Dose of Reality

My teenage sons are becoming more aware of life’s stark realities. Gas, food and entertainment cost money. Parents are not an unlimited resource of funding. Unfortunately, last week they also were exposed to another harsh reality about life on planet earth.

No matter how hard some may try to prevent it, there will always be “wars and rumors of wars” as the Bible phrased it. Put another way, as the Greek historian Thucydides suggested, “the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must”.

I think a lot of folks besides my kids woke up to a dose of reality regarding these truths last week. Seems like society is sometimes quick to forget the lessons learned about our human condition.

One quality, some may say a fault, in those who served in the military is we develop a doggedly realistic world view. As I observed the news last week, I felt many emotions. Foremost, sadness that war and destruction has befell a nation that escaped communism 30 years ago. This week’s featured pic is of the Kiev opera house.

One emotion I didn’t feel was disbelief. A realist world view understands, “the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must” is a cold fact of life. I assume many of my veteran friends and colleagues felt similarly and were not surprised by what we saw unfold.

My preceding comments are not to suggest that, because there will always be those who seek to gain power through force, one should just stand idly by. Quite the opposite. The realist typically embraces this fact and continually prepares to counter the behavior or mitigate its effects.

Developing a strategy to address the despots of the world is easy to say but extremely hard to do. Furthermore, it takes a nation’s full commitment exercising all instruments of national power- diplomatic, informational, military, and economic in perfect concert to achieve the desired ends.

After Russia attacked Ukraine last week I went back and reviewed some of my academic assignments while attending the National War College in 2014. In our curriculum on national security strategy, we developed strategies to address strategic problems of the day.

These included Syria, Libya and of course, Russia. I am a little disappointed that eight years later, many of the things we hypothesized about in the classroom came to fruition.

While studying national security strategy, I certainly developed an appreciation and respect for what our strategic leaders are charged to accomplish. It is not easy. I’d go so far to say as compelling a despot’s behavior is about the hardest thing on earth.

Some of my still serving classmates are probably locked in a room right now contemplating strategies to address the current situation in Eastern Europe. These leaders stay in my thoughts as they work through these incredibly tough problems.

If any good is to come from the events ongoing in Ukraine, perhaps it is the dose of reality. There are plenty of wars and rumors of wars around the world every day. Maybe we’ve been too caught up in the pandemic, social issues and the economy we forgot this unfortunate fact.   

I’m certainly not lessening the importance of domestic challenges, but war, in my humble opinion, is the ultimate evil. I’d venture that many veterans feel the same way. And it certainly bothers the realist in us when we see a war unfolding that was on the horizon for some time.

Views, opinions and biases expressed in this blog are the authors and do not reflect those of the U.S. Army or Department of Defense.

Check out my books on sale now on Amazon.

Use the links in the about section below to follow on social media or subscribe for emails to receive updates on the latest weekly blog at www.normspivey.com!