ukraine could already be part of an trans-european alliance before EU's membership is completed and of course people criticized saying that Ukraine can't be bumped into a 2nd tier organisation and blablabla, these criticism coming mostly from people that are not part of the EU (and some are oblivious to what being in EU means). For me this is too much.

And after some thinking, I now have no doubts that one of the big reasons for this division is the language (and cultural) divide associated with the binary mentality. The US and the UK lead the public opinion and those who think differently are with "the enemy".
It seems weird that France and Germany get more criticism than Italy, that suggested a 4-point peace plan that specifically mentioned Ukraine remaining neutral and that Crimea and Donbas should be autonomous (not even advocating for referendums as I think makes much more sense), and getting even more criticism than Hungary, the country that is blocking heavier economic sanctions to Russia from the EU (such as a complete ban on Russian oil).

To cap all of this, as this cogitation is long and probably a bit confusing by now, I have to make the disclaimer that I was born in France and I feel a special connection to that country, but even on a rational perspective (my own, but a rational one) some of their geopolitical strategies and measures are actually sound (there is a logic behind it and I don't have sufficient data and details to simply rule them out as bad, as easy as many so-called experts are doing in the public arena). But as a European citizen, it worries me seeing many in the European public arena seemingly siding with the US and the UK vision, and I state again they are adversaries in other theatres and don't want the best for the EU, and at the same time antagonizing the EU's biggest countries that are crucial in the much needed support for Ukraine, in particular seeing how the war seems to be becoming an highly attritional affair.