Here’s the seventh episode from Adjutants Lounge, all rights are Ben and Phil.

Half an hour transcript for everybody, the rest for paid subscribers. Might release for free to everybody in future, might not.

Full audio for free here

Transcript

00:00:00 Ben Skipper

Hello and welcome to part seven of the Ashton Lance series, the Russian War War. I'm joined today by several guests in which we will be discussing quite an important topic, which is the academic responsibility in the face of genocide today. I'm kindly joined by Doctor Philip Blood.

00:00:22 Philip Blood

Hello.

00:00:24 Ben Skipper

Doctor Ian Gardner.

00:00:26 Ian Garner

Good morning.

00:00:28 Ben Skipper

And legal counsel Dustin Decane.

00:00:35 Ben Skipper

So hi. Hi.

00:00:35 Philip Blood

All right.

00:00:40 Ben Skipper

So to get the ball rolling, this is gonna be quite a heavy subject listener.

00:00:45 Ben Skipper

And there will be various viewpoints on this and we'll be discussing what the Russians are currently up to just to sort of brief overview things are developing.

00:00:55 Ben Skipper

In Mariupol, there has been.

00:00:59 Ben Skipper

Continue targeting of civilian targets. We're now seeing the grain silos, which store Ukrainian grain.

00:01:10 Ben Skipper

Cereal crops slowly being emptied. There have been reports that seed stock has been stolen by the Russians and has already made its way into Russia, along with the the equipment, some getting as far as Chechnya.

00:01:27 Ben Skipper

And we've also got the recent announcements by the UN that they're not happy people and and they'll be upping their their mission in the area and most importantly, the Canadian Declaration, I believe it was, it was yesterday was it was.

00:01:42 Ben Skipper

It this morning.

00:01:44 Philip Blood

I got it this morning.

00:01:46 Ben Skipper

Yeah, same here. They'd recognise the genocide was being carried out by the Russians.

00:01:53 Ben Skipper

Now, as always with these podcasts, we have a discussion about what we're going to talk about. So it's not an entirely all off roof. And in this discussion, Justin, you made a really good point.

00:02:05 Ben Skipper

Regarding how we're approaching genocide as academics.

00:02:11 Ben Skipper

Would you mind just recapping that for the listener, please?

00:02:15 Dustin Du Cane

OK.

00:02:18 Dustin Du Cane

In light of what Philip said for the last podcast, I will set the terms for today's discussion as being discussion on the responsibility of academics to at this point and currently.

00:02:39 Speaker 5

Uh.

00:02:42 Dustin Du Cane

Peak calling events in Ukraine or for euphemism events, which is why we should be using the term genocide, because using the term genocide, especially by academics, lays the.

00:03:00 Dustin Du Cane

Political, legal and moral framework for prosecution of.

00:03:09 Dustin Du Cane

Russian individuals responsible for genocide, it lays the foundations for further sanctions against the Russian state, Russian individuals and also perhaps lays the foundations for further economic and.

00:03:29 Dustin Du Cane

Military aid to Ukraine and an important part of.

00:03:34 Dustin Du Cane

Genocide, as defined in the Genocide Convention, is establishing genocidal intent, and I think academics should now be working on the.

00:03:49 Dustin Du Cane

Subject of showing Putin's and his friends genocidal intent based on what has been said up to this point and is being said and will be said.

00:04:02 Dustin Du Cane

As.

00:04:04 Dustin Du Cane

Russia ratchets up its quite insane rhetoric relating to Ukraine and its annexation, occupation, deportation and language lessons.

00:04:23 Dustin Du Cane

For its citizens, I think academics should be now studying intensely, studying.

00:04:31 Dustin Du Cane

Subject and working on it to provide future ammunition for lawyers dealing with.

00:04:41 Dustin Du Cane

Genocidal intent and also there are.

00:04:46 Dustin Du Cane

Legal political consequences for using genocide, for instance, in the case of of Canada, if Canada is calling.

00:04:57 Dustin Du Cane

It's genocide that opens the way for.

00:05:02 Dustin Du Cane

Persons to be prosecuted are the Canadian laws on universal jurisdiction relating to genocide. Universal jurisdiction means that anybody in the world is.

00:05:18 Dustin Du Cane

Liable.

00:05:21 Dustin Du Cane

And can be punished by a Canadian cop.

00:05:24 Dustin Du Cane

Vote.

00:05:25 Dustin Du Cane

For their actions, for the for committing genocide doesn't have to be a Canadian. The Canadian doesn't have to be a victim and doesn't have to occur in Canada. Now universal jurisdiction is quite novel.

00:05:42 Dustin Du Cane

Development in international law.

00:05:47 Dustin Du Cane

Not every country recognises that. In fact, the minority of countries recognise it. But it's an important part of developing law dealing with genocide, atrocities and war crimes.

00:06:03 Dustin Du Cane

So.

00:06:05 Dustin Du Cane

Canada, saying that that opens its way for Canadian prosecutors to take put into court.

00:06:13 Dustin Du Cane

As it were.

00:06:17 Dustin Du Cane

And that's my background for.

00:06:21 Dustin Du Cane

What we were discussing today.

00:06:24 Ben Skipper

OK. Thanks Justin. Ian.

00:06:29 Ben Skipper

With your background, especially in in Russian history and Russian war propaganda, what what's, what's your view of this?

00:06:39 Ian Garner

I mean.

00:06:42 Ian Garner

This is, I think, one of those periods where the evidence is so clear that.

00:06:48 Ian Garner

For me, unlike Dustin, I'm not so fussed right now whether we call it genocide or not, because I don't understand the legal ramifications. But it's clear that Russian troops, whether.

00:06:59 Ian Garner

Independently or by instruction.

00:07:03 Ian Garner

Are committing atrocities of some sort.

00:07:07 Ian Garner

Right. They're murdering civilians, they're ****** civilians.

00:07:12 Ian Garner

Their wantonly destroying infrastructure and houses they're attacking.

00:07:18 Ian Garner

First responders.

00:07:22 Ian Garner

It's time even for academics, I think, to move beyond talking about whether this is genocide, whether this is a war crime and atrocity, mass murder or whatever, something has to be done.

00:07:35 Ian Garner

And.

00:07:36 Ian Garner

The academic response is to sit and gather more evidence and more evidence and more evidence until until the cows come home.

00:07:44 Ian Garner

But academics have really good tools.

00:07:48 Ian Garner

To draw historical parallels with what's gone in on in the past.

00:07:52 Ian Garner

To point out that our rhetoric for the last 50 years or 60 years has been all about never again. When it comes to war crimes and atrocities, and yet consistently, whenever we see these.

00:08:05 Ian Garner

Things.

00:08:07 Ian Garner

Academics are hesitant to leap to judgments for good reasons because that's the academic method in terms of making conclusions. Governments do not think the public are.

00:08:18 Ian Garner

Opposed to war crimes and opposed to bad things happening, but often resistant to making real sacrifices to actually stopping those things happening.

00:08:28 Ian Garner

And so we have to figure out a way for academics to get off the fence.

00:08:33 Ian Garner

And stop talking about things in the grand sweep of history and just start saying, well, we can recognise the same things occurring today that have occurred.

00:08:44 Ian Garner

You know when you talk?

00:08:46 Ian Garner

Let's take the example of the way that Ukrainians are discussed by ordinary Russians and by Russian media as an example. Ukrainians are discussed as vermin. Ukrainians are discussed as rats. Ukrainians are depicted as pigs as animals. They're often referred to as niji, which means.

00:09:05 Ian Garner

Or newly humans. Neude means unhuman is the opposite of humans.

00:09:11 Ian Garner

Right.

00:09:12 Ian Garner

It doesn't take a genius. It doesn't take an expert to workout that this language.

00:09:18 Ian Garner

Has worrying parallels with the language of 1930s Germany.

00:09:26 Ian Garner

And to say we should be documented in this language, academics have the tools to do that. Academics have the tools to make these comparisons. Let's do something now to actually draw the public's attention to that. The government's attention to that, and we will spend the next 50 sixty 7080 years, whatever it is, talking through the objectivity and the ways we can interpret this and the ways that.

00:09:48 Ian Garner

This might play out in more academic ways, but for now, academics need to put the career goals on hold.

00:09:55 Ian Garner

Unfortunately, and maybe we can talk about this a little bit more, they're not encouraged to do this by the structure of the Academy anywhere in Western Europe or North America, which generally discourages activism and frowns on activism.

00:10:09 Ian Garner

And encourages only or recognises only things like Journal Publications, which may take.

00:10:16 Ian Garner

Years to come to fruition and book publications which will take even more years.

00:10:21 Ian Garner

To appear.

00:10:24 Ian Garner

Right, But what happens between now and the two years from now where your lovely 8000 word article appears in the Journal of?

00:10:32 Ian Garner

Whatever I I would actually say to give people credit, there's been some excellent work by journals and academics who are already trying to do more than just that kind of slow thinking.

00:10:45 Ben Skipper

Phil, given that you know with your experience in the study of genocide and echoing Ian's remarks about the the very apparent and unsettling parallels are of the rhetoric used particularly by Nazi Germany.

00:11:05 Ben Skipper

How do you?

00:11:07 Ben Skipper

What's your personal feelings on this matter?

00:11:12 Philip Blood

Well, listening to Ian it, it reminded me of my of what happened in the 1990s with Yugoslavia.

00:11:21 Philip Blood

And.

00:11:22 Philip Blood

And it's one of the what what happened at that time?

00:11:28 Philip Blood

I'm reminded of was that the genocide school came together?

00:11:34 Philip Blood

And and there were various conferences and discussions and you saw you saw a building of an academic school during the 90s with the backdrop of Yugoslavia and Rwanda, Grozny and.

00:11:53 Philip Blood

Many other cases.

00:11:56 Philip Blood

It was a different time. NATO was involved in the air strikes in Kosovo.

00:12:05 Philip Blood

There was a will to intervene. There was Eli Beisel's memorable appeal to Clinton.

00:12:15 Philip Blood

Many of us who were in that who were doing our PhDs at that time.

00:12:20 Philip Blood

Felt the need to be active. I was fairly active with some refugees and victims groups. It's a it's a very.

00:12:30 Philip Blood

It's very traumatic, that kind of thing.

00:12:37 Philip Blood

Tend to avoid the and now I understand why people use the the, the the Nazi comparison. I'm I'm not against it. I just don't do it myself. I'm I'm kind of more interested in what's happened to this.

00:12:52 Philip Blood

Russian army since 1979, it went into Afghanistan and what came out has been.

00:13:00 Philip Blood

Has gone through various processes and what we're looking at now is an army.

00:13:06 Philip Blood

OK, it comes from Iraq. It's had a long record of war crimes in its past.

00:13:11 Philip Blood

And and being involved in heinous acts like the mass rapes in.

00:13:16 Philip Blood

Germany in 1945. I understand all of that, but there was also a fighting side to the to the Russian army, the Red Army.

00:13:26 Philip Blood

Which, given my discussions with certain specialists like Chris Bellamy only recently.

00:13:33 Philip Blood

There's a view that the Red Army wouldn't do this kind of thing unless.

00:13:38 Philip Blood

Unless there was an element of proportionality, proportionality is where.

00:13:44 Philip Blood

Troops and civilians have become mixed.

00:13:49 Philip Blood

For one reason or another, it happens in a war. Troops moving fast too fast will run into communities. They'll open fire on on the enemy forces, and there's usually.

00:14:09 Philip Blood

Civilian casualties and to a certain extent, the military, the military history school has always accepted that those kind of casualties were collateral to the war.

00:14:22 Philip Blood

And to a certain extent, Russian.

00:14:25 Philip Blood

Russian aggression into East Germany in 1945.

00:14:31 Philip Blood

Has always been seen as collateral, the rapes, and since historians in the 90s began to focus on them a lot more distinguished between those Russian crimes from the other Russian crimes. But there was, if you look at what happened to certain divisions that were captured.

00:14:53 Philip Blood

By the Russians in in 1945, there was some post.

00:14:58 Philip Blood

Post war.

00:15:01 Philip Blood

Punishments given out, especially troops from certain extreme SS units. What we have now though is that is a different situation and what concerns me.

00:15:14 Philip Blood

When I look at what the Russians are doing.

00:15:18 Philip Blood

The first thing I saw was they were targeting civilian communities almost before the offensive started.

00:15:25 Philip Blood

Now.

00:15:27 Philip Blood

I think all of us in probably agree with me these areas of Russia and Ukraine are no longer.

00:15:36 Philip Blood

Vast areas of wasteland. They're highly developed municipalities with extensive suburban boroughs going out far into, as with other Western cities. And so once you start pounding these areas.

00:15:54 Philip Blood

You're hitting masses of civilians with.

00:15:58 Philip Blood

High explosives. And we also know from the targeting on the railway station a couple of weeks ago that.

00:16:06 Philip Blood

Refugees who were supposedly given access to escape became a target.

00:16:13 Philip Blood

And I think.

00:16:15 Philip Blood

We then saw the the Russians move from the Kiev area and.

00:16:22 Philip Blood

What they left behind was just unspeakable. I mean, the the the horrors of bunker.

00:16:30 Philip Blood

Along with everything else that went on, and there's a confusion here. We're looking at a Russian army.

00:16:36 Philip Blood

That's committing crimes to itself. I mean, imagine.

00:16:42 Philip Blood

Imagine in anybody's mind, believing that the Russian army would dig trenches in Chernobyl.

00:16:49 Philip Blood

It beggars belief.

00:16:52 Philip Blood

So I was I've been very confused about what this Russian army has been doing. Several several experts suggested to me that it's not being controlled at the centre in Moscow from the General Staff.

00:17:06 Philip Blood

That, like previous campaigns, it's been operated from the Western and Southern commands, and they're slightly these district commands have different attitudes towards.

00:17:19 Philip Blood

How the war should be pushed and progressed?

00:17:23 Philip Blood

Now for academics in the genocide field.

00:17:27 Philip Blood

Looking at those situations, how the army is developing has not been the traditional way of examining genocide.

00:17:36 Philip Blood

You don't look at the the original soldiers, the fighting units you tend to look at.

00:17:43 Philip Blood

How many people have been murdered or killed or starved to death? And it's for many genocide students. It tends to be an exercise in large numbers.

00:17:57 Philip Blood

And.

00:17:59 Philip Blood

We're always left with that.

00:18:02 Philip Blood

That calculation, how many bodies does it take? How many dead does it take to define genocide? The problem is that that attitude.

00:18:12 Philip Blood

Has filtered its way into professional thinking, so you listen to an expert who from the British Army, who comes on to LBC, LBC radio this week, he says well it's not genocide because I served in Yugoslavia and the numbers aren't the same size as they were in the Second World War.

00:18:33 Philip Blood

Well, the numbers are irrelevant.

00:18:36 Philip Blood

It's not the numbers.

00:18:39 Philip Blood

It's the crime and it's what's behind the crime, the motivations behind the crime that make it happen. And it's at that point you should be thinking.

00:18:51 Philip Blood

We have to confront genocide.

00:18:54 Philip Blood

Now I'm not going to go much further because I spoke too long, but essentially it's the problem of.

00:19:00 Philip Blood

Getting out of, as Ian said, you've got to get out of the out of the books and the the stats and the numbers and the evidence and confront.

00:19:11 Philip Blood

What's actually what's actually happening before us, which is large numbers of people being killed, large numbers of refugees being forced into.

00:19:20 Philip Blood

Western Europe, the psychological horror and other parts, the rapes and the grievous crimes.

00:19:31 Ian Garner

One of the things that strikes me as I listen to Philip is that perhaps one of the things that academics can do, it's very practical and achievable right now.

00:19:44 Ian Garner

Is to try and break outside of their field and break outside.

00:19:48 Ian Garner

Of their discipline.

00:19:50 Ian Garner

Because Philip's right that many of those genocide scholars are doing body counting, which almost seems grotesque. And I understand why they do it. But in this particular moment, while this is still occurring.

00:20:04 Ian Garner

It's things the problem we've got to understand what is the legal nature of a genocide, and that's where Dustin's business comes in, is it to do with numbers? Is it to do with intent whose intent an individual soldiers intent the governments intent those commanders in the South and West that Philip noted.

00:20:24 Ian Garner

We've got to understand the perspective that drives people onto this. And you know that's that's where my discipline comes in, where I look at the, the history and the culture behind this.

00:20:34 Ian Garner

And look at, you know, for example, those those Russian.

00:20:39 Ian Garner

Only soldiers who were treated so poorly and.

00:20:43 Ian Garner

We start to say, well, the Russian are really as well as having very little regard for life seems to be driven by this.

00:20:52 Ian Garner

Apocalyptic messianic mode of thinking in which.

00:20:57 Ian Garner

The destruction of one thing can serve to renew another.

00:21:01 Ian Garner

So there's there's the justification for you that.

00:21:05 Ian Garner

Just as in the Second World War, we had to sacrifice 25,000,000 Soviets to save the world. Well, today, if we have to blow up the whole of Ukraine to do it.

00:21:16 Ian Garner

Then we'll do it again. That that perhaps is part of what crimes ordinary people on, but the genocide scholars won't understand that for now, because it takes a Russian Mr Slavist.

00:21:27 Ian Garner

To point that out.

00:21:30 Ian Garner

Right. We really have to look beyond these individual journals and beyond our departments and figure out how does all of this combine and.

00:21:39

And.

00:21:39 Ian Garner

How do we get this?

00:21:41 Ian Garner

Into the heads of politicians that something needs to happen to actually stop it. Because as I see it, we doing very little to stop it right now.

00:21:55 Ben Skipper

I I have to, I have to agree with you on that here, I think.

00:22:00 Ben Skipper

The the West West in particular has been.

00:22:05 Ben Skipper

Has almost had to be dragged into an interaction.

00:22:10 Ben Skipper

To face a situation.

00:22:13 Ben Skipper

Rather than being any reaction, being the the the result of foreign policy.

00:22:20 Ben Skipper

Or domestic security policy. It has literally had to be dragged by public opinion, and that in itself is worrisome. And I'm looking at the the rhetoric message, especially in the very early stages of this, this part of the Russo, Ukraine war where there was this.

00:22:40 Ben Skipper

You know the this to the Russians said that they had to defend themselves from NATO expansion.

00:22:46 Ben Skipper

I find it almost ironic that NATO have for the large part.

00:22:53 Ben Skipper

Been almost inactive.

00:22:56 Ben Skipper

And whilst you have the exercises that are being going on in the Baltic States and the early stages of the the campaign we it's now building up, arms are getting through.

00:23:07 Ben Skipper

But all the while this is happening.

00:23:10 Ben Skipper

The the, the, the, the, the the acts of genocide, the physical acts of genocide.

00:23:15 Ben Skipper

And the the atrocities of the Russians committing, which are.

00:23:20 Ben Skipper

You know the manifestation of genocide are just stacking up.

00:23:25 Ben Skipper

And that's something I, you know, as academics, is that an area we should also be looking at the this almost unwilling acceptance to to look back in the face and say.

00:23:36 Ben Skipper

A we were late responded to this, but B why were we late responding to?

00:23:39 Ben Skipper

This.

00:23:43 Dustin Du Cane

I see a huge role for academics at current role, very important one, as underlined by Ian Rossis and Slavis need to be talking with scholars of genocide.

00:24:02 Dustin Du Cane

On genocidal.

00:24:05 Dustin Du Cane

Intent.

00:24:07 Dustin Du Cane

Being expressed in Russian media, which is.

00:24:14 Dustin Du Cane

Split off and exists in its sort of weird world separate from Western media and needs analysing and actions of Russian politicians and element of Kremlinology needs to be applied here to give the lawyers.

00:24:34 Dustin Du Cane

Ammunition to bring charges of genocide, to give politicians that ammunition to scream genocide and demand their governments take action to get uh Russians prosecuted to get put and prosecuted.

00:24:51 Dustin Du Cane

To get money and arms to Ukrainians, and this is a current need, we need to be doing this now.

00:25:01 Dustin Du Cane

Not in 20 years time or in 50 years time as part of a book on the subject of.

00:25:08 Dustin Du Cane

Where it has been established by 2017, that genocide did.

00:25:16 Speaker 5

The.

00:25:16 Dustin Du Cane

Occur in Ukraine.

00:25:18 Dustin Du Cane

Or the state formerly known as Ukraine.

00:25:31 Philip Blood

I would.

00:25:33 Philip Blood

If we imagined ourselves for one moment that we were policemen.

00:25:38 Philip Blood

How would we deal with this? Would we say we need to read books or would we look at the dead bodies that before us?

00:25:46 Philip Blood

I think if we were policemen.

00:25:49 Philip Blood

Just assuming we all put our police hats on.

00:25:52 Philip Blood

And we looked at this from the point of how our policemen would approach.

00:25:57 Philip Blood

The crimes before us, he wouldn't just say, OK, let's sit down now and think about how.

00:26:05 Philip Blood

What was in the minds of these people when they murdered them? Whoever murdered them or raped them, he would say who caused this crime? What's the train of events?

00:26:17 Philip Blood

And.

00:26:18 Philip Blood

I think to a certain extent, we've forgotten the role of the policeman because we've all become.

00:26:24 Philip Blood

Lawyers, even as academics, we're trying to define, we're trying to set definitions to.

00:26:33 Philip Blood

The evidence that's been thrown before us now back in the back, in the Yugoslavian period when we didn't have Google Translate.

00:26:41 Philip Blood

I didn't really need to read or to understand serbo Croatian know that something evil was going down because there were so many.

00:26:50 Philip Blood

There were so many dead bodies, and there were so many crimes taking place. The evidence was just horrendous. But there were still people.

00:26:59 Philip Blood

And I've never really been quite able to understand this in my in my work in genocide, there's always been people who've wanted to deny it.

00:27:09 Philip Blood

Before we even go down the road of saying, well, who which academics are are in support of this kind of work and which ones aren't and which politicians do and don't, there's always a large cohort especially funny enough newspapers.

00:27:28 Philip Blood

Broadcasters who are reluctant to go down the route of saying we don't want to discuss genocide. We're happy to talk about war crimes.

00:27:38 Philip Blood

We're happy to talk about crimes against humanity, but there is a reluctance, so we have to acknowledge that. So on the one hand, you've got people who don't want to be the policeman and look at the evidence before them. You then have a have another load of people who don't want to confront the word genocide and and as we've been saying then, you have the scholars.

00:28:00 Philip Blood

Who we're arguing? Well, we need more evidence before we make the decision to come to a ruling on whether this is genocide. And then we have the courts, the international courts, who feel reluctant to go down the route of making the statement. This is genocide. And erring on the side of caution.

00:28:21 Philip Blood

By saying, well, it's war crimes, it's crimes against humanity.

00:28:26 Philip Blood

It's not just the so in a sense here I'm saying that the academics are not the only ones at fault, but we are living in a Society of of multi multiple views and opinions and not everybody follows the same.

00:28:42 Philip Blood

The same denial of genocide. It's there's a reluctance, and I I originally I used to think it was simply because the word is so heinous. People rather recoil it.

00:28:56 Philip Blood

I'm not so sure now. I think it's people just don't want that. There's so many different reasons, for example.

00:29:04 Philip Blood

Did the allies in Iraq and Afghanistan commit to genocide?

00:29:11 Philip Blood

Was the bombing of Germany a form of genocide? And all of those questions?

00:29:18 Philip Blood

And suddenly whipped up again. When we get into a situation that we have at the moment, my so my answer and and I've approached that the same way with the, with the blogs that I've been writing on, on the artillery and the bombardments is to look at the bodies before us and say, how did they die?

00:29:39 Philip Blood

What is the Chrome?

00:29:41 Philip Blood

Because if you go down the other route and I understand that we need to know the language, we get caught up into all kinds of arguments over well, is it or isn't it? Let's let's sweep that around, we away. We've got 3000. I think we've got in one one situation we had 3000 bodies.