I've often written about the application of the modern physics principle that the arrow of time is irreversible to world affairs and politics in general. Today it is combined with copycat behaviors, thus becoming all the more important to understand.
As Ukrainians pursue the historically-dictated split of their country, the West once again joining with Poland while the largely Russian-speaking East either becomes indepen-dent or joins again with Russia, using popular brute force not seen in Europe since the Second World War - or perhaps the Russian Revolution - European demonstrators fed up with Brussels and IMF imposed austerity are obviously thinking 'We can do that, too!'[tag]
Ever since the end of World War II, in which Communist and Socialist parties across Europe played a major role in resisting and undermining German occupation, trade unions have provided the left with a strong backbone, allowing workers to demand and obtain benefits American workers cannot even imagine. Their resilience continues to be seen every day on images of demonstrations across the European continent against levels of unemployment that hitherto had not existed in the welfare states.
European workers are also well aware of the role militarism plays in diminished social welfare, as EU countries have allowed themselves to be increasingly co-opted by Washington since 9/11. Although Vladimir Putin correctly noted the similarity between Kosovo's right to independence and that of Crimea, the crisis in Ukraine is different from the nineteen-nineties war in Serbia. Serbia lay in the heart of a Europe that was merely in the process of becoming united. Ukraine's only claim to belong to a united Europe lies in its long history of being part of Poland; but it has an even longer history of being part of Russia. As for today's Europeans, the fact that Ukraine looms as a putative relative inevitably dares them to show that they are just as capable of putting their bodies where their convictions are.
So much for the copycat aspect of the situation. As for the irreversibility of the arrow of time, this refers to the fact that once a trend is set in motion, it continues until it reaches a bifurcation point, when it can 'dissipate' (in the language of physics) to something different. What direction bifurca-tions take is unpredictable, but is usually influenced by previous history. Translated, this means that as revolts gather steam, the likelihood of them being stopped through negotiation or compromise is slight because each side is propelled inexorably forward. Revolutions and wars are the most obvious examples of bifurcations.
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