The moral fog of war and historical sociology

Abstract

Hans-Herbert Kögler offers an insightful analysis and a potent moral call to support the defence of Ukraine. This is a sensible moral position that I also share. However, I question Kögler’s approach which overemphasises the ethical arguments alone. I argue that wars do not allow for moral absolutism of any kind and that the best one can do in the conditions of warfare is to endorse a version of contextual morality. Furthermore, I make a case for using the accumulated knowledge of historical sociology to understand the dynamics of war in Ukraine. Building on this knowledge one can advance a multipart argument that favours the continuous support for the defence of Ukraine.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has generated a nearly universal condemnation among the academics. However, there is still great deal of disagreement on how to respond to the ongoing war. Some influential analysts such as Timothy Snyder and Anne Applebaum have been adamant that winning the war against an invading Russian force should be the primary objective and as such they have advocated the unconditional military support for Ukraine (i.e. Ukraine win at any cost). In contrast, other well-known intellectuals such as Noam Chomsky, Jeffrey Sachs and John Mearsheimer have interpreted the war in Ukraine through the prism of the wider geopolitical tensions between Russia and NATO. Their position is that achieving peace should be prioritised over any military support for the Ukrainian cause (i.e. peace at any cost). Jürgen Habermas (2022) has articulated a more subtle position with the focuses on the moral issues and historical legacies. For him the main choice is between preventing Russia from succeeding in its occupation or ensuring that Ukraine wins this war. He argues that further militarisation of Europe might have negative long-term consequences so the emphasis should be more on preventing Russia to win this war which would ultimately lead the peace negotiations.

In his clearly articulated and insightful article, Hans-Herbert Kögler offers a potent critique of the ‘peace at any cost’ perspective. ¹ Furthermore, Kögler is critical of any military justification that is determined by the geo-political, economic or legal principles. Instead, he argues that the international support for the defence of Ukraine is to be grounded in strong moral values: ‘The emphatically heard call to moral solidarity with others is thus completely independent of any merit or behaviour of the other, and solely owed to their vulnerability in the present situation threatening the other’s moral integrity and self-determination’ (Kögler, 2023, p. 4). His perspective rests on the moral commitment where ‘the vulnerability and experience of situated subjects is preserved and recognized, while the collective reality of the situation is nevertheless addressed’ (p. 6). Thus, Kögler argues that the use of ‘effective military means of emphatic solidarity’ is likely to ultimately create the conditions for peace negotiations with the morally acceptable outcomes. In other words, the moral imperatives prescribe that the international community provides the military support for the Ukrainian government until the moment when peace negotiations can be conducted on equal terms.

I fully sympathise with the key thrust of Kögler’s analysis and have previously expressed a strong support for Ukraine’s defence. ² However, I argue that the case for the defence of Ukraine cannot be built on the moral reasoning alone. While shared ethical commitment is an important premise of the overall argument, there is no room for moral absolutism in war conditions. Furthermore, to build a stronger case for the support of Ukraine’s defence, it is crucial to include other arguments too. I identify two such additional arguments both of which are grounded in the experiences drawn from historical sociology.

The contextual morality of war

Kögler is right that the moral concerns should govern one’s attitude if, and when, to use violence against other human beings. This particularly applies to the instances to the large-scale organised violence such as war. From Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas to Michael Walzer, scholars have developed the just war theory to assess the ethical parameters of violent conflicts (O’Donovan, 2003). In this ethical tradition, the key issue is whether a particular war meets a set of moral criteria to be considered a just war (jus ad bellum). However, Kögler’s goes beyond the just war theory and focuses on the issue of moral obligation to support the state that has been unprovokedly attacked by another, more powerful, state. His general point is valid but as it is premised on moral absolutism it cannot stand on its own.

Firstly, the highly contingent and volatile character of war environment does not allow for moral absolutes. While Kögler emphasises the centrality of moral motivations, the ethical choices in war are almost always relative, relational and specific. One of the key features of war is its unpredictability and uncertainty. As Clausewitz (2008, p. 101) noticed a long time ago: ‘War is the realm of uncertainty; three quarters of the factors on which action in war is based are wrapped in a fog of greater or lesser uncertainty. A sensitive and discriminating judgment is called for; a skilled intelligence to scent out the truth’. This characterisation equally applies to the logic of military operations and to the moral choices made by people directly or indirectly involved in the conflict. This moral fog of war creates conditions where there are no moral certainties, and every military decision can have unpredictable and partially immoral outcomes and implications. Since all wars involve killing of other human beings, they inevitably create situations where moral compromises are inevitable. The general cause of the war might be, and in this case it certainly is, morally sound (i.e. the liberation of Ukraine from the Russian occupation) but some of the means used to achieve that cause might not be fully ethical. ³ For example, many analysts have pointed out the role of the Azov assault brigade in the defence of Ukraine from 2014 until the 2022 siege of Mariupol. This organisation was initially a paramilitary formation inspired by the far-right ideology and some of its members were suspected of being involved in possible war crimes (Umland, 2019). Nevertheless, the same organisation has also played a crucial role in the defence of Ukraine and many of its members have sacrificed their lives to protect the civilians in Mariupol and other places. Similarly, some of the symbols used during the war have been historically associated with the far-right politics – from the museums, monuments and streets named after antisemite and Nazi sympathiser Stepan Bandera, rehabilitation of Roman Shukhevych and Dmytro Klyachkivsky, who were responsible for mass scale massacres of Polish population during WWII, to the use of some far-right symbols such as the Black sun and Wolfsangel (Mierzejewski-Voznyak, 2018). Even the widely used salute ‘Glory to Ukraine!’ (Слава Україні!) has a problematic historical legacy as it was also a slogan deployed by Bandera’s Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (Kaniewski, 2018). Yet some of these same symbols now operate as a potent device of collective solidarity and contribute to the mass resistance to the Russian invasion. In the world of moral absolutes, one could not tolerate use of such unethical symbols and actions. However, in the war conditions moral compromises are made regularly and instead of moral absolutism the best that can be achieved is what I would call a contextual morality of war. By this I mean the constant re-assessment of the ethical conditions within the war with a view of prioritising the agents and objectives that cause less physical and ethical harm. Thus, the Ukrainian resistance to the Russian invasion requires full support because this mission is much more morally justified than the alternatives. The immorality of Russian invasion and occupation of Ukrainian territory involving the mass killings of human beings and the large-scale destruction of the resources overrides the relatively sporadic instances of unethical practices on the Ukrainian side. Even if some immoral practices take place in the pursuit of this mission, the contextual morality of war allows for the continuous support of the cause until the point when the immoral actions significantly outweigh the moral purpose and the ethical conduct in war. The emphasis is on preserving the moral choices in a constantly changing war environment. However, these choices will inevitably involve moral compromises. This form of moral assessment is in tune with Judith Shklar’s (1984) arguments about injustice and cruelty. In this understanding, the focus should not be on achieving absolute moral outcomes as this is highly unrealistic but on creating conditions that will protect as many human beings as possible from moral degradation and physical cruelty. By providing all possible support for Ukraine, the ambition is to reverse the occupation, finish the war as soon as possible and thus stop the acts of cruelty against other human beings.

Secondly, since war is, as Clausewitz puts it ‘a realm of chance’, its outcome and direction remains unpredictable. This unpredictability affects its moral dimension. Many wars in history show how today’s victims can be tomorrow’s perpetrators of violence and vice versa. The experience of WWII Sudeten Germans is highly illustrative. While during the Nazi occupation of Europe many Sudeten Germans were supportive of the Nazi expansionism and some of them were involved in war crimes after the war the same population experienced revenge violence, rapes and killings and up to three million were expelled from Czechoslovakia (Glassheim, 2000). The key point here is that any moral absolutism cannot accommodate the changing conditions of warfare. By offering an unconditional moral support to the Ukrainian military operations today, one can abdicate moral responsibility for any future immoral actions that potentially can arise in the situation of Russia’s military defeat. The contextual morality of war is flexible enough to accommodate such changing dynamics of violence as it prioritises the situational avoidance of injustice and brutality over moral absolutes. As Shklar (1984, p. 18) puts it, ‘It is, however, not only undignified to idealize political victims; it is also very dangerous. One of our political actualities is that the victims of political torture and injustice are often no better than their tormentors. They are only waiting to change places with the latter. Of course, if one puts cruelty first this makes no difference. It does not matter whether the victim of torture is a decent man or a villain. No one deserves to be subjected to the appalling instruments of cruelty’. Thus, the morally absolutist arguments leave no space for the structural and moral contingencies that are integral to any war. As such they are not relational, dynamic or sensitive to the historical change. Moral absolutism operates with the universalist and transhistorical categories of analysis. As such it is largely impervious to social change. However, one cannot understand the dynamics of warfare without a recourse to the long-term historical transformations.

Thirdly, the absolutist morality cannot account for the preferences given to some violent conflicts over others. For instance, why provide a military support to Ukraine and not to the populations of other war-thorn countries including Yemen, Syria, Ethiopia, Myanmar or Palestine? Many analysts have zoomed in on the different moral yardsticks deployed to justify support for the population of Ukraine over others. The Ukrainian refugees have been received with much more enthusiasm than the refugees from Syria or Ethiopia, while the governments of European countries have allocated much more financial, medical, housing, educational and other supports to the Ukrainians than they have for other refugees (Esposito, 2022). Similarly, while the Ukrainian military has received billions of euros and dollars and most advanced weaponry from the EU and US governments, other war-thorn countries have received very little or no military support. These staggering differences cannot be justified invoking only the moral reasoning as Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and the continuous building of settlements on the Palestinian territory is just as immoral as any other act of occupation (Amir, 2023). Therefore, making a case for prioritising the military support for Ukraine over others cannot stand on the moral grounds alone. The ethical justification of Ukrainian defence is very important but as in any violent conflict the focus should be on the contextual morality not on the moral absolutes. While the Russian unprovoked invasion and occupation of Ukrainian territory is ethically immoral and as such should be reversed by any means possible the moral arguments are not enough to make a sustained case for the continuous military support of Ukraine. To do so, it is necessary to invoke other forms of reasoning too.

Historical sociology and modern warfare

Kögler (2023, p. 15) is rightly critical of the ‘peace at any cost’ perspective. He states that ‘the demand of an unconditional peace now amounts to the morally obscene request to accept life under conditions of a bio-politically operating and culturally oppressive regime’. He also emphasises ‘the ethical urge to help, to be solidaristic with those who are attacked or in danger’ (p. 15). Nevertheless, this ethical imperative would imply that we have moral obligation to provide military support to all societies that face similar situation and are attacked or occupied by ‘culturally oppressive regime’. While morally highly commendable, this is also completely unrealistic strategy. Moreover, such indiscriminate policy of military support would very likely generate an environment of constant and protracted wars as there are always new victims of oppression that require protection and support. So, the key question is how to choose where to and where not to provide the military support? As ethical reasoning is not enough here, the existing knowledge from historical sociology can help us navigate such choices (Collins, 1999, 2022; Mann, 2023). There are two important findings from the comparative historical sociology of war that can inform such a decision.

The first sociological lesson is that the smaller states can defeat their more powerful opponents under specific organisational conditions. Much of the recent sociological research on contemporary wars indicates that war victories are not determined by the size of the militaries but by their organisational capacities. As Biddle (2010) shows convincingly, the dynamics of force deployment has been central for wars since the beginning of the twentieth century and has regularly overpowered the quality of weaponry and the size of the armies. In contrast to the common perceptions that the militaries with more soldiers and better equipment regularly win Biddle demonstrates that organisational incapacity invariably results in military defeats. Collins (1999, 2008, 2022) has developed this argument further by analysing many historical contexts where the smaller militaries were able to defeat their much more powerful opponents. As Collins (1989, p. 366) emphasises: ‘It is social organisation, rather than physical bodies and physical equipment, that is the object of the manoeuvring of combat. Armies fight, not in order to kill soldiers, incapacitate weapons, and take ground but, to destroy the ability to resist. Organisation is both the weapon and the target of war’. The war in Ukraine has illustrated this argument well. Despite having much larger army and more weaponry, the Russian forces have experienced enormous losses and could not control many territories they have occupied in the first wave of their attack. So, the decision to provide the military support to Ukraine can also be based on the solid evidence that the Ukrainian military has a potent organisational capacity to retake and control the territories that have been occupied by the Russian military. By providing more aid to the Ukrainian military, its organisational capacity can continue to grow to the point where they would be able to defeat the invading force and ultimately stop the war.

The second sociological lesson is that war victories are regularly determined by one’s ability to successfully co-ordinate the military’s organisational capacity with the ideological mobilisation and the micro-level solidarities (Malešević, 2010, 2017, 2022). As military organisations are highly complex and bureaucratic entities, it is not easy to generate and maintain social cohesion that is a precondition of effective fighting. The military success often entails relatively smooth interdependence of organisational and ideological power structures and with the strong micro-level group attachments. The shared experience of fighting and being regularly exposed to the life and death situations often generates strong emotional ties between the combatants. These forms of deep micro-level solidarity are also enhanced by the moral and emotional commitments that the soldiers feel towards their significant others at home (i.e. family members, close friends or peer groups). So all military organisations attempt to utilise these potent social micro-bonds to make soldiers more effective fighters. However, it is difficult to adequately balance these organisational demands with the micro-level motivations. Thus, the successful military organisations often rely on ideological projects to couch their organisational requirements in the language of micro-group solidarity. It is no coincidence that most ideological discourses deploy the language of kinship and comradeship (i.e. our Ukrainian brothers and sisters, mother Russia, fatherland, родина, brothers in arms etc.). In this context, the specific military tasks are regularly framed as a struggle for the motherland, or the ultimate sacrifice for our sons and daughters and such. Hence, the military effectiveness stems in large part from the army’s ability to ideologically envelop the networks of micro-solidarities and integrate them with the wider organisational structures. The 1990s wars of Yugoslav succession have demonstrated how a smaller political entity with better organisational, ideological and micro-interactional coordination was able to defeat a much larger military organisation. Despite having no proper military formations at the onset of the war in 1991 and facing one of the largest armies in Europe (Yugoslav People’s Army), the Croatian military was ultimately able to prevail and re-take all the occupied territories. This outcome was largely a product of the ability of the Croatian army to successfully coordinate the networks of micro-level solidarity with the wider organisational and ideological structures while at the same time its military opponent was experiencing an organisational breakdown (Malešević, 2022, pp. 233–250).

The war in Ukraine points in a similar direction. Despite having an enormous military structure at its disposal the Russian government seems beset by many organisational problems. In the first year of the war, the coordination of military units has largely been very poor resulting in heavy losses of soldiers and the equipment. There seems to be a profound disconnect between different military formations including the regular armed forces, the private contractors such as Wagner and Kadirov’s militia, 141st Special Motorized Regiment and other paramilitaries (Crowther, 2022). Consequently, Putin was forced to reorganise the General Staff on several occasions. The ideological discourse used to justify the invasion has also been incoherent, underdeveloped and constantly changing. Most of all, the motivation for fighting seems to be very low for most soldiers and especially for the conscripted recruits (Dickinson, 2022). So far, the Russian military has not been successful at integrating the micro-level solidarities with the organisational capacity and ideological mobilisation.

In contrast, the Ukrainian military underwent a significant organisational transformation since 2014. Initially, the army was plagued by the similar issues that face the Russian army including the rampant corruption, underequipped units, inadequate military training, disorganised command structure and so on. However, after the Russian occupation of Crimea and the parts of the Donbas region, the Ukrainian government has invested substantially in the re-organisation of the military force (Shelest, 2022). The 2022 invasion has also galvanised a mass public support most of which has congregated around a coherent ideological message about the causes of this war. In addition, the army seems to be capable of successfully connecting the networks of micro-level solidarity of military units – which have also grown stronger during the war –, with the wider ideological and organisational structures. If these developments continue, the Ukrainian military is likely to gain in strength and acquire a capacity to re-capture the occupied territories.

So, these two lessons from the comparative historical sociology of war help us make a stronger case for the military support for Ukraine. The moral argument alone would imply that every occupation should be treated in the same way meaning that we have a moral obligation to provide the military support for the fight against any occupier. The sociological lessons provide more realistic and specific guidance: the military support will make a difference in the contexts where the occupied state has the capacity to win the war. Ukraine has a relatively high level of organisational capacity, has undertaken a very successful ideological mobilisation and the micro-level solidarities of its military units are well integrated with the wider organisational structure. All of this suggests a possibility of the Ukrainian military success which would ultimately end this brutal war.

Nation-states, empires and war

In his analysis, Kögler emphasises the role of radical nationalism and the neo-imperial Eurasian ideology that underpins the Russian invasion. He dissects Aleksandr Dugin’s cultural essentialism which provides an ideological justification for Putin’s biopolitics of elimination in Ukraine: ‘The abduction of children, the elimination of non-integrable subjects, the construction of new citizens via passports, the mantle of a new legal framework – all this pursues the biopolitical elimination of Ukrainian subjects as subjects and the transformation of their lives into Russian subjects. The strategic reductio ad substantia biologis here is not a reductio ad absurdum, but the zero-sum of a politics that transports the Russian nation itself to a new and stronger life, to greater power’ (Kögler, 2023, pp. 14–15). Although Dugin is not a principal ideologue of the Russian regime, many of his ideas can be clearly recognised in the ideological justification for the invasion of Ukraine. In Kögler’s (2023, p. 3) view, this ideological project cannot be challenged effectively ‘by simply dogmatically invoking grand and allegedly uncontroversial concepts such as “international law” or human rights’. Instead, he offers a moral repudiation of this ideological programme. Nevertheless, regardless how potent, and well-argued is this moral critique, it is unlikely to delegitimise this ideology. Most ideological projects are resistant to the external criticisms and often such attacks help reinforce a cohesion among those who are part of the same ideological community. Instead, one could deploy the knowledge from historical sociology to identify the structural faults of this project and to simultaneously make another argument for the military support of Ukraine.

Firstly, Putin’s attempt to capture the large swaths of Ukrainian territory and incorporate it into the Russian federation resembles the behaviour of imperial rulers from the past eras. This action is not only about the intentional break of the international law but more importantly it represents a direct challenge to the character of state order in the contemporary world. Unlike the previous acts of military intervention such as the US occupation of Japan, Austria, Grenada, Panama, Iraq and Afghanistan or the Soviet occupations of Eastern Germany, Austria, Korea, Czechoslovakia or Afghanistan, the Russian invasion of Ukraine was not envisaged as a temporary act. Instead, an independent nation-state has been carved to expand the territory of another nation-state. This act of a permanent territorial conquest is an attempt to subvert the post WWII international order which is based on the idea that the borders of sovereign nation-states cannot be changed without the consent of the people who live in these states. In other words, unlike the imperial world where Great Powers could legitimately pursue the wars of conquest in the world of nations-states that is not possible regardless how big and powerful a particular nation-state is. This is not only a question of morality or legality but more importantly it is a sociological reality that cannot be changed at will. However, this imperial annexation of a territory belonging to the neighbouring state cannot last because the social order has been radically changed since WWII. In contrast to the imperial subjects who could be under control of different empires and who generally did not have a strong sense of attachment to such polities, the citizens of nation-states fervently identify with their polities and are unlikely to accept the foreign domination (Kumar, 2017). In our nation-centric world, there is no room for the legitimate existence of formal imperial structures. The last attempt to dismantle the existing nation-states of Iraq and Syria and create an imperial polity was the caliphate of ad-Dawlah al-Islāmiyah [the Islamic state]. Nevertheless, that entity existed for only a few years and was ultimately defeated. The same logic applies to the Russian occupation of Ukrainian territories. The neo-imperial project of Russian world (Русский мир) has neither ideological nor organisational grounding in the contemporary environment. There is no place for imperial Pax Russica in the world of sovereign nation-states. As the nation-state has replaced empire as the preeminent ‘bordered power container’ (Giddens, 1985, p. 120), any attempt to re-create imperial structures is bound to fail. However, this is less the question of illegality or immorality but primarily is the result of changed sociological conditions where nationhood has become the dominant form of collective solidarity and nation-states the only legitimate form of territorial rule (Malešević, 2013, 2019).

Secondly, Kögler is absolutely right that Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is internally justified by the Russian ‘nationalistic cultural essentialism which ideologically supports the geopolitical claims of territorial domination via the symbolic ideal of the uniquely Russian national character’ (p. 22). In this understanding, Ukrainians are denied their nationhood and are urged to ‘return to the mother Russia’. This was very clear in Putin’s speech that preceded the invasion where he states that ‘Ukraine never had a tradition of genuine statehood’ and that its nationhood was invented by Lenin: ‘Modern Ukraine was entirely created by Russia, more precisely, Bolshevik, communist Russia. This process began immediately after the revolution of 1917…as a result of Bolshevik policy, Soviet Ukraine arose, which even today can with good reason be called “Vladimir Ilyich Lenin’s Ukraine.” He is its author and architect’ (Putin, 2022). For Kögler this expansionist nationalist ideology is rooted in the insular cultural essentialism and biopolitics that completely negates the Ukrainian subjectivity. In his view, this ideological project is profoundly immoral and as such it should be resisted.

While I agree with this general assessment, I would argue that to make a stronger case for the defence of Ukraine one should shift the focus from the morality of nationalist claims to the sociology of nationalism. For one thing as some form of cultural essentialism is present in all nationalist discourses (Brubaker, 2004, 2015) deeming it immoral will not undermine its influence. As we now live in the nation-centric world the nationalist idioms are central nodal points of political rhetoric (Malešević, 2013, 2019). In this sense Russian nationalism cannot be successfully countered by the cosmopolitan or globalist discourses but only by the alternative, more inclusive, nationalist visions. It is no coincidence that the international solidarity towards Ukraine has not been expressed through the cosmopolitan imagery but almost exclusively through the national symbols with the Ukrainian flags, national colours, songs, folk costumes, and the use of the salute ‘Glory to Ukraine!’ deployed by the political actors and also by many ordinary people throughout the world. Since nationalism, in a variety of forms, is now the dominant operative ideology of contemporary world, it is futile to simply wish it away. Since nationalism is the principal ideological glue and the main source of political legitimacy of nation-state, as long as the nation-state model is the only legitimate form of territorial political organisation in the world nationalism will not cease to exist. Thus, the nationalist discourses are integral to the political rhetoric of both sides in this war and the leaders of both states rely extensively on the nationalist idioms to mobilise the public support. This is not to say that these nationalisms are somehow equivalent. On the contrary, it is very clear that they are organisationally and ideologically asymmetrical: while the Russian state nationalism is unapologetically expansionist, authoritarian and assimilationist, the Ukrainian nationalist discourses are mostly defensive, anti-authoritarian and relatively plural. ⁴ Most importantly while the Ukrainian nationalist project is centred on the preservation of state sovereignty and does not question the existence of the Russian nationhood, the Russian state nationalism is imbued with the imperialist ambitions that do not recognise the legitimacy of the Ukrainian nation-state and also negate the existence of the Ukrainian nationhood. Thus, nationalism by itself is not a problem. What is a problem is the character of the Russian state nationalism. So, the military support for Ukraine is necessary in order to tame the Russian imperialist nationalism, recapture the occupied Ukrainian territories and ultimately bring an end to this war.

Conclusion

War conditions are never conducive to the subtle discussions, debates and analyses. War is an environment of ideological mobilisation. As an ancient Jewish proverb states: ‘when the flags are unfurled, all the wisdom is in the trumpet’. The war in Ukraine illustrates this point only too well. Any analysis that does not conform to the established war scripts is instantly deemed to be supportive of the one or the other side. Even a modest criticism of the official narrative can invite harsh rebuke and accusations of collusion with the enemy. However, war realities are always more complex and messier. As Clausewitz (2008) noted a long time ago wars belong to the realm of uncertainty and unpredictability. He differentiated sharply between the absolute war, a theoretical abstraction, where one could defeat the enemy with the utmost violence and without external constrains and the real war which is always limited in aims and scope and is influenced by a variety of unpredictable causes. In this article, I have argued that the same logic applies to the ethics in warfare. Although I am highly sympathetic to Kögler’s moral plea to defend Ukraine I am sceptical that this case can rely on the moral calls alone. The best one can achieve in the conditions of warfare is the contextual morality that inevitably involves some ethical compromises. In addition to the moral calls, it is also necessary to rely on other factors including the knowledge of historical sociology to make a multipart argument for the defence of Ukraine. The capacity of Ukrainian military to successfully fight the Russian occupiers and Putin’s inability to reverse the structural foundations of nation-state order are both potent reasons that fully justify the continue support for the Ukrainian population.