Adrian Bonenberger

I think in attempting to understand things as they are today, a lot of people are ignoring what Europe and the world would look like following a blood-soaked Russian invasion of Ukraine; how different countries would be animated or compelled by that spectacle.

My cleanest example of this is the War of 1870, wherein the Prussians defeated France and Napoleon III.

Reading the British newspaper accounts of the war, you see the tone turn slowly and then abruptly from cheering the Prussians for smashing the French — Napoleon III, no less! — to horror and then anger at a longtime ally — Prussia, and by the end of the war, Germany.

Some of this was due to what the British columnists were recognizing was a rising competitor rather than a longtime ally. Much was due to stories of hardship and deprivation from Paris — the terrible effect the war had on civilians.

In considering a conventional invasion of Ukraine — and it’s likely consequences — one can’t settle for the variables as they are today, or as one would like them to be, but as they will be in various scenarios.

A best case scenario for Russia — a “bloodless blitz” — will give us all 50 more years of NATO, and spur massive military spending in the US and Europe.

A likely scenario — bloody attrition, with the Russians losing some aircraft and having to battle hard to take or hold cities, against an isolated Ukraine — will see tens or hundreds of thousands of deaths, and hundreds of thousands or millions of refugees.

But a not unlikely scenario, in which Russia’s bloodless blitz fails to materialize, and the refugees and casualties mount, involves other countries feeling compelled to join the fight. Poland comes immediately to mind, as does Turkey. It’s possible others will join, as well.

I don’t see a scenario where the US joins directly in any capacity, save — as it did at the beginning of both world wars — as an arms merchant.

Why did I mention Germany at the beginning of this thread? During the time I spent there, I’ve been as impressed by the scrupulous antiwar sentiments of my parents’ generation, and somewhat surprised at how bitter my generation and the next is about ongoing German guilt for WWII.

In cultural phenomena like Babylon Berlin and Generation War, one sees a kind of longing to explain and (worryingly) to excuse WWII.

The easiest way to resolve this paradox in German culture without resorting to nihilism, as the Nazis did, is to participate in a just war, an act to help in some small way to balance the crimes of the past.

Fighting selflessly on behalf of orphaned, impoverished, and unhomed Ukrainian children — rather than being the one doing the orphaning — is a fairly simple idea, and once those orphans begin showing up in Berlin, one that will quickly occur to decent German citizens.

In conclusion: you think you know the world you do until a real war starts and changes everything. Russia’s conventional war in Ukraine will very likely upend everything we take for granted about our world today, mostly for worse.