The Role of Collective Trauma in the Actual War

Cause for horror

Every war is cruel and inhuman. The war that broke out these days is, beyond the inhumanity associated with any war, a cause for horror and dismay for all those who believe in the power of peace and non-violent conflict resolution and who hoped that in the millennia of civilizational progress the primitive law of the strongest would be overcome. It is cause for disillusionment about the power that individuals, supported by compliant elites and enthroned by manipulation and dictatorial tricks, can bear violence in the 21st century. The Russian autocrat has unleashed an aggressive war of aggression against his "brother nation," driven by sheer greed for power and by a nationalist ideology with a contorted view of history. 

We feel thrown back to the 18th or 19th century, where wars were started when a neighbouring state was weak and one's own army was well equipped. Potentates put their troops on the march to expand their own power realm and increase their historical glory. These were gruesome wars, but they mostly affected the civilian population only marginally. Unlike today, almost every war of aggression in those days resulted in coalitions in which the relevant great powers pursued their interests. Another difference was that wars were fought on battlefields, not in major cities.

The Russian aggression of February 24, 2022, was possible because it was clear that the West did not want to interfere militarily. The European continent has two world wars behind it and intensive learning and reappraisal processes have taken place in many countries. The horrors of the wars have left deep scars on souls and led many people to believe that international conflicts must be resolved nonviolently, without the sacrifice of human lives. The threshold for entering into warlike actions is high in functioning democracies, because it is probably impossible in any country to mobilize majorities for a war of aggression. 

But how do democracies deal with dictatorships in which wars can be waged without regard for their own populations? The response options are limited to economic sanctions and moral ostracism. The situation is reminiscent of that before World War II, in which the dictatorship in Germany took advantage of the dithering of the English and French democracies to invade Czechoslovakia, first in the so-called Sudeten territories, including guarantees for the integrity of the rest of Czechoslovakia, only to occupy it six months later. Dictators have an advantage in action over more discussion oriented democracies. They have the disadvantage that the decisions that are made are driven by the emotions of individuals who are highly prone to error.

Sooner or later (more likely over the long haul), the model of Western democracies is so attractive that more and more people living under different conditions will aspire to it. One component of the current war lies in the dictators' fear of this attraction, which would go to their own heads. Putin wants to dictate to Ukraine what form of life and government the country "wants" to have, so that he can, in a sense, create a buffer zone against the democratic bacilli coming from the West, for which there is much fertile ground in Russia as well. 

Shameful Finding

We must experience the present state of humanity, that is, of the community of people, as shameful. How can it be possible that a long-term ruler with his military machinery starts a war of aggression in the 21st century and nobody can put a stop to this outrage? Unfortunately, we are still a long way from a world order in which states are deprived of their monopoly on the use of force. There is no world police force that can arrest individual state perpetrators of violence and take away their means of violence. Individual states function only because of the internal monopoly of power among the forces of order. How can a world function if there are no forces of order responsible for the whole world to stop such inhumane aberrations?

Collective Traumas and their Devastating Effects

Putin has named the denazification and demilitarization of Ukraine as the aim of this war. Everyone knows that Ukraine is not ruled by Nazis and is no potential military threat for highly armed Russia. So these are propaganda lies. At the same time, it becomes clear what historical trauma is behind the aggression. Putin has pointed out that he avoided a mistake made by his predecessor Stalin, namely naively believing in World War II that Russia would not be attacked by Nazi Germany. Then, when German troops unexpectedly invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941 and inflicted defeat after defeat on the Russian army, the shock was great and could be dealt with only slowly after the situation turned in favour of the Soviet army starting in late 1942 and finally Germany was defeated in 1945.

The collective trauma has obviously not been overcome, and Putin sees himself as the executor of a victim-perpetrator reversal. He finds the Nazi opponents in Ukraine and wants to eradicate the "Nazis" there before they can become dangerous to the Russian fatherland. Moreover, the Ukrainian "brother people" are to be saved from wickedness of their leaders. 

But the Ukrainians suffer from an even earlier trauma, the Holodomor between 1931 and 1933, which can be considered as genocide. About 3.5 million Ukrainians fell victim to the Soviet agricultural policy with the collectivization of agriculture. About 10% of the population was exposed to starvation at that time. In addition, there were extensive "purges", i.e. the execution or internment of artists, teachers, scientists and intellectuals, as well as lower and middle party cadres. Historian Gerhard Simon writes: "For Stalin, the Holodomor was not only an instrument to discipline the peasants, but also to destroy once and for all in Ukraine all dreams of autonomy or even independence." (Source here) 

These events dug a deep hole in the collective Ukrainian soul. This was also one of the reasons why many Ukrainians joined the invading German soldiers in WW2, fought for them and also assisted in mass murders of Jews, albeit instigated by the German Nazis. This turn of events in turn resulted in the hatred of many Russians for Ukrainians. 

Putin has Studied his Hitler

Here also lies a root of today's Russian propaganda, which accuses the democratically elected government of Ukraine of Nazism and uses this insinuation as a pretext for forcibly invading the country, invented and presumably fed by an unreflective and unprocessed history. The Nazis, who invaded the Soviet Union in 1941 out of greed for power, are to be punished and avenged in Ukraine - with tricks copied from the Nazis: Using fake news to feign Ukrainian attacks in order to have a justification for attacking. So Putin has learned his Hitler: Assume that the victim of your aggressiveness is under attack, if necessary staged, then you have the right to destroy the state with your superior military machinery. Of course, Putin uses a propaganda trick because there would be no signs or reasons why Ukraine should attack Russia.

Even the goal of demilitarizing Ukraine, which the Russians have taken up, is justified by an apparently deep-seated fear of external aggression - not surprising for a country that has been invaded from the West several times in history. This time, however, the tables are turned and the aggression goes from Russia to the south and west.

We don't know if Putin really believes what he is talking about, in any case his propaganda serves the dark stains of the Russian soul that characterize the thinking and feeling of many of his compatriots, who have little idea of history and its complexity and of the effect of collective traumas. In addition, Russia's own population has long been inundated with false news and manipulative propaganda. Dictators need stupid people as followers and also count on their stupidity; that is part of their impudence. 

Disillusionment

The sobering insight is: we have to change our ways and scale back our expectations of humanity's progress in reason. A world order based on the principles of non-violence, characterized by freedom and self-determination, can only exist to the extent that it is shared and respected by all concerned. It is enough for a ruler or a regime not to share these principles, but to subordinate them to its own striving for power, to undermine their validity and their effectiveness. In the long run, nonviolence will triumph over violence, but with infinite casualties. In the short term, Russia's arbitrary unilateral aggression means that the arms spiral must continue to go upward around the world and that we continue to need a balance of terror to prevent global nuclear war from breaking out.

In the combat zones in Ukraine, not only people are dying and not only material goods are being destroyed, but the order of values that mankind has painstakingly acquired and fought for over centuries is being attacked. The opportunity, however, lies in making ourselves aware of these values and in representing and defending them with commitment. We must not allow the level of humanity we have achieved to be thrown overboard by potentates flexing their muscles with the pathos of smear dictators and projecting their destroyed inner selves into brutal destruction in the outside world.

Collective processing of historical traumas is an indispensable basis for making it impossible for autocrats to play the piano of unprocessed collective emotions and to channel these energies in aggressive directions.

Collective Regression and Repetition Compulsion - Aspects of the Ukraine Invasion

The cruel events in Ukraine confront us with primitive forms of conflict resolution, namely the idea of using force and superior military strength to subjugate an opponent and impose one's own wishes on him. The law of the strongest had already largely disappeared from the civilized world, overcome by legal systems at the state level and by international treaties and supranational organizations at the global level. But not all players abide by the rules, and when one of the powerful ones breaks away and violates the rules, the entire system disintegrates and has to reorganize itself.

The logical consequence is then that the other players must regress to the more primitive level in order to restore balance there. A state currently uses its armed forces to expand its own borders and subjugate another country. This is a form of power politics that has been outlawed worldwide since World War II, because any rational person can learn from the massive destruction of that war that violence does not solve problems but increases them. It should also be clear from historical experience that wars of aggression lead to the escalation and engagement of other powers and bring no long-term gain. But when a state uses more primitive means to advance its own interests, the other states must counterattack at that level, whether they like it or not. If they do not, they themselves become victims of the attack machinery. 

So there must be armament everywhere. Money that could be used for the further development of the social and health system, for education and for the development of new technologies against climate change must be put into weapons, where they serve no other purpose than that of deterrence. Weapons are developed and built with a great deal of intelligence and raw materials, at best for then rusting away over time. This is valid until a more stable world order with effective control mechanisms is implemented and, at the same time, democratic mechanisms are installed everywhere to prevent megalomaniacs and paranoids from rising to political leadership positions.

The Repetition Compulsion 

What is happening right now has all already happened in a similar form, in the middle of Europe and elsewhere in the world. There would be no need to repeat again what we know from history including all the tragic consequences. We already know how it will end. But if the past has not been processed and understood, it sets the directions and steers action rather than the apparent rational calculations used to weigh the costs and benefits of aggression.

We know from trauma psychology that unprocessed traumas urge repetition and re-enactment, and this is true of collective traumas as well. So we are witnessing a gigantic collective compulsion to repeat, its destructive force and its compulsiveness. As the omnipresent object of comparison Adolf Hitler shows, there is no turning back on this track, there is only final victory or final defeat.

The Logic of Evolution 

Life progresses from one stage of development to the next. The later stages incorporate the achievements of the earlier ones and organize them into new structures with new qualities. This is the course of things and the inherent urge of all life to grow, or, in the language of physics, the generation of order from chaos (negentropy). Such developmental steps are most clearly visible in children and adolescents. They show up, for example, at birth or during adolescence.

It is similar with societies and mankind as a whole. They, too, move from one level to the next in order to better master new challenges. The model of the evolution of consciousness describes the development of these successive organizational models and their inner interrelationships. In the process, advances in complexity and differentiation occur. In the favorable case, these processes proceed organically. 

Regression and Instability

But there can also be disturbances when it comes to progressing to a new stage, so that the process gets stuck. The preserving elements and the elements pushing on come into conflict. When the preserving forces get the upper hand, regressions occur, that is, withdrawing to earlier levels of development. If we look at the model of the development of consciousness, it sometimes seems as if the regression happens by several levels at once. It is as if we suddenly have to set new priorities, priorities that have been long forgotten to us for a long time and that seem outdated and primitive. We realize that we are suddenly sliding back, in feelings and in thinking. We have fallen under the influence of collective traumatizations. We lose the stability of the developmental stage we have already reached.

Traumatization and excessive stress lead to regression. Let's take the example of diseases: when viruses or bacteria cause inflammation in the body, it switches to emergency mode, and we regress and become weak and helpless like small children. Regression serves to ensure survival by simpler means. All resources are expended to remove the danger and return the body to healthy self-regulation. 

Societies also react by regressing to earlier levels of stress and conflict management when massive threats occur that cannot be mastered, or seemingly cannot be mastered, by existing means. In the current case, we can see that it does not take real threats at all to activate primitive reaction patterns. Already fantasized threats are sufficient, as they are known as trauma consequences. Dictators and authoritarian leaders tend to distort reality and blur the lines between fantasy and reality, in their propaganda and in their worldview. The fears to be mobilized by such conflations come from the past, from the field of collective traumas.

Forced Regression

The regression into which the states of the West are moving is forced, but it can be reversed if it is done with awareness and not as a trauma reaction. Societies that are sufficiently grounded at the level of systemic consciousness can even suspend certain basic rights in an emergency and then return to normal once the emergency is over. Advanced systems are more flexible; regressive systems are more rigid. 

The rearmament results as a system constraint, which on the whole is useless, but has become necessary so that the aggressor will be deterred from continuing his repetition compulsion. The perfidious thing about the present situation, then, is that policymakers have no choice but to strengthen the armed forces; anything else would be irresponsible and grist to the war-mongers' mill. The appeasement policy of the 1930s motivated Germany to launch World War 2. This experience must not be repeated.

Breaking the Power of Collective Traumas

We escape the pull of the repetition compulsion only if we perceive the power of collective traumas and face them consciously. All the feelings that are stored in these fields must be accepted and experienced. On the rational level, it is important that there are no cognitive distortions and other sprinklings of trauma energy. In this process, the view of history moves away from blame and moral judgments and toward a deeper understanding of the connections between actors, systems, and patterns of mentality. The findings of the historical sciences form the standard for a rational and balanced evaluation of historical processes. For example, research commissions staffed by historians from the countries between which a conflict has existed or exists, or museums in which different views of history are presented, serve this purpose.

As long as the past rules the present, no free relationship to the current reality is possible. This also makes it difficult or impossible to resolve actual conflicts. Any form of sustainable peacebuilding is based on coming to terms with collective traumas. Peace with one's own past is the indispensable prerequisite for peace in and with the present (this is true on the individual as well as on the collective level). Peace in the now is the basis for the ability to act in a constructive and creative way to shape the future in a humane way.