One Nation, One State, One Budget, but Two Priorities: Military or Culture?
This article explores which of these two is more crucial for the survival of the Serbian people.
The Art of War
Sun Tzu, a Chinese sage, wrote the rules of warfare over two thousand five hundred years ago, principles that are still applied today. His „The Art of War“ remains an unparalleled textbook on military strategy. Sun Tzu states, “A good warrior is one who wins without fighting,” and he further adds, “If war is inevitable, a good warrior first wins the war and then begins it to confirm that victory. A bad warrior starts the war first and then fights in it to achieve victory.”
The Cold War
Two thousand six hundred years after Sun Tzu’s death, two nations on Earth were vying for supremacy—the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). Both possessed the most destructive weapons in human history: atomic bombs, capable of annihilating the entire planet in a matter of moments.
The Cold War was the longest and most grueling conflict of the 20th century. It lasted fifty years, during which seventy local wars were fought, with these two superpowers indirectly clashing. The Cold War claimed more lives worldwide than World War II.
At the end of the 20th century, the Cold War came to an end, with America emerging victorious. The Soviet Union collapsed, as did the Warsaw Pact, which it had established. The former allies of the Soviet Union are now allied with America.
This long and arduous war is notable for the fact that the opposing sides never directly engaged in combat, and America won the war without firing a single shot.
Victory without war—Sun Tzu would be proud.
What led to such a great victory if not weapons?
The answer lies in the triumph of the economy and pop culture. People living in Warsaw Pact countries wanted jeans and Coca-Cola; they wanted to listen to rock ‘n’ roll, not revolutionary songs.
The weakness of the Soviet Union was that it was a totalitarian state that underestimated the importance of its people, who are the most crucial element for the existence of any nation.
Pop Culture and Cultural Imperialism
Russia is the homeland of Tchaikovsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Yesenin, Dostoevsky, Pushkin…
Yet, the Russians wanted to listen to Elvis Presley and the Beatles and secretly read Salinger. How did this happen?
America culturally conquered the countries of the Warsaw Pact. Cultural imperialism, a well-known ancient political strategy that America executed effectively, ultimately led to the point where, for the average citizen of Eastern Europe, it became more important to embrace the American way of life, the so-called American Dream, than to preserve their own way of life.
21st Century
Many centuries ago, the Slavs, Celts, Romans, Illyrians, and many other peoples lived in our region. They haven’t disappeared; they still exist in our genes, but we no longer belong to their cultures. No army can save us from forgetting our own culture.
At the beginning of the 21st century, we once again stand before the “Gates of the Nations”; a great migration of Biblical proportions is looming.
The global population increase, the development of information technologies, the scarcity of water and food due to climate change and wars in this century will lead to migrations unprecedented in human history. Serbia, like most European countries, has fewer than ten million inhabitants. According to United Nations reports, there are currently one hundred million refugees and displaced persons in the world who have been forced to leave their homes due to war. And billions of others who live in extreme poverty, unable to provide security, clean water, and food for themselves and their children.
Europe is an old continent – the average age of the population in Europe is almost 40 years, while the average Serbian is 42.5 years old. In contrast, the average resident of Asia or Africa is just over 20 years old. It’s natural for people in these regions to seek a better life for themselves and their families, aiming to move to places with a higher standard of living.
Let’s return to the topic of culture. Who among us “counts blood cells” to assert their belonging to a nation? We simply know that we belong to a particular nation, inheriting its culture, and we’ve learned this in our families, schools… Belonging to a nation is not a medical concept but a cultural one, and this distinction is important because the notion of a nation is often manipulated.
In the end, what is necessary for the survival of this or any other European nation at this moment? Should we focus on developing our culture, or our military?