‘On Tyranny’: Guitarist for UK Thrash Phenoms Struck a Nerve – Who Has a PhD in Russian Foreign Policy – Talks Ukraine Conflict
“Americans and the British, we really struggle to understand and put ourselves in the feet of Russian leaders who truly, truly believe that if they’re not seen as an equal great power, their state will collapse.”
-Struck a Nerve guitarist and Russian foreign policy expert Nathan Sadd
If you’re a thrash metal fan, what are you doing when you’re not windmilling your long hair or gesticulating air guitar riffage till you fall through the makeshift box spring “bed” in your parents’ basement? Perhaps reorganizing your CD collection yet again, indecisive over whether it should start with albums by the Big Four or strictly abide by alphabetical norms by putting Acid Drinkers’ releases before Anthrax’s? Get a job, son!
Like Nathan Sadd, for example, who holds the unusual status as a guitarist in maybe the most exciting British thrash band of the moment – Struck a Nerve – all the while maintaining the pride of his parents and the respect of academics as an expert on the topic of Russian foreign policy as proven by the PhD he received in international relations from the University of Oxford. Yeah, that’s a mouthful, but an overachiever like Sadd deserves it.
When we posted most of our interview with the guitarist late last year, we reserved a side conversation about Russia’s war against Ukraine for a future edition of On Tyranny. Seven months later, one would think we missed our opportunity to post the chat due to outdatedness. But, oddly enough, the chat is still relevant thanks to a turn of events in Ukraine that can only be compared to very, very rare foreign entanglements – like, as Walter Sobchak would say, “our current situation” in Iran … or one of the “visits” we’ve paid to the country to which he was referring in The Big Lebowski, Iraq … or Afghanistan … or Russia’s own past quagmire in that same land.
Here’s how our exchange went:
How is the Ukraine situation going to get resolved, do you think?
In history, it would’ve been resolved with the superior firepower crushing the other country. But now we live in a world of international law and things … o states don’t necessarily have the same ability. Think of Israel and Palestine. Two hundred years ago, that would have been solved with one state annexing the other state, simple as that.
[Russia’s war against Ukraine is] not going to end anytime soon. It was going to be a decade-long war, minimum [when it began]. As long as the West are going to continue a minimum amount of support for Ukraine, it’s going to continue. Russia will forever want to be a great power in its neighbourhoods; that’s never going away. When Putin dies, the next leader will feel the same way.
The new peace deal of Ukraine swearing neutrality and halving its military, that’s a first step towards the inevitable annexation of the entire country in the next couple of years.
I think anyone who says they know how it’s going to end is lying. None of us know. But we have historical trends, right? If we withdraw support, it will be a vassal state to Russia. If we continue to support [Ukraine], it’s going to be a long, protracted, frozen conflict.
It’s a tragedy for Ukrainians. I hate it.
If Ukraine does become a vassal state, are the threats to Poland real?
I’m skeptical about the threat to the rest of the neighbourhood. Article 5 in NATO [which stipulates that an attack against one NATO member state is an attack against all] exists, even under Donald Trump. Russia knows it would be suicidal to attack a NATO country. They know that very well. It’s why they make big threats and they never carry them out. Nuclear bargaining and stuff like that.
I fear mainly for places like Georgia, places like the rest of Ukraine. West Ukraine is who I feel bad for. It’s tragic, basically.
Because they want to reassemble or reconfigure the old USSR, right?
They know that’s not possible, but in Russian history, status as a great power is paramount. I don’t think people in the West quite understand. We have the same thing in the UK, right? Brexit happened for a reason here. It’s because we have this old imperial mentality of rule Britannia. We see ourselves as distinct from Europe, and it makes us make poor decisions. The West, Americans and the British, we really struggle to understand and put ourselves in the feet of Russian leaders who truly, truly believe that if they’re not seen as an equal great power, their state will collapse.
Over the last 20, 25 years, Putin himself has written countless pieces on the genuine belief that if they don’t control their neighbourhoods, Russia will collapse internally. Even [murdered Putin opponent and human rights activist Alexei] Navalny, rest in peace, once spoke about Ukrainians as being “little Russians.” This has gone way off pace.
One really interesting thing to look at is 1992, when the liberal Westernizers came into power in Russia, and you look at how they were talking about Ukraine. These are people that we saw as wanting to become a Western market-based economy, like [Mikhail] Gorbachev, [journalist and filmmaker Mikhail] Kozyrev and foreign ministers. It’s really, really interesting to look at their writings and see them saying the same things, like Russia is destined to be a great power and should have responsibility for Eastern Europe.
It’s really important that Russia plays this role. Even if Putin dies tomorrow, and we suddenly have a liberal regime in Russia, we’re still going to have the same problems, because it’s about how they see their neighbourhood. To me, at least, it has tons of North Korea sentiment.
Check out more On Tyranny installments – featuring Carcass, Napalm Death, Dying Remains, Convulse and more than 100 other artists – in the series archive.
Buy Struck a Nerve releases – including their most recent album, which is self-titled – on their Bandcamp page. They’re also on Facebook, where they announced about three weeks ago that they have new music on the way soon.
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