Sunday January 22, 2022
Let’s set the scene, first.
A country long considered a satellite state, almost a colony, of a nuclear superpower changes its government. The new government rejects its former connections with the superpower, and tries to build an alliance with an opposing superpower.
The first superpower feels threatened. It masses its armed forces close to the offending nation. It threatens to restore the previous status quo by force.
Meanwhile, the other nuclear superpower, that the vassal state hopes to ally with, ships heavy weapons to its new ally.
Tempers flare. Nuclear war seems imminent.
You probably think I’m writing about the current situation in Ukraine, where Russia has apparently gathered 100,000 soldiers along Ukraine’s northern border. (Although after the Iraq “weapons of mass destruction” debacle, I’m skeptical about any claims from military intelligence sources.)
But no, I’m not describing the crisis in Ukraine. I’m referring to the Cuban Missile Crisis. Back in 1962.
Strong parallels
There are strong parallels between the two international confrontations, 60 years apart. They’re not perfect parallels, of course. But they do identify similarities.
Prior to the two crises, both Russia and America launched attacks on their former vassal state. Last year, Russia successfully seized Crimea. On the other hand, the U.S. attempted invasion of Cuba, at the Bay of Pigs, failed miserably.
But the U.S. has not – so far – installed nuclear weapons on Ukrainian soil; the Russians did install missiles in Cuba. Only 90 miles away from Florida, missiles from Cuba could have carried nuclear warheads into any American state.
The Cuban Crisis was resolved when President Kennedy talked with his counterpart Nikita Khrushchev in Moscow. They negotiated a stand-off. Khrushchev agreed to pull out his Cuban missiles, in return for Kennedy’s promise not to invade Cuba. (And, less publicized, Kennedy’s promise to remove U.S. missiles from Turkey.)
In the present crisis, Biden and Putin have also talked. There’s no indication that either of them backed down. Putin demands a guarantee that Ukraine will not be allowed to join NATO.
After all, if Ukraine were to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, does anyone seriously doubt that the Pentagon would want to set up bases there? The U.S. currently operates about 750 bases in at least 80 overseas countries.
Missile sites in northern Ukraine would be a mere 800 km from Moscow -- as close as Havana is to Jacksonville’s naval base.
No wonder Russia doesn’t want Ukraine in NATO.
Prequels to prequels
I wish I had studied more history during my university years. I didn’t, mostly because I saw history as being primarily a record of an endless succession of wars. Who beat whom, and how. History books say next to nothing about what life was like for the peasants who served as cannon fodder -- collateral damage -- in those wars, or how they survived when they weren’t at war.
But I suspect the Ukraine standoff, and the Cuban one, have numerous prequels.
I’m too young for any personal memory of Hitler massing his troops along the border with Poland. I know Hitler and Neville Chamberlain had talks. I’ve read that Chamberlain came home declaring, “Peace for our time.”
By some unintended irony, Chamberlain repeated the exact phrase used 60 years before him, by another British Prime Minister -- Benjamin Disraeli -- after his talks with German leaders, in 1878.
They were both wrong.
Survival of underdogs
In war games, supremacy does not always favour the superpowers. Underdogs have a surprising staying power.
Poland survived invasion, although its lands hosted for a while the worst of the Nazi death camps set up to exterminate Jews, Communists, and Roma.
Vietnam survived 20 years of war, with two sides backed by America and China.
Afghanistan, one of the world’s least developed nations, survived two invasions and occupations – first by Russia, and then by the allied forces spear-headed by the U.S.
Cuba survived 60 years of a brutal trade embargo -- economic war. The same kind of economic sanctions, incidentally, that NATO nations expect to change Russia’s mind about invading Ukraine.
A quote commonly attributed to Albert Einstein says, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”
Ukraine has already survived the infamous Crimean War of the 1850s. And the 1932-1933 Russian attempt to starve rebellious Ukrainians into submission -- the Holodomor, which killed more people than the Nazi Holocaust.
The question is not whether Ukraine will survive a war. Like the Cuban crisis, it’s whether any of us will survive if the confrontation is allowed to escalate into full-fledged nuclear war.
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Copyright © 2022 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups encouraged; links from other blogs welcomed; all other rights reserved.
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Your turn
Last week’s column, in which I decried our societal desire to make comparisons that hurt, produced a flood of personal experiences.
“I have been thinking a lot, about the words you wrote,” said Susan Peverley. “You see, I grew up with older siblings who were brillian -- in a very linear, convergent way. I felt that I was nowhere near as smart, as talented, as they were. It wasn't until my forties that I realized that I was just as smart, but in a different way -- a divergent, all-over-the-place kind of brain function. And, as I grow older, perhaps wiser, I am annoyed by expectations of others. I entered into ministry as a student in 2014, and many conversations centred around beginning in a small, family-size church, and, if a person was really good, they would become a leader in a larger church, and larger, and, maybe, eventually become Moderator. My question was, "What if you want to remain as a small, family-size church minister, but be the best that you could possibly be, what is so wrong with that?"
“A friend, also in ministry, has given me the words for this: 'In God's army, there have to be leaders, but it is the foot soldiers that really do the hard work.’ I am happy to be one of those foot soldiers.”
John Shaffer: “In my family there were four sons. I became a minister; one of my brothers had learning disabilities. At a church meeting a woman came up to my mother gushing about me, saying ‘Aren't you proud of your son, the minister?’ In front of me, mother said with as much firmness as she could muster, ‘I am proud of all of my sons.’ And that was that. I was very proud of my mother. “
Tom Watson: You make a strong case for not making comparisons, and I agree. On the other hand, I wonder about the effect of removing everything that smacks of competition. What happens to our spirit when we stop trying to do the best we can at whatever we undertake? A game in which nobody cared about trying hard would be a pretty boring thing to watch. A column written by someone who didn't care whether it made sense would be a pretty boring thing to read.
Clare Neufeld sent what he called “an unplanned homily”: “The focus on being ‘the best’ or ‘bestest’ is indeed infuriating, and potentially idolatrous.
“I believe an alternative goal, if there needs to be one, is to nurture a persistent hope, and the multitude of generally recognized as “healthy“ emotional/spiritual responses to and within our own lives, as opposed to pursuit an impossible goal.
“Hope is not an easy thing to achieve, if ever it can be. It is a worthy, necessarily perpetual and/or persistent pursuit.”
Clare described his own family upbringing in what would today be considered poverty, and went on: “Somewhere, somehow, we managed to learn and embrace a ‘doctrine’ expressed by a simple adage: ‘Don’t bother to compare yourself to others. Try your best to do your best, each day. Enjoy learning something new every day. Be content, be grateful, be generous in giving and receiving help.’
“It seems to me that contentedness, these days, is erroneously equated with lethargy, laziness, rather than the rich soil in which hope might thrive.”
Steve Roney suggested that my column “poses a false dilemma. Anyone who views life as a competition with others is a loser. Full stop. A loser not only in the sense that they will never be the best at everything, as you say, or, most probably, at anything. A loser in that they have misunderstood the meaning of life. They have lost the race, because they have never made it to the starting blocks. To see life as a competition with others is to take your ego as your god.
“There is nothing wrong with friendly and honest competition, ‘good sportsmanship,’ so long as the intent is to make everyone better, for the greater good.”
Ted Spencer took different level of being a loser: “For many years, my smallish electronics company designed and made some fairly cool widgets, in fairly large numbers, most of which were ‘private branded’: they appeared to have been made by the (mostly American) companies who were, manifestly, unable to make them for themselves.
“After one of the frequent and insufferable design meetings with one of them, it was observed that my little business could get out there and do marvellous things, and grow immensely.
“I replied that I simply wasn’t interested in taking over the world, or even a vanishingly small part of it.
“The speaker’s reaction: ‘Show me someone who doesn’t care about winning, and I’ll show you a loser.’
“I nodded and smiled. The people are nicer around here.
Ruth Shaver has “worked with children and youth across the broad range and depth of physical and intellectual capabilities, mainly in church settings; it's always been important to me to help them find a gift that's uniquely expressed in and by them and then to find a way to help them use it in the life of the church. I worked with a teen whose gift as a person with intellectual and physical disabilities was giving compliments; with his mother's help, we guided him to do so tactfully and truthfully in church, which later earned him a long-term job that he loved in a local grocery store. Fast forward 16 years and he's still doing customer service with a smile that lights his eyes above his mask.
“Focusing on what someone can do rather than on what they can't do could go a long way toward relieving the competition of ‘being best.’ As Dr. Seuss reminds us, ‘Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You.’”
Isabel Gibson quoted Rumi: "The rose does best as a rose. Lilies make the best lilies. And look! You - the best you around!"
Then her own words: “Maybe we (and the kids) will still want to be the best at things that we can't. I have no trouble being the least-capable EVER at high-jumping; I wish I took photos anywhere near as good as the ones I see all over the web. I've had to learn (and re-learn) to be happy with taking *my* photos. And look! The best photos by Isabel abound.
“If we really learned to see ourselves and all others as children of God, as sparks of the divine, maybe we'd have an easier time selling that idea to the kids.”
Local friend Bob McCoubrey: “My mother lived to 102. She was a kind, compassionate, caring and self-assured friend to many, by embracing a credo she learned from her mother -- ‘Comparisons are odious.’ In helping her children to build self-esteem, she never suggested we should be THE best, only that we should do OUR best.”
I’ve withheld a couple of letters; they felt as if they might reveal too much that was personal about another member within a family. The upside, though, as one of those letters noted, was “the sensitive care and kindness showered upon her and her parents by virtually everyone around her!”
Pat Graham also included some personal details I’ve withheld, but ended with an Ann Landers quote, that "half the doctors, lawyers and Indian chiefs finished in the bottom half of their class.”
Sue Moshier described an experience almost identical to one of the stories I put into my column: “A few years back a young boy ( probably not more than 9 years) wanted to prove his reading prowess by reading aloud an op-ed from The NY Times. When I congratulated him on a job well done, I noticed our same-age step-granddaughter leaving the room in tears. When I asked our daughter why she was crying, she replied, ‘She can’t read at all and feels less than….’
“What a tremendous wake up call to understanding what it must feel like to be either physically or intellectually challenged. And to know that from a very young age these individuals bear wounds they may carry for life.”
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TECHNICAL STUFF
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PROMOTION STUFF…
To use the links in this section, you’ll have to insert the necessary symbols. (This is to circumvent filters that think some of these links are spam.)
Wayne Irwin's “Churchweb Canada,” is an inexpensive service for any congregation wanting to develop a web presence, with free consultation. http://wwwDOTchurchwebcanadaDOTca. He set up my webpage, and he doesn’t charge enough.
I recommend Isabel Gibson’s thoughtful and well-written blog, wwwDOTtraditionaliconoclastDOTcom. She also runs beautiful pictures. Her Thanksgiving presentation on the old hymn, For the Beauty of the Earth, Is, well, beautiful -- https://www.traditionaliconoclast.com/2019/10/13/for/
Tom Watson writes a weekly blog called “The View from Grandpa Tom’s Balcony” -- ruminations on various subjects, and feedback from Tom’s readers. Write him at tomwatsoATgmailDOTcom (NB that’s “watso” not “watson”)
ALVA WOOD ARCHIVE
The late Alva Wood’s collection of satiric and sometimes wildly funny columns about a mythical village’s misadventures now have an archive (don’t ask how this happened) on my website: http://quixotic.ca/Alva-Wood-Archive. Feel free to browse all 550 columns.