By Peter Williamson
That grabbed your attention, didn’t it? Fortunately it is an entirely fabricated headline. However, lately there has been a huge oversaturation in the media of two topics in particular, which I am sure you are quite familiar with by now. On the one hand, the attempt of the Islamist extremist Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS, or just IS) to create a ‘caliphate’ in the now heavily destabilized Middle East. On the other hand, there is the ongoing civil war in the Ukraine between government forces and separatists, with recent evidence pointing towards Russian boots on the ground.
Striking about these developments are two things: First of all, these are among the first armed conflicts to be fully “twitterised” – both IS and the Ukrainian separatists are very eager to post all their recent exploits on the popular social network. Never has there been more on-the-ground live footage – and propaganda – available than now. While there is news concerning other subjects, almost every major news outlet is chock-full of breaking news, analyses and opinion pieces regarding IS & Ukraine.
To me, however, there is something more frightening than pictures of ski-masked men with guns, whatever their ethnicity or creed: it is the current discourse emerging from this constant chatter on all media channels. Once again, there has been a marked increase in the heavily nationalistic and militaristic discourse so reminiscent of the Cold War and the post-9/11 world. The United Kingdom, Norway and several other countries have heightened their terrorism alertness status, while at the same time Russia and the United States seem be nostalgic about their ‘good old Cold War’ days.
During a discussion on the cooling relations between Russia and the US, a friend of mine once remarked: “The Cold War isn’t over by far. People think there’s a thaw, but if you touch it’ll freeze your hand right off.” This is more true right now than in the past decades since the fall of the Soviet Union, and even though President Obama explicitly stated in a press statement that it is “not in their cards to see a military confrontation between Russia and the United States”, the very fact that it has to be stated that this option is not on the table should give cause for concern regarding the increased ‘Us vs. Them’ political discourse currently flaring up again.
In the same press statement, Obama stressed the fact that Russia had armed the Ukrainian rebels and “repeatedly violated it’s territorial sovereignty” – which is ironic, seeing that the US’ foreign policy has been eerily familiar to this, having supported both rebels (the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan/Pakistan, now Taliban) and regimes (Saddam, House of Saud) in the past, not only in the Middle East, but also globally. However, these realities do not surface in the current discussions in the media and parliaments – when Russia does it, it is cause for an immediate call to action and saber-rattling; when the West does it with the same pretext of ‘protecting our national interests’, we applaud our strong and determined leadership safeguarding our freedom.
What is frightening is not the masked men with AK’s and anti-aircraft systems, it is the men in suits telling us that due to security reasons, they are going to need to increase surveillance – and please, do report suspicious behavior. What is frightening is that both Russia and the West still have nuclear warheads and biological weapons pointed at each other. Furthermore, Assad is now considered ‘the lesser evil’, and there are talks of a possible joint military action between the Western powers and Syria against IS. Yesterday’s enemy is tomorrow’s friend and vice versa; and my enemy’s enemy is my friend. For a while, at least.
Peter Williamson, Class of 2015, is a sociology & politics major from Germany, Hamburg.
