03-05-2022, 06:18 AM
Let me spin a more hopeful message.
For better or worse, Putin (or Biden, if you prefer, or the two of them) have largely reunited the West, no small feat after Trump did his best to break it apart. But they are united in a non-military way, testing the proposal that the economic might of the West can make Putin’s moves on Ukraine a no-win proposition.
Has this ever worked before? I don’t know of an example I can point to, but the world has never been this interconnected and interdependent before. And as a friend of mine pointed out tonight, when was the last time a country was ever successfully occupied by a foreign force indefinitely?
Biden may be our era’s Chamberlain…or we may be on the verge of a new (and long awaited) world where leaders here and there may finally understand that military victories without the world’s support inevitably turn to dust. That certainly seems to be our experience.
For better or worse, Putin (or Biden, if you prefer, or the two of them) have largely reunited the West, no small feat after Trump did his best to break it apart. But they are united in a non-military way, testing the proposal that the economic might of the West can make Putin’s moves on Ukraine a no-win proposition.
Has this ever worked before? I don’t know of an example I can point to, but the world has never been this interconnected and interdependent before. And as a friend of mine pointed out tonight, when was the last time a country was ever successfully occupied by a foreign force indefinitely?
Biden may be our era’s Chamberlain…or we may be on the verge of a new (and long awaited) world where leaders here and there may finally understand that military victories without the world’s support inevitably turn to dust. That certainly seems to be our experience.