Gefira 63: A Point of No Return

Iraq against Iran, Croatia against Serbia, Ukraine against Russia and a few other purposeless wars: can we not see a pattern? Someone sets one country against another, watches the unfolding conflict from sidelines and derives benefits. Why were the wars purposeless? Because the mentioned wars meant mutual demolition and no palpable gains after the hostilities for either of the parties involved. The parties involved became weakened and more dependent on other actors on the world’s scene. Wars are designed and manufactured. They are designed far away from their theatre. Special agencies, non-governmental organisations, supranational structures, financial institutions if they collaborate, they can orchestrate crises, coups d’état and wars. If they have the media at their disposal – and they do have the media at their disposal – they can with time whip up a given population into a frenzy and make it behave as planned. Psychological techniques of influencing human behaviour are numerous and have been developed for decades.

Think about the campaign aimed at maximizing the profit of the manufacturers of cigarettes. Someone had an idea of enticing women who at that time generally did not smoke. The enticement was simple: why should only men smoke? If you, women, want to be as free and independent as men, you ought to be allowed to do everything men do. Smoking or cigarettes were presented as torches of freedom, That’s it. And it worked despite the fact that smoking was and remains hazardous to anybody’s health.

People exposed to a psychological processing can be programmed to believe in anything and to act on their beliefs. Sure, there will always be some exceptions to the rule, individuals who will see through and refuse to comply, but then no one needs to reckon with them. Besides, such rebellious individuals that refuse to comply make up a tiny minority in any society, are ostracized, marginalized – so they really do not matter.

A war between State A and State B serves the purposes pursued by State C, which pulls the political and financial strings to control the outbreak, duration and cessation of the hostilities. It has always been so and it will remain so till the end of the world. Gefira 63 guides its readers through the meanders of the Moscow-Kiev-London-Washington conflict that is being played out. We trace the origin of the Ukrainian ethnicity and show the mechanisms that produced it. We also point to the possible outcomes of the war which include the partition and disintegration of the country. We demonstrate that ideas have long-lasting consequences, which means that the seeds sown centuries ago bear fruit centuries later. Few thinkers realize which current events will translate into momentous changes in the remote future.