Put Country First, as Ukrainians Do

For three years, Ukrainians have dug deep within themselves and made great sacrifices to preserve their basic freedoms. History shows that citizens of democracies the world over will have to do the same within the next few years.

It’s not a coincidence that the three deadliest wars in American history were spaced 80–86 years apart: the Revolutionary War in 1775, the Civil War in 1861, and US entry into WWII in 1941. And now it has been another 84 years, so history is about to call.

This cycle traces back through 500 years of Anglo-American history and was seen in classical antiquity dating back to the Etruscans, who called this recurring period a “saeculum”—the lifetime required for scarring impressions of total war to slip out of living memory. Although this generational theory is best developed by William Strauss and Neil Howe, who call it the “fourth turning”, other historians document this once-a-lifetime frequency of major/hegemonic/general/global wars. The timing cannot be forecasted with the precision of a single year, which depends on unpredictable events and decisions. But it can be predicted to a given decade, by which time citizens have romantic notions of war, feel more impassioned by ideology than security, and elect strongmen who promise to avenge grievances and solve intractable problems by getting tough.

These generational impulses fuel decades of rising social pressure, until a galvanizing event—the Boston Tea Party, Fort Sumter, Pearl Harbor—clarifies the existential challenge. Then everything changes. The few years of destruction that follow such an event were known by the ancients as the “Ekpyrosis” (conflagration). Particularly in free societies, citizens are so invested in preserving the community they have built that the Ekpyrosis taps into decades’ worth of frustration over unsolved problems and rising threats to unleash a previously unimaginable intensity of public energy: a tsunami of civic power that organizes all social urgencies into one collective fight that must be won.

Take the example of US mobilization following the attack on Pearl Harbor, an Ekpyrosis that lasted three and a half years until victory in mid-1945. The US military went into this period with fewer than half a million people, and then added another half-million to its ranks every two months until WWII ended, even as FDR—who updated his moniker from Dr. New Deal to Dr. Win-the-War—warned that one in three who enlisted wouldn’t return alive. Production of homes, cars, and appliances ceased as factories were retooled to build planes, ships, and weapons. A year after Pearl Harbor, 50 million Americans worked for the government war effort across agencies created to manage labor supply, set production quotas, fix wages and prices, and more. Scientists descended upon Los Alamos, where they worked 24/7 to invent an unprecedented weapon of mass destruction.

As with every Ekpyrosis, it left an indelible mark, and not only in the United States. Unlike the previous existential wars in US history, WWII was truly global, bringing in 70 countries. Thus, what started as a deepening Anglo-American cycle has now metastasized into a synchronized global cycle, making WWIII likely before the end of this decade. But as with WWII, some democracies will be pulled into war before others. One already has.

February 24, 2022 is Ukraine’s day that lives in infamy. When Russia launched its full-scale invasion, Ukrainians stood in long lines to sign up for the armed forces and territorial defense. Unarmed civilians blocked tanks. The battle cry heard round the world was, “Russian warship, go f**k yourself.” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy refused to flee from Kyiv, where he advised residents to make Molotov cocktails. When Russia bombs children’s hospitals, Ukrainian civilians run towards the burning rubble to pull out screaming children. Ukraine now has Europe’s biggest and most battle-tested national army. If needed, Ukrainian soldiers drive to the battlefield in their own cars. Ukrainians clamor for munitions, not the end of martial law. Civil society experts in governance and digitalization turned their talents towards international advocacy for arms supplies and domestic development of military technology. Ukraine has built the world’s largest and most advanced military drone industry.

In the face of nightly bombing, Ukrainians keep calm and carry on just as Britons did during Nazi German’s Blitz in 1940–1941. Like Britain then, Ukraine suffers the lonely hardship of entering its Ekpyrosis before the United States and other allies, leaving the country’s indefatigable leader—then Churchill, now Zelenskyy—to beg hesitant Americans for help, receiving weapons too slowly to win or remain solvent. In both cases, elections were suspended. Devastatingly, Kyiv is now being betrayed by its most powerful ally more than London ever was: FDR was convincing Americans to arm Britain, not to make a deal over its head with Hitler, who supposedly wanted peace.

That is the first lesson of this historic context of the past three years: democracies everywhere must urgently unite and step up all manners of support for Ukraine as its defenders valiantly degrade the forces of tyranny that are increasingly organized as the axis powers of WWIII, whether we admit it or not. As war comes to more democracies, it will become clearer that this is a shared fight for freedom.

The second lesson is that free people everywhere should draw inspiration from the courage and resolve with which Ukrainians have spent three years giving their blood, toil, tears, and sweat to preserving our collective way of life. Because we all may be called upon to find this strength within ourselves before this decade is out.