Putin may be right, but what if he is wrong?

Although ‘historical materialism’ and ‘historical revisionism’ denote different concepts, Russian president Vladimir Putin’s recent use of the latter regarding alleged attempts to alter the history of World War II, in a Daily Monitor article [Wednesday, July 8] submitted by the Russian Federation’s Embassy in Kampala was significant and needs unpacking because of its implications. He might have a point.

While attending a special session of the UN General Assembly on disarmament in June 1978, I thought the superpowers were committed to it, but to them disarmament seems to have meant self-imposed restraints on selling weapons of mass destruction to Third World countries. The argument was that their leaders were irresponsible. Forty two years after the historic session, the number of irresponsible state actors seems to have exponentially increased.

Mercurial they might be, none of them has ever deployed a nuclear weapon in a limited border conflict with their neighbours or to brutalise protestors, have they? Never mind that some of them now possess stockpiles of them, Africa slumbers in sleep and waits to be turned into nuke fodder.

It was rumoured that a ‘Neutron Bomb’ designed “to put humans out of action” a military euphemism for killing, while leaving military equipment intact, had been manufactured. With an impact ascertainable by numbers of victims Covid-19 replicates the latter’s characteristics.

Cogent ethical questions notwithstanding, with Hindu, Islamic and Juche nuclear bombs poised to wreak havoc, I too might be persuaded to queue behind Africa’s de facto ideological leader if he fast-tracks teaching ‘nuclear power and its fuel cycle’ in African universities as a strategy for paving the way for an ‘Afro-Arab Nuke.’

“Everybody for themselves, God for us all” sounds a crazy idea, but as Korean leader Kim Jong-un demonstrated, nuclear superpowers respect only those with nukes. A nuclear balance of terror might be the best deterrence against a re-colonisation of Africa.

Russia seems poised for a war the Kremlin and its historical arch-enemies have for decades struggled to avoid. With Russo-American, Sino-US, US-Iran, US-Korean, Indo-Sino and Indo-Pakistan quarrels; war obsolescence, its ritualisation and pacification of humanity envisioned by disarmament are shattered.

I surrender to foreign affairs and defence analyst Russell Howe’s assertion that “Disarmament was more poker than stripping.” If war breaks out in a Europe perforated by Brexit and Nato is weakened by Turkish ‘double-edged diplomacy’ in the world’s shatter belt of disorder, historically known for playing the game of Russian roulette, the stakes lay with Russia.

Kremlin Middle East weapons diplomacy has over the years significantly benefitted from self-imposed US inhibitions and mistakes. Considering the replacement of ideology with ultra-nationalism in international relations, president Putin is probably making a mistake to apply Middle Eastern Backgammon tricks and skills to the management of Russian-US relations to determine who won World War II or who now really rules the world.

Dialectical materialism, the kingpin of Communist Party philosophy expanded the context of historical materialism and affirmed the dialectic underlying the laws of development, nature, society and intellectual thought.

Marx applied it only to social and historical events, but Engels never argued that ‘historical materialism’ could be deduced from it. Stalin’s Dialectical and Historical Materialism conflated it. Revisionism which Putin is reinventing was used by Communist China to undermine Gorbachev’s perestroika and glasnost.

Soviet ideologues accused China of ideological adventurism. But de-ideologisation, a form of adventurism, ended Communism. Seeking a historical reinterpretation to reflect old truths or hype the importance of new discoveries is not wrong. Contestation is integral to learning the truth or getting a different perspective, but presenting an objective and truth-based re-assessment of historical events is crucial.

Mr Baligidde is a lecturer in Democracy, Governance and Politics of Public Policy at Uganda Martyrs University