Tariq Saeedi
Ashgabat, 11 May 2015 (nCa) — There are two ways to look at the notable absence of the western ‘leaders’ from the Victory Day parade in Moscow.
First: As if the world is being rules by high school dropouts. As if being shortsighted is the prerequisite for election to the top job. As if it is a matter of some pride to act babyish in the world relations.
The logic behind the decision to skip the V-Day parade in Moscow, when scaled down to a group of teens, will sound something like this: Oh, let’s punish her by not going to her birthday party — I hate his Kawasaki, let’s go sit at the other table — She was so mean to me yesterday, let’s spoil her party tonight — blah, blah, blah.
Second: The Victory Day is not about the victory or defeat of one country or the other; it is all about the triumph of mankind against fascism. The equation here is composed of ideas and ideologies, not countries and nations.
According to Merriam-Webster dictionary, one definition of fascism is: a tendency toward or actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control.
Starting a war is one of the strongest indications of the ‘tendency toward or actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control.’
By this definition, it can be argued convincingly that after the WWII the baton of fascism passed from Hitler’s Germany to the United States of America.
Consider this:
- 1950-1953 Korean War
- 1961 Cuba
- 1961-1973 Vietnam War
- 1965 Dominican Republic
- 1982 Lebanon
- 1983 Grenada
- 1989 Panama
- 1991 Gulf War (Kuwait and Iraq)
- 1993 Somalia
- 1994 Haiti
- 1994-1995 Bosnia
- 1999 Kosovo
- 2001—2014 Afghanistan
- 2003—2010 Iraq War
- 2014–present (Syria/Iraq)
At least 15 major wars and countless conflicts have taken place since the end of the WWII and in all of them one side was led by the USA. Had the diplomacy been given a fair chance, nearly all of them were either avoidable or unnecessary. The combined death toll has far exceeded that of the WWII.
Bergson, the French philosopher, says that the processes of immediate experience and intuition are more significant than abstract rationalism and science for understanding reality.
In his theory of time and consciousness, Bergson asserts that time eludes mathematics and science.
By extension, his theory advocates that the events are placed in the duration of time and once we pass those events, we cannot roll back the time to revisit those events.
During the Sochi Winter Olympics some people thought that it would be a clever idea to skip the opening ceremony to ‘isolate’ Putin. During the Victory Day celebrations this Saturday the same rationale was at work – let’s ‘isolate’ Putin.
The time has passed and the events have been frozen in place for the future historian.
The people who attended the ceremony in Moscow were there because of broader principles, not as a personal favour to Putin. The decision to attend the ceremony or to skip it is the demarcation line between magnanimity and pettiness, between statesmanship and juvenile pranks.
And, isolation is definitely taking place but not around Putin.
The policies of a certain group of countries that have led to wave after wave of global economic and financial crises, the perpetual state of war and zero sum games are also the policies that are driving them toward irrelevance and isolation.
The people who are going to matter in the tomorrow’s world were all there in Moscow, including the man standing beside Putin whose road and belt initiatives are going to usher in the new world order.
It was a decisive Victory Day.