Since late February 2022, the world has been transfixed by Russia’s increasingly brutal invasion of Ukraine. Among other items, the conflict represents the largest of its kind in Europe since the Second World War. Along with hostilities, Russia’s invasion induced significant outflows of refugees fleeing conflict in targeted urban areas. While thus far smaller in aggregate than total outflows from the former Yugoslavia during that civil war, numbers are astounding for the brief period – over one million persons having fled the country as of this writing, little more than a week into the invasion.
Countering this human tragedy are stories of hope and vigorous support. Ukraine’s neighbors are accepting refugees from the conflict with open arms, from the largest outflows to Poland to the highest per-capita support from one of Europe’s poorest countries, Moldova. Additionally, countries far from the conflict, from the United States to even Japan, waived visa requirements or similar considerations for Ukrainian nationals. Such actions are exemplary in the face of human tragedy, and demonstrate a willingness by many to support a population placed under such immense stress and violence so quickly.
And yet – anyone who’s followed conflict and refugee-related news faces a troubling consideration. As already demonstrated in media coverage of the Ukrainian invasion, events are tinged with a sense of strangeness compared to similar coverage of tragedies in Afghanistan, Syria, or Iraq. Just a few months prior to Russia’s invasion, its co-belligerent Belarus essentially weaponized desperate Kurdish refugees against Poland – an action amplified by staunch refusal of Poland and others to accept these persons. Going back a bit further, the last migration crisis matching current magnitude concerned Syria, the results of which included nearly fracturing the European Union and sparking intense populist, nativist movements throughout the continent.
We thus see contradictory actions in the face of essentially common circumstances, excepting one critical aspect of refugee flows: the origin and nature of the refugees. In the case of white, Christian Europeans, the response (thus far) is open arms, while non-white, non-Christian populations were at best tolerated and more often looked upon with disdain or horror. That such a dramatic difference in response exists is shocking and sad – but also calling it (only) “racism” seems potentially too simplistic given the complexities at hand.
To personalize this discussion: events in Ukraine hit me hard. Not quite as hard as the very acute pain from the fall of Afghanistan in 2021, but at least I’ve been in various types of therapy covering my experiences in that country for nearly ten years. Ukraine just feels different, and for reasons that smell faintly of racial preference, if not outright racism: the people involved are from a society like mine, in communities I understand, with backgrounds I can grasp. As such, while I can share a sense of humanity and imagined suffering with a victim of the murderous Syrian regiume (and coincidentally, its Russian enablers), my sense of outrage is more direct and visceral for someone from Kyiv or Lviv as I see them as very near to myself – oh shit, that really could be me. For me, the question is whether such behavior is at minimum explainable, as I don’t think I will find an exculpatory argument, or if it represents a reprehensible form of tribalism.
One item that seems significant in the current discussion is the nature of the current crisis: an unprovoked invasion by a larger entity. By comparison, conflicts such as Syria and Afghanistan represent long-running internal crises and civil wars, with blood on the hands of many sides. This may seem enticing for a moment, until one looks at an example such as Iraq, where the inducement to refugee flows was intervention by the United States, yet such aggression did not seem to result in significant welcoming of persons displaced by that conflict and its ensuing civil unrest. Looking back further, we can note differences in external invasion scenarios such as differing levels of support for those fleeing Hungary in 1956 compared to those trying to escape (or just survive) the immeasurably more horrific conflict in Biafra a few years later. Thus conflict type seems to be unsatisfactory in explaining observed behavior.
Before proceeding further, an intellectual detour: An enduring question of ethics and moral philosophy remains the responsibility for helping and assisting fellow human beings. Answers to this question take the form of virtue, duties, community cohesion, and even something approaching mathematical analysis. That so many models of human behavior and definitions of the good and the just exist shows clearly that humanity is yet to arrive at a universal, all-pleasing answer lacking criticism or alternative. Yet while none of these models are perfect, each may be useful in viewing human behavior and compassion (or at least its limits) in a way that unearths more useful lessons than simply saying observed preferences in current crises are (simply) racist.
If we really wish to rationalize around seemingly irrational behavior, we could pursue a utilitarian argument, where “the good” equates to a moral calculus of maximizing however we measure “good.” Under this framework, support for Ukrainians – within or next to Europe (depending on how you define it) and ringed by countries with suitable institutions for staging aid – seems like an easier proposition than, say, landlocked Afghanistan and its overwhelmingly complex if not hostile neighborhood. Essentially, our preference for aiding those “similar to us” is a proxy for proximity, and proximity enables more efficient use of resources therefore maximizing returns on investment. Yet this seems unsatisfactory when comparing the relative costs of supporting persons in a middle-income country versus the truly amazing returns even small investments have in underdeveloped locations – thus flipping the script as we see outsized returns on small investments in places like Afghanistan or Congo compared to Ukraine (or even Syria, for that matter). Utilitarian arguments can certainly be made to support (or at least explain) why Ukrainians are favored by westerners over other victims of geopolitical violence, but closer analysis points toward selective measurement and weighting of variables producing such results. The “moral calculus” therefore appears a game easily rigged, and one leading to preordained outcomes.
Alternatively, we could break with utilitarians and adopt a deontological (or duty-focused) approach to moral decision-making. In this framework, most often associated with Kant’s writings on ethics (i.e., “Practical Reason”), “the good” is equated with those actions a perfectly rational being would accept and endorse as the best-possible outcome for an individual in a specific circumstance. The rational duty imposed thus becomes something akin to a moral law, a “categorical imperative.” Key to understanding this concept is the position, role, and available decisions facing the given agent, which give rise to the duties (in the form of morally-required decisions) adhering to that person’s place in the greater cosmos. While not strictly Kantian, later scholars have adapted this sense to indicate a sense of almost concentric circles of duty extending outward from the individual, encompassing different populations based on the degree of relative responsibility (or duty) adhering to these groups. We thus see “closer connections” – family, society, etc. – as “trumping” more distant parties in terms of the strength or relevance of duty. Thus our actions with respect to Ukrainian refugees are justified as they are a closer and more specific duty than a more general duty of supporting all humans in all cases of persecution or similar.
Once upon a time, I adopted the above worldview and would lean on this explanation to guide my actions, or justify my past decisions. A duty-oriented worldview would seem to combine some of the (seemingly) robust value calculations of a utilitarian perspective while also considering the particulars of place or position in decision-making. Yet the Kantian project, while laudable in its goals and extent, remains a cold and emotionally desolate place – placing all faith and action in attempts to mirror some objective, perfectly rational reasoning seems not only unrelated to actual experience, but likely to set one up for failure.
Instead of this approach, we might ponder instead how human beings are formed and socialized: not as some atomic, perfectly individual reasoning entity, but rather as members of communities and societies. While these organizations are far from perfect, they nonetheless orient individual action and calculation in such a fashion that considers and (ideally) maintains the integrity of the community in which they reside. Taking this view of human development and formation of a “moral compass,” privileging entities within or closer to our own communities and upbringings seems obvious and reasonable. Under this rubric, our moral existence is defined not purely within the boundaries of self, but also extending into the society in which we are developed and socialized into – as such, threats to similarly-structured societies (or extensions of our own) would appear more immediate than threats several degrees of separation further away. In this sense it would appear natural, and for the maintenance of social functioning potentially necessary, to prioritize persons “closer” to us in order to sustain our own sense of integrity and moral completeness.
While the above seems to accord well with lived human experience, in the current situation it appears sufficient merely from an explanatory perspective and not exculpatory for the inequalities thus created. A communitarian approach to moral decision-making may well align with our intuitions and socialization into a community, but also is parochial and limited in bounds. What may have made a high degree of sense for a Greek polis or a collection of villages and towns one would be extremely unlikely to ever venture far beyond seems poorly adapted to a world where communication and experiential boundaries are pushed to such an extent that legacy social constructs are knitted together into a global whole.
Under this view, we can look at our prioritization of communities closer to our own as a natural development, but also a vestigial component of a moral framework that must evolve to fit new realities. Technology and connectivity have lowered or even erased many barriers between what would have historically been distinct cultures and societies, creating significant overlaps and shared spaces, values, and outlooks that allow the formation of a “meta-community” of human beings. What may have made sense in decades or centuries past is no longer applicable in the current environment, and thus we as human beings – moral agents – must accept this expanded horizon and adjust our view of “community” accordingly to encompass all those participants in the project we now face together.
In light of current conflict-driven crises, this approach of an enlarged community of shared humanity would allow us to view all persons escaping violence and similar as equally valuable and similar members of the global human project. Like most types of growth, such actions are not without pain or disorientation, but if we accept the view of an intertwined global community consisting of a core of shared values (e.g., unprovoked, unjustified killing is morally repugnant) we can attain a foundation allowing us to see the Ukrainian farmer, the Kurdish doctor, and the Afghan engineer in the same light.
As the world continues to move through even more frightful crises in scope and impact, such as the effects of anthropogenic climate change, this “meta-community” approach becomes even more necessary. As the world we live on begins to destabilize from long-running norms, we should anticipate population dislocation and similar impacts that will drive a refugee and migration crisis an order of magnitude greater than anything exhibited in all the ghastly conflicts of the 20th and 21st centuries. If we continue to embrace an outmoded view of moral boundaries and priorities, we will be ill-prepared to deal with the challenges such a world will bring – thus it is vital we, as individuals and as component societies and cultures within the broader human project, begin to grow and extend our understanding of what our true “community” consists of in the broadest sense.
Through this meandering, I think I’ve arrived at a state where my actions at present are justifiable, but only in the sense that such actions continue and extend to other members of my global family. We should all strive to support those victimized by Russia’s terrible aggression to the best we can, yet at the same time not lose sight of the “bigger picture” where so many are similarly harmed either on smaller scales or out of the spotlight of global media coverage. From the family fleeing gang violence in Central America to Tigrayans coping with continued civil war, we need to recognize both our shared humanity and the common needs we all face.
To conclude, simply calling preference for Ukrainian support as “racism” misses significant nuance in current struggles. While there are undoubtedly committed, terrible racists helping Ukrainian civilians who would never dream of assisting someone that does not “look like them,” a more realistic assessment is that many (if not most) people are simply more comfortable and willing to assist those similarly-situated to themselves. Yet while we can explain this activity, we must push beyond this archaic tribalism to accept and understand the common humanity and meta-community we share with those across the world. In short, we must “do better” if we wish to achieve defensible, moral consistency, or as Kant might put it, to act in such a way that we could will into universal law.
Towards this end, I strongly encourage everyone who has joined me on this rhetorical journey to contribute what you can towards efforts to support, resettle, or heal those fleeing conflict, wherever they may be. While the current headline crisis resides in Ukraine and the Ukrainian people demand our attention now, there are existing fires elsewhere and more will emerge once conflict in Europe subsides. To address this, I advise setting up recurring donations to groups such as the following to their general funds, so that resources can be directed as and where needed at any point in time:
- The United Nations Refugee Agency
- The International Committee of the Red Cross
- The International Rescue Committee
- Doctors without Borders
The above is just a sampling, and many other organizations exist to assist those in need. But please remember in helping others to grow your sphere of humanity to embrace all those who are in need, rather than just those closest to us. Such a change in perspective requires some work and some adjustment beyond “natural” boundaries, but if we can achieve such growth we can attain a greater world for us all.
