What is a public documentation of half-knowledge if not something one can cringe about when looking back in a few years.

Motivated by a very real rule that made it tricky for me to invite a collaborator.

Let me start with a triviality. The amount and value of information any member of society possesses at any given point in time, is subject to fluctuation. Just like the amount of economic capital we have at our disposal is undergoing ebb and flow, so is the informational content we can lord over.

Corollary is that the flow of information, and its volume, is an ebb and flow.

All high brow nonsense, but let me apply this to the current situation. No particular perspective taken.

The first order of approximation is that we think the other side is doing bad, and hates us.

This applies to every side, however. The west hopes for a coup (which will be bad, at least in short term, for the Russian populace) or a humiliating defeat (which will be equally bad for the Russian populace). The Russian side hopes for a victory, an expansion of territory, and a reemergence of Russian might (which needless to say will be bad for Ukraine). Currently the signs point, mildly speaking, to a defeat of Russia.

And rightly so. Ukraine is fighting for its self-determination, nothing less.

The effect will be a further fracturing of the world. This applies not only to the present conflict, which serves merely as example, but equally to Israel (I remember vividly the first time I arrived to the country, and hearing from encounters of both groups that one could not talk to the other side because “they want to kill us”), the emerging conflict with China or many other examples.

That is not to say that more open people do not exist, in all walks of society (and I count my best friends among them). However, this may become an increasingly fringe viewpoint as not only the respective groups stay in their respective echochambers, but these partitions of the world become increasingly enforced with real and permanent restrictions (see the restriction of social media in some countries).

I feel that I woke up to a post-Covid world that will, for some time, not be open again. That walls were increased in height. And now, behind those walls, pressure will increase further until both sides will suffer an explosion. Or many.

The second order of approximation is that we realize the other side thinks we are doing bad, and that we hate them.

Hence the logical thing is to work anticyclically. In peacetime, one of the tasks of politics is to keep the peace. Now that politics is pointing towards a war of systems, we have to soften the blow. Decrease the pressure. And while my personal modus operandi is to circumvent rules I think are nonsense, there are much easier things that can be done.

This involves keeping lines of communication open.

It involves keep if only to fight with your friends and enemies rather than avoiding uncomfortable discussions.

And while boycotts can be measures that I support on occasion, I like to avoid boycotts of information. Because intel is the one thing that can decrease pressure.

(Unless you are boycotting me, of course. Continue at your own leisure. I have at best been described as weaponized incompetence).

Concretely, I think we have to keep communication to Russians open. Because many are trapped in an echo chamber (as everyone is. I learned only recently I should not use the idiom “jedem das seine” (german for to each his own, with a dark connotation) 😉 ). Because at the very least, while they may not be an empire anymore, a free discourse is welcome. So don’t only communicate to those whose mind is already open, but equally to those whose mind is not.

The current approach I would favor is to speak softly and carry a big stick. We are carrying a big stick, and Russia/Putin knows (the Ukrainians are pushing back the Russian Empire with sticks we made mostly 20-30 years ago, and their own which are even older). We are making that stick even stick even bigger and are putting quite a few thorns on it (which I am afraid will not only be necessary vis-a-vis Russia). That is necessary and good. However, many of them are caught in an information bubble that will invariably collapse, and the cost of the Russian populace will be dire.

Moreover, there is a strategic aspect. A Russia that collapses and is humiliated, but does not reform (either because Putin is still around, or because his successor is just as deluded) and that hence will be ostracized and excluded from Europe will inevitably fall into another domain of influence, most likely ending up a vassal state of some other power.

But to reform Russia, the reformers need support. And this likely cannot come out of the ranks who already support reform. Diplomatically, we have to extend an arm to those that are still caught in the bubble, but only stay there because there is no alternative. I think there is no convincing some of them, but one has to try with those in the middle from time to time.

There are many obstacles. And, if not taken so serious, there are many ways around them.

Fun fact: there was a lot of fun being made about Russia calling it a special military operation, rather than a war. Did you know that the last war congress declared was in 1942 against Romania?

(even if this was written in Amsterdam, I swear I am not high. Right now. Just a lil bit. חצי-חצי)