Well, that’s what France understands as the quickest way to end an invasion, right? In fairness, though, our government’s instinctive move was to assume an easy Russian victory and offer to evacuate the Ukrainian President.
Huh. I would have figured Moldova was next in line, followed by the Baltics. But maybe I just understand geography better than this illustrious Russian MP.
Wow. Good catch on Samuel Huntington and the seeming paradigm challenge this war is. Huntington’s ideas still command far more respect than they deserve, IMO
Aggressive war making dictatorships always affect us. Sooner or later. And control of Ukraine is control of its food exports to the west and elsewhere.
This seems to be a case of an exception that proves the rule. On the whole, his arguments about clashes of civilizations seem to have merit historically. In fact, now that I reflect on it, isn’t the issue here that Ukraine, part of the Russian (in its view) civilization, was moving unacceptably toward the Western civilization?
We’ll pick up Huntington at another time. He’s not as bad as Thomas Friedman, but he was far too simplistic
Precisely the problem with all political science models. Trying to neck down very complex systems that are difficult at times to put into words at all into simple, categorical models that generally describe situations.
I will completely agree with that. We always want easy to follow doctrines or rules, but the world is not that simple
It certainly seems that as western aid poured in, the tide of the war turned. We may never know the effectiveness of our contributions to Ukraine.
I wholly agree with this point, and I’d add the following: perhaps we have learned from history after all. If the world united against German aggression in the 1930s, Germany would not have reached its strength and WW2, with its uncharted death and destruction, would have been averted. Maybe the world recalled that lesson, and agreed to take every rational step to stop Russian aggression. This is war that impacts everyone because if Russia is not stopped, they will systematic continue their move West.
