One American journalist called war “the food of the state.” This was still during the First World War. The American state, which had not yet entered the war, carried out many “reforms”—nationalizing the railroads, sharply increasing intervention in the economy. All this was justified as preparation for war. In fact, war is a condition that generates the state—and toward which all state policy tends. War is the limiting condition of state regulation. It is not for nothing that all totalitarian regimes without exception are militarized regimes, living in a state of siege. War is the ultimate argument for obtaining the “right” to manage your life and property.
“Well, but what about destruction, casualties, losses?” the reader will say. “Are they beneficial to the state?” Of course they are. The destruction will be rebuilt at your expense—and the state and its representatives in the form of politicians will collect political bonuses from you as well. With casualties it is even more interesting. In situations like the current one in Ukraine, the casualties become, first of all, the “passionaries”—people who, regardless of their views, represent a threat to the state.
Of course, I am talking about the “interests” and behavior of the system as a whole. This does not at all mean that there cannot be politicians and responsible citizens who sincerely believe that they “will not allow,” who believe that they “control” and so on. But I remind you: social institutions do not arise from our intentions.
The conflict of states differs from the conflict of private individuals in that the state does not spend its own. The state, as a system, never suffers damage from conflict. Even when destroyed—defeated in war or revolution—it will necessarily be reborn, as a rule, stronger (if “strength” is defined as the possibilities for controlling the behavior of private individuals). The conflict of private individuals ends when the aggressor-side understands that losses may exceed potential profits. For the state, this threshold exists too, but lies considerably further away. A bureaucrat will bury a case worth a hundred million for a bribe of one hundred dollars. For an employee of a private company, the boundaries of opportunism are much narrower, since the losses are also his money—to a greater or lesser extent. For a private person, the degree of maneuver is even less. Therefore, Putin can indefinitely feed the terrorists in Donbas, since he is not spending his own money on this enterprise. And he will stop only when he ceases to profit from it—whether politically or otherwise.
But we are not talking about Putin, but about Ukraine. The Ukrainian state has never faced a war like this. The profit it currently extracts from the conflict—censorship, a general increase in loyalty, persecution of criticism and dissent—seems to arise by itself, as a result of the system working as a whole. But over time, a situation may develop that often occurs in conflicts of this type: groups may appear that consciously, or let us say semi-consciously, work to sustain the war on “our” side. They will do this because, as in Putin’s case, these groups, connected to the state, will not bear the losses—and if they find a way to extract profit from the war, it may last a very long time.
What is worse, the further it goes, the more difficult it will be to return the situation to normal. I will not retell the hackneyed story about graffiti in the New York subway; the same principle operates here. Roughly speaking, a “good neighborhood” turns into a “bad neighborhood.” It begins with bad people arriving in the “good neighborhood” and good people beginning to leave. Together with them, the “good” institutions they supported disappear, bad people find it easier to operate and they grow in number, and after some time—voilà!—you get the South Bronx or South Borshchahivka. The longer the bacchanalia in Donbas lasts, the faster this region will turn into a place where “interest groups” from around the world will conduct their dirty dealings, and the more difficult it will be to restore peaceful life there.
The only limiter of the state at all times and under all “socio-political formations” is society—that is, institutions arising from the voluntary interaction of people. The state has only as much power as people are willing to give it. And therefore, how long the war will last depends solely and exclusively on how much people understand what is happening, and how much they act in accordance with that understanding.
Quite recently, Ukrainians passed the temptation of dictatorship. One might say we were lucky here. The “split of the country” played a positive role in this sense. For half of Ukraine, Yanukovych was simply illegitimate. As president, the country might have tolerated him for some time, but as an amateur dictator—never. Yanukovych was too caricaturedly Donetsk for that. Now the state, thrown out the door, is climbing back through the window. Now we are going through the trial by war. It will be a bit harder, since swaggering patriotism is contagious, and patriotism is capable of destroying a healthy brain in a matter of minutes. The main thing here is to understand the moment when war becomes a source of profit for “our” side and transforms from an operation to destroy terrorists into a long-term ailment for us and a joy for them. I think such a criterion can be found. The moment I am talking about will come when people stop buying body armor and other equipment with their hard-earned money. From that point, the war ceases to be “ours,” and those who retain the ability to think clearly will have to stop it—since such a war and dictatorship have absolutely identical consequences.