Ukraine, Russia, and the Armchair Battalions

It’s an odd feeling, living in a stretch of time you know will get a paragraph in future history textbooks.  With an equal measure of lies and tanks, Russia invaded its neighbor Ukraine on 24 February 2022.  It is an unjustified, unprovoked, naked power grab of the sort Europe thought they left behind decades ago.  But I don’t plan on talking about that, at least not directly.  I want to focus on the Armchair Battalions.

Let me first lay out a bit of my resume.  I have a bachelor’s in military strategic studies, a master’s in international relations, and have spent the past nine years in the military—four of those stationed in Germany, looking east towards Russia.  All that said, I have no idea what Putin is going to do next.  So when I see folks lining up to offer their insight on what will obviously happen, it amuses and frustrates me in equal measure.  I have dubbed these newfound experts the Armchair Battalions, and they serve with misplaced confidence and ferocity on the front lines of the Internet.

The Armchair Battalions are a varied lot, and their focus tends to shift with the topics of the day.  A coworker recently commented that his friends on social media have gone from thinking themselves epidemiologist experts to geopolitical savants overnight as the Russian invasion kicked COVID out of the media spotlight.  This is par for the course.  There is no cause too unknown for the Armchair Battalions not to have a rock-solid opinion on.  And when those opinions are proved wrong?  Not to worry!  They can fire and maneuver with tremendous speed.  Observe how they went from being sure Russia wouldn’t invade, to being sure Russia would flatten Ukraine in a matter of days, to being sure that Ukraine would win the war.  Throw in some old pictures and misidentified video game footage as evidence, and any point can become a hill to die on. 

Where does my frustration with this behavior really lie, though?  People are entitled to their opinions, what does it matter if they blast them out online?  It would be hypocritical to the extreme for me to have a blog doing just that if I didn’t allow for it from others.  No, I think the frustration stems from two areas.  First is a personal pet peeve: hindsight bias. 

The Armchair Battalions now say it was obvious Russia would invade.  They say that knowing the result and looking backward, filling in the evidence gaps with whatever information fits the narrative.  Hindsight bias is deluding yourself that the answer was always obvious, even before the event took place.  But if that were so, then there would have been nigh-universal acknowledgement of the event ahead of time.  Just glance at the news from the week before Russia invaded and you’ll see plenty of intelligent people convinced Russia would never invade.  This is just pride talking, wanting to convince ourselves we are cleverer than we are and using a paint-by-numbers approach with past events to do it. 

The second reason it frustrates me is more personal and esoteric.  Seeing the Armchair Battalions at work annoys me.  Why?  In this case, because I feel that I have a justified level of expertise with the subject.  Ahh, you say, so you’re upset people are listening to those other voices but not to you.  Yes, I can’t overlook that point.  There’s only one man to have ever fully overcome his own pride and fully subsume himself in humility, and I assure you it’s not me.  But digging deeper, there’s another level below that.  Maybe no one listens to me because I don’t have anything worth saying.  That is a hard pill to swallow. 

As I think on it, though, another potential shows up.  Maybe it’s not that I don’t have anything meaningful to say.  Maybe it’s the fact that life is far too complicated for us to sit down and say “this is how it is.”  I could accept the Armchair Battalions if they approached their battles with that in mind.  We should all strive to understand important events that shape our world, as we are all crew on the same rock hurtling through the cosmos.  It’s when they armor themselves in pride that things go sideways.  An unwillingness to consider other viewpoints and recognize personal mistakes hurts us all, individually and as communities and peoples. 

Next time you find yourself laying out some point for those you perceive as the ignorant masses, take a second to pause.  Think about how much expertise you actually have on the subject matter.  Did you just skim the headlines of a few articles and call it good, or have you done the intense, intellectual work to really dig out an issue?  Are you making grand, sweeping gestures that paint the whole scenario with a paint roller the size of your ego, or are you considering each stroke carefully, choosing the right brush for the context? 

Even in this Wandering, I’m sure I’ve made numerous errors on each of those fronts.  This stuff is hard, and it should be!  If you just repeat someone else’s opinion with the hopes of looking intelligent or getting attention, you are the human equivalent of a parrot looking for a treat.  Gaining worthwhile opinions requires a level of effort beyond regurgitation.  Critical thinking gets tossed around so often it’s almost a useless buzz word, but it still gets the point across.  Put the time in to think deep about topics you care about, or you’ll just be another conscript in the Armchair Battalions.

If you are looking for ways to help Ukraine beyond keeping yourself better informed, consider donating to the Red Cross, the Ukraine Humanitarian Fund, or writing your local elected representative asking them to sponsor legislation to support Ukraine.