There's No Moral High Ground

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called . . .

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.

But does it all start with name-calling?

Here are two perspectives I value. First, I am familiar with, and very respectful of, much of Quaker Faith and Practice. In North Yorkshire I attended the local Meeting, and was always nourished, and from time to time utterly astonished, by the power of its collective silent searching and worship. My sister is more deeply involved, helping run her local Meeting. My daughters attended the Mount, a Quaker school in York, for which I have unreserved praise. My eldest daughter got married last year in a Quaker wedding in Edinburgh.

But I am not a Quaker. I cannot be, because when it comes right down to it, I’m not a pacifist. I cannot persuade myself that there will never be circumstances when the right thing to do is to pick up a rifle and fight.

Here’s the second perspective. I was lucky enough to have David Wiggins as my philosophy tutor. In one unforgettable tutorial, he guided me through the complications of moral dilemmas. And right at the end, he summarised: sometimes there are no right ethical choices, all choices are bad. It’s not the people that are wrong, it’s the world. He ended very simply: ‘That’s the thing about moral dilemmas, and about life: it’s tragic’.

I’m writing this piece because I can’t keep down a sort of disbelieving outrage at the current level of simplistic moral posturing, particularly in Britain, about the Russia Ukraine war. The brittle Starmer is being hailed as a rare shining example of European statesmanship, even though he’s obviously writing cheques he can’t cash when he promises ‘boots on the ground and planes in the air’ in Ukraine. Zelensky is feted as an indomitable and unquestioned hero. Trump and Vance are appalling moral dwarfs dancing to a chuckling Putin’s tune. Putin, of course, is just a monster.

Going back to my two perspectives: first, the quasi-Quaker in me thinks that though sometimes there may be an ethical justification for war, that hurdle must be very very high. And second, there are circumstances in which, for want of a better explanation, there is simply is no moral high ground to be had. In those circumstances, attempts to seize it are fraught with all kinds of danger.

But despite all this: blessed are the peace-makers, for they shall be called the children of God. But only after they’ve been called a lot of other things first.

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You want moral clarity? Well here are two examples. First, when Putin sent columns of tanks into Ukraine in 2022, he was a villain. There’s no two ways about this: it matters not a jot that he felt provoked by the civic overthrow of a Russia-friendly president, nor that he was outraged by NATO expanding to encompass ever-broader stretches of Russia’s border. It doesn’t even matter that when it comes to which country should claim the Crimea it’s hard to overlook the claims of both Catherine the Great and the Russian Black Sea Fleet. Once you set the tanks rolling across the border, with murder on you mind, you’re the bad guy. Mr Putin cemented himself as a dangerous and malevolent force by that action. That’s moral clarity 1.

Moral clarity 2 is what happened next: when Zelensky declined to flee, but rather became the largest figurehead in resistance, he was heroic. Again, no two ways about it. What he did and more importantly didn’t do in 2022 puts him on the dais with Churchill: he refused to lose a war when he could/should have done. That’s moral clarity 2.

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But the Putin bad, Zelensky good clarity of 2022 get’s caught up in the smoke of three year’s meat-grinder war of hundreds of thousands dead, and no end in sight.

For the choices available to all parties, and to Zelensky in particular, no longer offer crystal ethical clarity. What is now, I think, obvious, is that neither Russia nor Ukraine can ‘win’ this war. Ukraine obviously can never defeat Russia, unless it envisages wiping out everything from St Petersburg to Vladivostok. (It may be relevant that I’m two thirds of the way through War and Peace at the moment.) Equally, though, there’s no victory for Russia, for the atrocities Ukraine has suffered have genuinely birthed the nation. ‘Victory’ would therefore involve a tyrannical, full-scale and unending occupation, with the occupiers endlessly harassed by waves of insurgency that would follow generation after generation, bleeding Russia dry until in the end it left, suing for peace.

But if neither side can win, the only possible outcome is an armistice along some disputed lines, presumably flanked on either side by a DMZ bristling with all kinds of horrors. And yes, both sides would be unhappy, and everyone, both parties to the war and those looking on, would consider this a ‘dishonourable outcome’.

And indeed, it would be ‘dishonourable’, because to an extent, the villain Putin would have got away with it, whilst the hero Zelensky would have betrayed those hundreds of thousands who fought and died for Ukraine’s undivided sovereignty. But ‘that’s the thing about moral dilemmas, and about life: it’s tragic’.

This dishonourable armistice is surely ethically a better outcome than ensuring that the meat-grinder is endlessly fed with more Ukrainians, more Russians, more North Koreans? No, the vision of an endless war which cannot be won and cannot be stopped is the vision of very hell itself. I am not a pacifist, but such an outcome cannot possibly court anything but damnation.

If Zelensky envisages no end to a war Ukraine cannot win, cannot lose, is he still a hero? Or has the genuine heroism of 2022 been violently compressed into something much darker?

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So this is where we are: blessed are the peace-makers, for they shall be called the children of God, but only after they’ve been called a lot of other things first.

Yes, I’m now talking about Pres Trump and VP Vance, who have been called every name under the sun ever since the infamous shouting match which curtailed Zelensky’s visit to the White House on last Friday (28th Feb). Now there is no doubt that the drama as played out was horrible: selfless hero being bullied by vain and power-mad world emperors, seemingly reading from the villain Putin’s script. Most of the world saw a courageous nation fighting for its life being humiliated and stabbed in the back by the very people they had considered its chief ally and armourer.

But what if this is what it takes to force the inevitable ‘dishonourable' armistice. What if peace - just peace, not a ‘just peace’ - can only be forced upon Ukraine and Russia only like this. Peace, after all, can only be made with your enemies, not your friends, and Putin certainly hates Zelensky, and Zelensky hates Putin in return. If someone has to calm down and reassure Putin whilst bullying Zelensky, and the result is to force an end to the bloodshed, their actions, however revolting to behold, are those of a peacemaker.

Conversely, those newly-badged European ‘statesmen’ who are promising seemingly an inexhaustible supply of gold and eventually flesh to keep Ukraine in the war - what do you call them? Not, I think, the children of God.

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I do not know how this will end. I hope, and if I really knew how to pray, I’d pray, that this war will end in the very near future. I know it will be wretched, and I know it will be ‘emotionally crippling’ for very many, and I very much doubt that President Trump and VP Vance will be showing up in Stockholm to collect the peace prize. But maybe they should.

Blessed are the peacemakers, they shall eventually be called the children of God, even if now they’re just unbearable SOBs.

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