It was Edward Bernays’, US propagandist who helped persuade America to join WW1, who perhaps set the scene for future manipulation of public opinion for war. In his book “Propaganda” he lays out his rationale for this type of manipulation:

“In theory, every citizen makes up his mind on public questions and matters of private conduct. In practice, if all men had to study for themselves the abstruse economic, political, and ethical data involved in every question, they would find it impossible to come to a conclusion about anything. We have voluntarily agreed to let an invisible government sift the data and high-spot the outstanding issues so that our field of choice shall be narrowed to practical proportions. From our leaders and the media they use to reach the public, we accept the evidence and the demarcation of issues bearing upon public questions from some ethical teacher, be it a minister, a favourite essayist, or merely prevailing opinion, we accept a standardized code of social conduct to which we conform most of the time.”

It certainly seems to be how many behave, anyway. But it can’t have escaped the careful reader how it also makes entire populations vulnerable to manipulation. This is thrown into stark relief with recent DOGE revelations about US Government funding being funnelled to media outlets, or when one realises the monopolistic ownership of the media industry which allows one small snowball to become an avalanche of lock step messaging to guide our opinions.

“What is the truth?” is the last thing most of us are expected to ask, or find out. What we are expected to *believe* is the truth is more easily found. And what we are to think and say about those who believe differently, even more readily still. As the old joke goes “The news used to tell us what happened, and we decided what to think about it, now the news tells us what to think, and we decide whether it even happened that way.” This is not a new phenomenon, “In war, truth is the first casualty”, observed Aeschylus wryly, around 500 BC.

And this is important, especially while war drums are being banged. Partly because it probably isn’t those banging them the loudest who are expected to fight, die and suffer in the conflict. But mostly so that we aren’t being used instrumentally for someone else’s motivations.

We’re in such a position now regarding Trump, Ukraine, Russia (and NATO members that haven’t been paying their ‘membership fees’).

One must have been living under a rock to miss the hoo-ha generated by Trump’s opening talks with Putin about Ukraine. The comparisons with Chamberlain have been non-stop, the accusations of ‘appeasement’ hurled, the denigration of anyone who dares say Trump may have a point, and so on. Apparently wanting to consider that people stop being killed is “cowardice” – talks have barely begun and the white feathers are here already – such is the bravery of those whose endless sacrifice consists of the lives of others compelled to join their cause. A very troubling taste of things to come, when discussion is already being turned on in such a manner. But then if negotiation isn’t the most natural part of your toolkit, and when what you have is a hammer, perhaps everything looks like a nail.

And that’s before we dare peep under the stone of nuance, and try to understand the real complexity of the issues – the complexity Bernays would spare you from having to grasp in favour of easily persuading you to march to the beat of his sponsor’s drum.

Other NATO countries might be taken aback by Trump’s decision to go straight to Putin. But they’d probably better get used to it in light of the general failure of NATO members to provide for their own defence, and place too much reliance on the USA. Something Trump has criticised before. Notice it was Poland that US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth visited, to heap praise on, because they are actually taking their NATO obligations seriously.

“We see Poland as a model ally on the continent, willing to invest not just in their defence, but in our shared defence and defence of the continent,” Hegseth said. (https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/4068503/hegseth-lauds-us-poland-alliance-reemphasizes-call-for-nato-countries-to-increa/)

Time for some foot-shuffling silence from certain other NATO members, methinks. Poland also has other reasons for increasing investment in hard power, given their proximity to Russia, and lack of a natural border. But it also makes them favoured of NATO ally USA.

In that light, it’s perhaps understandable that Trump feels little need to gain approval from members who aren’t pulling their weight, and is perhaps sending a message to them, as much as anyone, by his unilateral move.

But there’s more. A lot has been made of Russia being ‘first aggressor’ in the Ukraine conflict. In terms of ‘hot war’ that may be true, but nuance reveals it may not be as simple as that either. I don’t agree with rolling tanks over borders, so I’m absolutely against Putin’s protracted invasion of Ukraine. At the same time, I’m not blind to US proxy wars, and deployments in many places across the world which are other people’s sovereign territory too. Nor am I blind to the reports of covert operations to foment discord and “maidan”/”spring” revolutions in other people’s sovereign territory also. Our propaganda tells us that either never happened, or it’s OK, because it’s the west doing it and besides – those other people are the bad guys. Do we talk about blowback? Do we talk about Minsk? Do we talk about Donbass? Do we talk about who popped the pipeline? And, guess what, other people have propaganda too, which they expect their people to believe. A nuanced understanding of all this recognises it’s not necessarily as simple as the headlines.

I’m not saying the west doesn’t have a point, as I already pointed out, Russia’s continued war in Ukraine is not justified. But at the same time, there’s deep suspicion that the west helped create the coup that replaced Ukrainian leadership with more EU oriented Zelensky. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

It’s certainly not all righteous indignation from Putin, either. His invasion of Crimea was clearly about gaining access to warm water ports, whether he can argue for local support or not. Some even posit an ambition to retake all former USSR territory – a view shared by Joel Skousen, conservative political scientist, and former Marine infantry officer and fighter pilot. Skousen lays out his theory succinctly in a Quora article (https://www.quora.com/What-factors-led-to-the-rapid-collapse-of-the-Soviet-Union-How-did-it-differ-from-other-empires-that-were-able-to-maintain-their-power-for-longer-periods-of-time-such-as-the-British-Empire) in which he claims that recapturing USSR territory was always on the cards, stating “now that Russia has invaded Ukraine, it shows that their intent to start taking back the former Soviet States is real as well.”

When nuance is allowed on the table, perhaps negotiations are exactly what is needed, rather than each side shoring up behind their own propaganda.

Thinking people who watch their own governments lie to their faces might, perhaps, be cautious about believing everything they are told about other things too. In the UK we’ve been given every reason to mistrust our own current government in light of domestic terror events, that were spun a different way by the propaganda machine, and with prosecution of those who rightly identified them as terror events at the time. Why should the call to support taxes, or net zero, or war be any more trusted? What is the truth? And what price are we being asked to pay while not knowing?

Given real world nuance is often quite different from propaganda, maybe Trump is right about opening negotiations with Putin after all.

When we’re talking about war, we’re talking about two sets of propagandised and ‘under orders’ people facing off with death.

Surely, negotiations are worth a try.

“To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war.”

Winston Churchill, Speech at White House, 26 June 1954
(Oxford Essential Quotations (5th Ed.), Susan Ratcliffe (ed), Oxford University Press, 2017)