This is Democracy – Episode 191: War Crimes

This is democracy, a podcast about the people of the United States, a podcast about citizenship, about engaging with politics and the world around you. A podcast about educating yourself on today’s important issues and how to have a voice in what happens next. Welcome to our new episode of this is democracy.

This week, we’re going to explore a topic that unfortunately is front and center in our news these days, uh, the perpetration of a war crimes in Ukraine and not only in Ukraine, this is a story that’s actually had a lot of recent history in Syria. And in other parts of our world, uh, what are war crimes?

What do we mean when we say war crimes have been committed? How do we understand that terminology and what do we do about it? Uh, we actually have a long history around this topic and we’re joined today with the person who I think has written some of the most interesting work on this topic. Uh, this is my friend and fellow his story and Elizabeth borgwardt, uh, Elizabeth borgwardt specializes in the history of international law.

And the history of human rights, ideas and institutions. So she’s kind of like two scholars in one, she does the international law side and the international history side, uh, with a focus in particular on war crimes, trials, such as the Nuremberg trials at the end of world war II, the Tokyo attorney. At the end of world war II.

Uh, most recently she’s the co-editor of a wonderful book, rethinking grand strategy, where she writes among other things about Franklin Roosevelt’s approach to international affairs, her publications on human rights politics of the 1940s, especially her book, a new deal for the world. America’s vision of human rights.

Uh, this work has been recognized widely as some of the most important cutting edge work on. These topics that we’re discussing today. Liz teaches at Washington university in Saint Louis, and she’s been a visiting scholar, uh, pretty much all the important places, uh, in the world. She has a, she has a PhD in history and a J D.

So she’s also spent a lot of time, uh, studying these issues. Uh, Liz, it’s really delightful to have you with us today. Thank you for joining us. Oh, it’s great to be here, Jeremy and Zachary. Thank you for the invitation. Our pleasure. Our pleasure. Before we turn to our discussion with Liz, we have, of course our scene setting poem with Mr.

Zachary Siri. Uh, what is the title of your poem today? Fortunately, we are fortunate to hear your reflections on, fortunately, let’s hear it. Fortunately, I was sitting on the toilet, plugging my ears when the bomb fell. Fortunately, it is nearly impossible to cry when you are starving and unfortunately they cannot take away your name if they don’t bother to ask it of you first.

Fortunately, it was dark and Misty on that Thursday afternoon when they came in through the Hills in great big machines, gulping up asphalt, like catamaran is on the. Fortunately, it was cold outside. And so I was under the blankets already. I could just play dead when they came in the house, looking for a sandwich and some light entertainment.

Unfortunately, when they came to entertain me, it was dark. And the lights wouldn’t turn on. They bombed the power plants. And so I didn’t have to see it. Fortunately, I remember every second and I always will because they beat them into me each great tick on the grandfather clock. Another letter in the coming decree, slowly collecting the words for their defeat.

Unfortunately, I am still here. Unfortunately, I am writing those words out as best I can, even if it is now on the back of gum wrappers in the 4:00 AM train to and eventually I hope there will be enough of them to make a difference. It’s a very moving image. Uh, writing your reflections on gum wrapper.

Sacary what is your poem about. Uh, my poem is really about the power of words and the power of testimonials to overcome even the most horrific circumstances and how ordinary people, um, to make their voices heard through art, through poetry, but also just through plain speaking the truth. Well, I think there’s a lot to that.

Um, Liz, one of the reasons as I understand it, that we develop this terminology around war crimes is to pick up from where Zachary is. There are unspeakable actions that are committed, uh, and they’re not new to the modern world, but certainly in the last century, we, we have tried, I think, to identify those, discouraged them, prosecute them.

So, so maybe help us understand where does the term war crime. Come from what does it mean? How do we understand what we’re talking about here? Well, actually, let me back up for a second. Before I start getting all legalistic on you and also responded to a Zachary’s poem. Um, and it reminds me of some, uh, Holocaust testimonials that were written by diarists actually in some of the.

Concentration camps, death camps, work camps. And, uh, I just remember reading one image, uh, of a diarist in one of these extreme situations who described that she must have marshaled the last molecules of strength that she had in order to write. These, um, journal entries down on little scraps of paper and that image image of the last molecules of strength I reflect on sometimes when I say, oh, I’m too tired to write in my journal tonight, you know?

Um, but, um, just the idea of being in extreme illness and still writing, still writing things and creating a record is very powerful. To respond to your actual question, uh, about war crimes refers to activities that remain crimes, even though they happen in war. So we have very ancient ideas about crimes, robbery, murder, kidnapping, rape assault, and the, and yet in war time sometimes.

The status of those acts can alter, right? You’re supposed to go kill people in war time. That’s part of the idea is to inflict maximum damage on your enemy. And so killing in war time is not necessarily a crime to the contrary it’s encouraged. And so under what circumstances are these kinds of activities, which.

Normally crimes and peace time. Are they also crimes in wartime? So that’s the concept, dividing war crimes from an equally long history of peace time crimes. And w what is the basis for distinguishing between what would be legitimate use of violence and warfare and the illegitimate use? Because obviously that’s going to be different from peace time judgment.

Exactly. Exactly. And I really like your framing of legitimacy because again has a very ancient history, perhaps going back to Roman times or a lot of discussions of war crimes histories, start with Knightly chivalry in, uh, um, Medieval Europe and beforehand, the idea that, you know, you can, you can use the crossbow against havens, but you can’t use a crossbow against fellow Christians, you know, assume to be fellow Christians would be an example of a rule about how to conduct armed conflict.

And so, again, it’s the same act in certain circumstances, it’s considered to be a crime. Not. And so the legitimacy factor that you mentioned, Jeremy goes back to this idea of what are the rules of the game for legitimate warfare and they’re different in different times with different players. Uh, unlike the Romans today, we have international institutions that are supposed to at least nominally, uh, enforce these rules.

Um, how do those institutions develop and, and what role do they play in, in present discussions of these issues? Well, again, great to identify institutions as a significant factor. I mean, Simplify a great deal. You’ve got a 19th century set of development about ideas of legitimate warfare coming out of the Crimean war on us, civil war in particular, those ideas, which are.

Codified as lawyers like to say, and various kinds of international agreements, like the Hague and Geneva conventions, early iterations of them, then plug into institutions in the world, war II era, such as the Nuremberg trials or the United nations. This is something that. What about in the book that Jeremy, so kindly mentioned a new deal for the world, which is about the U S role in drafting, the, um, uh, drafting, the effectively, the constitutions of those new institutions.

And then later. In say the seventies, but in, especially in the nineties, you see these ideas and institutions plugging into what we now call grassroots movements or popular movements for nongovernmental organizations like amnesty international, where they’re energized and of course diversified by the participation of ordinary people.

So you have a multi-layered. Development of ideas and institutions over time. Yeah. You actually really explained some very complicated things in a very direct, uh, accessible way there that was really helpful is, and maybe the best place you can get to see the hand motion. Uh, maybe, maybe the best place to start on this is to go back to your wonderful book, a new deal for the world and, and just maybe lay out for us what role do Nuremberg and Tokyo that the war crimes trials, uh, play in, in taking what is a set of ideas perhaps that are in gestation and giving them some, some, not just legal, but some forceful backing.

Although controversially and, and sort of, where do we go from there? Excellent. Um, and again, I have this tendency to sort of backup to the moon, but just briefly, um, I think one of the most salient developments of the 1940s, and particularly towards the end of the waging of world war two was a kind of reconfiguration of the very idea of security and that.

President Roosevelt administration, Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s administration. Um, a number of the young lawyers associated with his administration were instrumental in helping to develop these ideas. It was core course and international enterprise among the allies and by the end of the war, there were 49 allies.

And so the, the reconfiguration I describe as. Economic ideas that you can’t have security. If people are starving and fomenting revolution, um, uh, multilateral. Collective security ideas, uh, which leads us to the United nations as an institution and ideas about accountability, particularly individual accountability.

And that gets us. I’m just going to stick with the Nuremberg tribunal. Uh, because Tokyo is very much modeled on the Nuremberg tribunal. Charter Tokyo came just slightly later. Uh, and so, um, the internet, the economic security piece is a set of agreements known as the Bretton woods courts, which gets us the world trade organization and the world bank as noted the collective security ideas, get us the United nations and the accountability.

Uh, particularly criminal accountability gets us the Nuremberg trials. One of these things is not like the others. The number of trials doesn’t have that enduring stickiness as political scientists, like to say, to carry it over into the post-war era. But it was initially as initially conceived, supposed to be the first step in a permanently sitting international criminal court ICC, which we do get eventually.

Um, in 1998, the Romes treaty, the Rome treaty Rome statute is drafted. And then it enters into force as lawyers like to say in 2002, but there’s a long fallow period during particularly the most virulent phase of the cold war where these . Really going anywhere. And at Nuremberg, I have a sense, Liz, from your work, you don’t see this as just Victor’s justice, right?

That’s the criticism that I imagined Vladimir Putin would articulate today. If we said, if we said, you know, there’s a, we have a system of, of, uh, war crimes trials. It goes back to 45. 1998, as you say, we finally create this international criminal court. We’ve tried certain people like the former leader of Yugoslavia Slobodan Milosevic.

Uh, but I imagine a lot of may Putin would say, war is war. I’m just fighting war. And you only prosecute the people who lose its Victor’s justice. What’s your response to. Well, I think it goes back to your raising of the idea of legitimacy, Jeremy, which I think is an excellent watch word for discussing a lot of these ideas than institutions.

There are a number of factors that serve to de-legitimized Nuremberg proceedings, the most famous or the most well-known trenchant. One is the idea of ex post facto law, right? That you can’t pry. Uh, accused people, you can’t try defendants for activities that were not crimes at the time they were committed and just make up laws later and try people, but defendants for them.

Um, but there were other de-legitimizing factors as well. Um, such as a principle known as clean hands and Latin it’s called , which means you do it. You did it to. Uh, students love the Latin for some reason, usually I try to stay away from it. Well, Zachary is Zachary is a Latin expert, so you’re speaking his language quite literally.

So , um, concerns would be that the allies also engaged in a number of these materials for which the leaders of the third Reich were tried at Nuremberg, notably unrestricted submarine warfare, and also the indiscriminate targeting of civilians through. Aerial bombing fi both firebombing and the use of nuclear weapons, that those would be designated as crimes against humanity under any reasonable definition of the term.

And so, and then there were also procedural. Uh, examples of procedural unfairnesses, uh, unfairness during the trials, such as prosecutors talking to the judges and hanging out with them, socializing them and all kinds of other things that would never have been allowed. Let’s say in. Criminal trial. Um, but clean hands and ex post facto are the two big ones.

So there are absolutely legitimacy issues. So I can keep talking to address, say what, how one might address them. But I. Yeah. Well, and then you ask a question. No, no, no. Well maybe it lets I mean, that would be great. It’s just sort of what, what is the basis for legitimacy despite those very persuasive limitations?

Well, those are very serious limitations to, or challenges to the legitimacy of these trials. And by the way, when I say trials, there’s one mean Nuremberg trial. That is multi-lateral among four of the leading allies, U S w union France, and the UK. There are also a series of so-called subsequent trials.

Also known as Nuremberg trials, uh, uh, 12 of them. So there are 13 Nuremberg trials, total, which is why people will tend to use the plural. Okay. But those subsequent trials, like the doctors trials, the doctor’s trial, rather than the industrials trials, judges trial were exclusively conductor. By the Americans.

So when I say Nuremberg, and this is context I’m ref, I tend to refer to the main flagship trial with it. That was multilateral. And the response to your question about legitimacy or dressing concerns about legitimacy is basically. I’m going to recapitulate the most famous one that was articulated by a political theorist whom I adore called Judas Sklar, who was a political theorist in a social science department.

But she wrote a wonderful book called legalism in the very early sixties. And basically she said, ex post facto, give me a break, you know, under, under. Possible notion could these Nazi perpetrators have thought that they’re, uh, systematic, industrial killing and targeting of civilians was permissible when basically lesser included subsets of the same kinds of behaviors had been outlawed.

Under, particularly the Hague conventions on land warfare since the very early 19 hundreds. And so that’s, that’s really the, the basis of her objection is that saying, well, look, ex post facto, you can get all technical on me, but basically it’s a fairness concern, right? That you, as a defendant need to be put on, notice that your behavior is out of bounds.

And it just seems a little odd to say that these defendants wouldn’t have had. A pretty strong sense of that as these atrocities were unfolding. What about the argument? Uh, advanced most famously by hunter Arent in her book, Eichmann in Jerusalem that perhaps what is needed is not the criminal prosecution of the perpetrators, but a real, uh, process of political responsibility for the state apparatus itself.

And perhaps that includes not just tackling the difficult moral questions of guilt and innocence, but really dealing with. Nitty-gritty of the political institutions themselves that allowed such actions to occur. Oh, a hundred percent. Okay. I mean, I think your question goes to really all of law as an enterprise, which is, it’s really not a substitute for social relations and politics.

It’s something you can turn to when though when social relations and politics breaks down and that includes domestically, right? If your neighbors hedge. I don’t know, casting shade on your vegetable garden. So your tomatoes won’t grow. Your first line of approach is not necessarily to take them to court or to buy a flame thrower, right.

It’s to use other basic kinds of social norms to try it. Fix this problem, address this conflict. And, uh, only when those approaches break down, are you thrown back on more formal conflict resolution mechanisms and that’s even more. The case at the international level about the kind of spinned leanness of the law, I guess, as a substitute for politics and other kinds of dispute resolution.

And I think that’s a really good segue to the contemporary issue, right? And this is such helpful background, a clear example, as we try to show every week of how historical knowledge enriches our understanding of the current issue. Right? So, um, The challenge that, uh, Ukraine faces with a lot of me or Putin is it’s very hard for them to reach him and to force him to stop his behavior, stop his killing of people, uh, killing of innocent individuals.

Uh, I’m sure our listeners have seen the gruesome images of Boucher and other areas of Ukraine images that evoke just what you were talking about. Liz, they evoke world war II, uh, in the center of Europe. Um, How useful is it in this setting where recourse to structural institutional change or recourse to civil discourse is not present?

How useful is it to go? The route of declaring these war crimes and, and what does that get us? Uh, okay. So, um, the prosecutor of the international criminal court has now referred the situation Ukraine or not now from starting in 2014. And investigation was opened into possible war crimes, crimes against humanity.

Um, also aggression, which we can maybe talk about in a minute, because that’s a little bit different legal category for now. Um, Uh, and to, for, to start gathering evidence for a possible future procedure of some kind, and there are different kinds of options in terms of, well, does the ICC really have jurisdiction here?

Neither Ukraine nor Russia are. What’s known as state’s parties to, um, the international crimp, the Rome statute of international criminal court. Although. Um, Russia did sign. And then unsign the initial treaty, just as the U S signed and later unsigned it under George W. Bush, but doesn’t signing it doesn’t make you a states’ party.

You have to ratify it, like in the U S your, our Senate has to ratify it, and it wasn’t even submitted to the Senate. And, um, so anyway, Russia to do the same thing, they, they don’t, I don’t know what their ratification processes, but basically they signed initially and then unsigned, um, Why does the ICC have jurisdiction at all?

And it turns out there is an avenue for them to have jurisdiction, meaning, um, authority to investigate. Um, but that doesn’t answer your question about, well, okay. Uh, gathering evidence is one thing, but what about getting Putin and his generals to stop doing what they’re doing? And because they’re unlikely to be deterred by saying, you know, Many filing cabinets of evidence, you know, that you were doing bad things.

And I think that that’s, um, the, the, the sad story is the slowness. Um, the speed of this kind of an international procedure. It’s not really designed to intervene in an ongoing conflict. Uh, Look at Nuremberg and even, um, the war crimes trials for Rwanda in the former Yugoslavia, there were, uh, they were really for, especially Nuremberg for conflicts that were over.

Okay. So just like litigation. In the U S system you’re cleaning up. People’s messes in a backward-looking post hoc way. Okay. Post-hoc was for you, Zachary. Um, and so when Ken litigation. Be part of a solution. Well, if you have maybe some kind of plea bargain, or if you can trade away elements of, um, future liability for an exchange for someone stopping bad behavior, uh, sometimes that can be effective.

And the ICC the very first, um, uh, prosecutor of the ICC. He was interested in doing that. Um, not necessarily giving people a Jew get out of jail free card, but using the ICC as a diplomatic tool to intervene, you know, perhaps, uh, to, um, um, you know, talk about future liability. Um, It’s designed to hold individuals accountable.

Also circling back to Zachary’s early questions just as Nuremberg did and not institutions. And, um, it’s um, uh, it’s a, it’s a later, it’s a later occurring intervention. Just again, like court cases are in the. Domestic situations. I like that metaphor of, um, it being a method of cleaning up the garbage, uh, after the fact, but not necessarily intervening during the act, during the act of commission.

And, and just to clarify for our listeners. Cause because it does get complicated, right? The ICC, as, as Liz said, is the international criminal court. Created in 1998, as Liz said with the Rome statute. And just to go back over where we were, uh, both, uh, the United States and Russia initially signed on, but then unsigned and the United States never ratified its membership.

Uh, and, and it’s interesting to think about this as a long arc of history, back to Nuremberg coming up to the present. One of the arguments often made for the value. Um, calling out war crimes that, that, that many of your colleagues make Liz, is that, uh, doing so as a kind of naming and shaming, I think that’s the term of art, right?

That what you’re doing is you, you are declaring something out of bounds, a certain kind of behavior, and you’re making it harder and harder in this case for Russia’s. Um, maybe not friends, but those who have remained neutral in. China other countries making it harder for them to associate themselves, uh, with this, uh, I think as parents, we do this naming and shaming all the time too.

Don’t we? So does this work, uh, is this, is this a way in which the post hoc legal process can have a, an influence during, during the commission of the atrocity during the. Well, as you rightly pointed out, Jeremy, it’s not as if this kind of naming and shaming is going to affect poop in, in any way. Uh, if anything, it’s, it might encourage him to double down or a crack down further on the free circulation of information.

And I think you rightly point to one area where there might be a little bit of wiggle room, which is isolating Putin’s regional. Evermore on the world stage. And it, in terms of having a good effect it’s would be almost impossible to measure, but something that we might think about looking ahead would be, well, maybe China would think twice about, um, uh, acts of aggression against Taiwan, seeing how ostracized Putin has been including.

Commercially and financially, um, after this active aggression. And so, uh, that, that would give a future future potato invaders pause, I guess, um, by invoking these kinds of sanctions and also other. Involving tribunals, but other kinds of sanctions, economic sanctions, financial sanctions. Right. And it would seem to me, one could argue, I don’t know if this is true, you’d be the expert on this, but it would seem to me, one could argue that there’s a possibility of influencing those within the regime around someone like thought of your Putin.

So those who are thinking and hoping to have a post-war existence, oligarchs and others who have business interests overseas, who, who. Who for whom legal ostracism might have real costs, right? This, this is something that. Possibly. I mean, I wouldn’t set to too much store on it, but, um, it, I mean, it reminds me of arguments about whether sanctions work or not.

And there are lots of examples of sanctions not working, but the example that everyone likes to point to where sanctions possibly were effective was, and the ending of apartheid in South Africa were really there. It wasn’t the people at the top around the Boto regime who. Responded to being ostracized necessarily.

Um, not only in terms of finances, but in terms of sport, you know, rugby teams couldn’t travel, this kind of thing. It was a middle class, uh, white middle-class in South Africa in that apartheid era that said we’re sick of this. We’re sick of being isolated and ostracized. So maybe there’s enough. Um, still enough freedom for.

Ordinary citizens to express themselves. Although it’s hard to tell and say, you know, this is not the identity that I want for myself and for my country on the world. Right, right. So this is sobering your analysis, Liz, because it points to the, um, very similar tude and the usefulness of the term as a concept.

But it’s perhaps uselessness in trying to influence, or it’s limited, you. And trying to influence policy to try to stop the killing. Uh, what are the ways you think that our listeners, particularly young people, my students and others who, who care about these issues, they there’s a moral claim there that they care about.

What’s the way, what are the ways in which are we as a society? We, as a citizenry, we, as a world community talking about these issues could use the concept effectively, at least in our description. Work, uh, how would you like to see us use it? How would you like to see us not use it? Because even when it’s used correctly, it’s often used obviously for political purposes.

So, so where should we go? The war crime, the concept of war crimes, right? How, how should we, what would be a useful way for us to talk about it as an analytical category, as we’re unfortunately watching these events? Okay, well, I’m not sure my answer will be very satisfying, but I would encourage our younger listeners to think about the idea of norms and what is a norm as opposed to a law or rule or an aspiration.

And that norms can shift over time. And so you have, for instance, a norm that’s articulated in the U S constitution about against cruel and unusual punishment. Right. Just in it’s in the, in the bill of rights. Okay. So what is cruel and unusual punishment? That is something that changes over time. Used to put people in stockades or make them wear a Scarlet a or I don’t even know a nail in their ears to trees and awful things happening in early colonial era.

And now a lot of those behaviors would be considered. Cruel and unusual punishments. And so Nuremberg offers us an example. It’s a little bit attenuated, but let me make it more specific with the Nuremberg medical trial. That’s the one I referred to earlier as being a later American trial of some, uh, Nazi doctors who, uh, performed experiments on human subjects without consent.

So it’s going to take me a minute to lay this out, but in the, in the. Decision, um, that was handed down for, um, any opinion that was handed down in the number of medical trial. The judge has sort of put through into the opinion, a checklist of. Was necessary for a human subject to be fully consenting to a medical experiment.

And it has to be explained to them. And I don’t know, this is kind of thing, the harm, and, uh, nobody really paid any attention to it until the 1970s. I’m talking in an American American context now where. We had a scandal in the U S um, known as the Tuskegee syphilis experiments where some, uh, black Americans had been basically experimented on, um, without their consent.

They were not told of treatments for a disease they already had. Um, so that scientists could study them. Okay. So the American medical association is looking around and saying, oh my God, What is it that makes us not Nazi? Like what can we do going forward to either make sure this doesn’t happen again, or at least to show our outrage and that we have standards.

And so what’s on the shelf, the Nuremberg medical code. Adopted as part of the code of conduct by the American medical association in the seventies. So it’s not our law. It doesn’t have quote unquote teeth in the way that people are always asking about international law. But what happens in the eighties, the Nuremberg code becomes adopted by universal.

If you’ve ever conducted any kind of trial or experiment using human subjects in a university environment, you’ve got to fill out all this paperwork that comes from the, the, um, Nuremberg code. Um, and that was in the eighties and the nineties. And it’s not until the nineties later in the nineties that health and human services actually adopted.

Well, again, what I’m referring to as the number of medical code as federal law. So it’s a pretty long process, right? It’s a, it’s a dusty part of a decision in the late forties. It pops up in the seventies in response to a specific kind of political legitimacy crisis. Again, in a us context, then it becomes part of a code of conduct.

And then it becomes part of university regulations. And at what point do we say. It’s a law. You know that you’ll be punished if you break, it takes quite a long time. And so I think the message in terms of activism is how do you keep those norms, you know, crystallizing and moving in the right direction.

Um, we have a useful concept called Cogans more Latin for you, Zachary. This idea that. Peremptory norms of international law. Right. You can’t just decide even through a democratic process that you as a state, want to commit genocide or that you want to reinstate slavery. Okay. You can’t do it. Um, you know, that you’re breaking the law, right.

And under international law on some level, um, even if it happens. Um, and so there used to be a third year Cogans norm, right? Slavery, genocide, and torture, but torture isn’t really in that group anymore. It’s moving out of that circle of use Cogans norms because of contrary state practice. Great by the United States.

Well, lot of folks actually, but yes, notably the United States, the idea being that, um, if there’s enough contrary state practice, then the norm is degraded over time. Right. And so it doesn’t really work anymore to say that those big three are genocide, slavery and torture. Um, although it’s holding for now for genocide and slavery, and I want to be careful because it’s not that for instance, slavery doesn’t have.

Okay. I read something recently that said there might be more enslaved people in the world now than at any time in human history. I mean, depending on how you define enslavement great. And in factories and all kinds of things, but the idea is. If you’re doing it, you know, you’re doing wrong on some level.

You’re not saying, you know what? We think it’s more efficient to have slaves or our state policies, genocide. Um, it’s uh, and so that’s what at least helps maintain the norm. Even if there’s some. Contrary practice. So calling out poutines, a killing of innocent civilians helps to reinforce the norm against that behavior.

Is that what I’m understanding? Absolutely. And again, it’s unsatisfying because it’s not very immediate, but it does circle back to Zachary’s contribution with his poem and that one of the, um, activities that. Turns out to be the most effective is, uh, the emotions that are, uh, basically engaged by artistic expression in the face of mass atrocities or atrocities against civilians.

And so, and, and. Ukrainians themselves are very aware of this. They’re engaging in various kinds of performance, performance, art and bandaging statues show that their, uh, polity is wounded and, uh, they’ve have mastered various kinds of circulation of memes. And those are powerful artists. Expressions, it’s unclear to what extent they’re able to be circulated within Russia.

Um, but certainly for American young people or, um, Non non Russians who have access to this information. Those are powerful statements and they are meaningful. Yes. Yes. So Zachary, maybe this is where we should come back to you in closing, as, as a young person paying very close attention to these issues.

Very moved. You’ve been very moved by this, and I know many of my staff. I’ve been moved many, many people in one doesn’t have to be young to be moved by what’s happening in Ukraine. Um, although we’re still young Liz, I’m going to put us in the young category. Um, but, but Zachary for, for, for those of your generation and just a little older, is this discussion helpful as war crimes, a, a, a label that you find useful, uh, because we have to choose how to talk about these issues.

Right. And, and do you find that a useful way to move forward or not? And how should we think about it? Can I drop it? Oh, can I drop a note? Well, Zachary is thinking, although oddly tongue all the time, but, um, I rather than work crimes, I would actually get. Maybe use the term crimes against humanity and, you know, is that evocative for him?

I mean, I think it certainly is an important concept if, if not only to, to, to help us comprehend the gravity of, of what is unfolding as we speak. Um, but I also think that in some sense, Uh, it, it misses the point to a certain degree because, um, I think that, that at least for me, at least what, what has helped me understand?

What is, what is unfolding in Ukraine and all over the world, uh, unfortunately is, is, is reading the. The literature, the, the art, um, the personal testimonials. And I think at some degree, it’s, it’s less the, the legal, codifications the legal understandings that we need. And more of a, a personal understanding.

Um, I, I recently re-read an essay by Milan. Kununurra called the tragedy of central Europe, which is all about how the central European states, uh, managed to stay independent and revolt against domination from the east and from the west, uh, through. And, and, and through, through poetry, through the literature.

And I think it’s important to, to understand how powerful even individual voices in the United States and around the world can be in, in, in shaping the present, the future understanding of this moment. Uh, it’s a very powerful way of, of thinking about it. And it is to our listeners. Uh, it is Milan, Kununurra his essay from 1984, actually.

So it’s for many, many years, Is it 84 or 86 we’ll check? Uh, I think, uh, maybe it was 86, uh, in the New York review of books. Uh, I remember the source aren’t exactly on exactly this topic and, uh, throughout history as, as Liz knows better than anyone else, the arts have been a source of, uh, expression and resistance in, in certain ways.

Absolutely. And there are a couple of relatively recent good books about it. It’s known sometimes. I don’t know. I, our circles as the Helsinki effect, this idea that the Helsinki Accords had a so-called basket of human rights. Interests when it was signed that the Soviets then Soviet signed onto, and I want to say 75, uh, that they didn’t just sign because precisely because it didn’t have quote unquote teeth, but then Helsinki watch group sprung up all over particularly central Europe.

And they were in conversation with each other and the arts were very important. Part of that movement, people were performing plays in their basements about human rights and putting up. Poetry journals. And they’d have a soccer club where they’d play soccer and then they’d talk about human rights in the clubhouse and that cultural movement, which again, is something.

Subsumed under this label of, um, that, um, Helsinki moment or the Helsinki movement was, uh, instrumental, I think in, uh, mobilizing that transition, for instance, that led to the unraveling of the Soviet union. And it was 1984 that the. Oh, so I was correct, unfortunately. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. Lightning has struck, well, Liz, this has been so enlightening.

You, you have really enriched our historical foundation and our conceptual understanding of these issues. And you’ve, you’ve really manifest, I think one of our core themes week-in and week-out, which is that democracy occurs at many levels. And in fact, the, uh, quote unquote softer level. Of art literature, daily behavior, they’re often more important or at least as important as the more traditional areas.

And one of the hopes of our podcast is that people see opportunity and see reason to engage in the work of democracy that you’ve described so well, that Judas Sklar was a great example of within our society at all levels. So thank you so much for sharing this with us. I get choked up. When I talk about this Zachary, it’s pretty amazing.

Ah, and uh, I really hope. That our listeners will, uh, read your work again. Liz is a major book on this topic is a new deal for the world, and I’m going to let Zachary close us out since I’m losing my voice here, you got a fact, right? You lose your voice. Well, thank you for joining us. This was a wonderful conversation.

Uh, we, we hope to, to be in your ears soon. Thank you. Thank you. Take care. Thank you, Liz. Thank you, Zachary. Thank you to our listeners and thank you most of all, to our loyal participants in this democratic adventure. We’re all a part of thank you for joining us for this week of this is democracy.

This podcast is produced by the liberal arts, its development studio and the college of liberal arts at the university of Texas at Austin. The music in this episode was written and recorded by Harris. Codine stay tuned for a new episode every week. You can find this is democracy on apple podcasts, Spotify, and Stitcher.

See you next time. Uh,