I was pleasantly surprised by some news from halfway around the world last week, the fact that there are a large number of draft resisters in Russia.

I didn’t think we’d see widespread open defiance. Russia is a totalitarian country, one in which refusing to serve in a war could have serious consequences.

Draft resisters can flee to places like Finland or the former Soviet republic of Georgia. I thought they might not take that option, however, out of concern for family members they’d leave behind.

Instead thousands have opted to go that route. It’s probably impossible for Putin’s regime to punish very many of them. They have a war to be concerned about.

Ukraine’s successful counter offensive to retake areas in the eastern part of their country came as a surprise to many observers around the world.

Many things have gone wrong for Russia’s invasion force. Its leaders under-estimated Ukraine’s will to remain independent and the amount of sympathy they’ve drawn from other countries.

It doesn’t appear that China wants to get involved on Russia’s behalf. Further efforts to compel additional Russians to go to war in Ukraine would likely be met by more resistance.

Putin has placed himself in a situation which involves leading a very unpopular war effort. It has some strong similarities to the 1960s and 1970s war in South Vietnam. The main difference is that the United States was defending an ally, not attacking a country with the intention of occupying it.

There’s a similarity when it comes to old people making foreign policy decisions that involve sending a younger generation off to war.

I wanted to learn more about the Vietnam era this summer. It was a troubled time in America, with a political and social divisiveness that was maybe even worse than what we’re seeing in 2022.

I read the Vietnam chapters of a book called Adventures in Chaos, which also looked at failed efforts to preserve democracy in China and the successful efforts to stabalize political conflict in the Philippines. The Vietnam section focused on how the Kennedy administration tried and failed to get the South Vietnamese government to make meaningful reforms.

I also read Norman Mailer’s account of the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago, a situation that involved massive left wing protests with the war in Vietnam as the single biggest issue.

I had only a vague knowledge of hippies as a child in the 1970s. I remember my dad referring to them as radical kids, which reflected the view of most people over 30 years old as well as many of those who were younger.

Although most people in mainstream society never identified with the hard core counter culture that included drugs and casual sex, a large percentage of them began to question the war in Vietnam. Public opinion put pressure on the Nixon administration to negotiate a withdrawal of U.S. troops. It was followed by the fall of South Vietnam in 1975.

I’d like to know Russia’s total number of casualties thus far in Ukraine. I’d be interested to find out if its starting to approach the total of more than 50,000 from the United States that were lost in Vietnam.

I know that as deaths add up, and as even the state-run Russian media can’t find any good things to report on the war, average citizens are increasingly likely to want an end to the hostilities.

Both the United States and Russia were heavily influenced by World War II. The Greatest Generation faced what even many ardent pacifists regard as a righteous war.

There was no choice other than military action to stop the Nazi Germans. There was also probably no way to share the Pacific Ocean with the empire of Japan. It definitely became impossible after Japan chose to attack Pearl Harbor.

Most of history’s wars weren’t righteous. They involved competing interests of tribes, city states, kingdoms and eventually nations.

In spite of the higher amount of destructive force that’s resulted from modern technology, we still haven’t reached a point when war becomes unthinkable. Even the United Nations hasn’t accomplished that. I hope that it’s something that will happen within my lifetime.

— Jim Muchlinski is a longtime reporter and contributor to the Marshall Independent