A few minutes before I sat down to work on this entry, it was reported that Russian incursions into Ukraine are taking place on three fronts, and hundreds are already said to be killed in the fighting. If Russian troops move as far inland as the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv, it seems certain that this will become a bona fide war, which will doubtless have global ramifications. After two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, this news is almost as hard to believe as it is to stomach. Still, as I have surveyed reports and opinion pieces about the conflict, one thing has become clear: Russian president Vladimir Putin views his military’s action as a matter of self-defense. Of course, many will dismiss this claim as nothing more than gaslighting, but it made me think, worrisomely, about René Girard’s 2007 book Achever Clausewitz (later translated into English as Battling to the End). Girard is well known for his “mimetic theory,” which argues that human violence emerges when people want the same things as other people. If this “mimetic rivalry” reaches the point of violent conflict, it can only be ended by the scapegoating of an alleged “monster,” whose murder serves to release the mimetic tension. For Girard, this founding sacrifice explains the formation of any number of hallowed cultural acts and rites, which keep violence at bay by ritually reenacting the murder that (on false pretenses) was used to establish cultural harmony. Only Christianity, says Girard, reveals the corruption of this process, since Christianity sympathizes with and even binds itself to the scapegoat ne plus ultra, Jesus Christ. In Achever Clausewitz, Girard applies his theory to the problem of modern warfare, and what he says is prescient regarding Putin’s claims of “self-defense.” Since violence emerges out of mimesis, Girard notes that the “aggressor has always already been attacked.” Girard is not saying that this perception is necessarily true, only that, according to mimetic theory, it must be seen that way by the agents of violence. In turn, he ties his theory to Carl von Clausewitz’s On War (Vom Kriege), which, nearly two centuries prior to Russia’s current invasion of Ukraine, made a critical observation. As Girard puts it, “Here we are touching on Clausewitz’s second great intuition, which takes the form of a paradox: the attacker wants peace but the defender wants war.”
Also from Achever Clausewitz: “Religion is what enables us to live with original sin, which is why a society without religion will destroy itself. … This constitutes the greatness of all religions, with the exception of Christianity, which abolishes the provisional function of sacrifice. Sooner or later, either humanity will renounce violence without sacrifice or it will destroy the planet.”
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