Russia and Ukraine have sat down for talks while the fighting it ongoing.
This doesn't mean it's all peace and love today. But it's a good sign. If you know nothing about Russia and can't find Ukraine on the map, you can see this has not gone as Russia could ever have hoped. Like Russia reportedly did after the election of Reagan in 1980, Putin and his cohorts likely saw in Ukraine's Zelensky a half-baked actor who wouldn't know what to do with a little push. Like Reagan in 1980, they were wrong.
None of this is to say it's easy to parse the complexities of this situation. There is blame aplenty, and there are greater issues right now behind all this than Russian tanks in Ukraine. But right now, things have clearly gone sour for Putin's plans. While I can't speak to his sanity or mental balance, I can say that anything bringing this to a quick conclusion will be better for everyone. That is as long as we learn the biggest lesson from this, and it's stop basing our policy on silly progressive modernity narratives. And for heaven's sake, stop worrying more about pregnant men with nail polish in the military than the actual events and purposes of the real world in these troubled times.
Not necessarily. For centuries the system of war in Europe has been as follows:
ReplyDeleteStep 1: kill a bunch of enemy soldiers.
Step 2: seize as many strategic targets as possible.
Step 3: sit down at the negotiating table and use the aforementioned gains as bargaining chips.
Putin controls a number of key peices of Ukrainian territory. Quite likely he will gain something from the talks which he didn't have before the war. Or he's dragging this madness out as long as possible to pull America farther in, thus leaving Taiwan vulnerable.
With Biden at the helm Taiwan HAS been vulnerable.
DeleteNot necessarily. For centuries the system of war in Europe has been as follows:
ReplyDeleteStep 1: kill a bunch of enemy soldiers.
Step 2: seize as many strategic targets as possible.
Step 3: sit down at the negotiating table and use the aforementioned gains as bargaining chips.
I think you'd have to repair to the early modern period to locate a European war that resembled this profile you concocted. Since 1789, possible candidates might be the Crimean War, Austro-Prussian War, the Franco-Prussian War, and the Balkan Wars of 1910-13, IOW. Three were fought on the periphery of Europe, two > 3 generations ago, one > five generations ago. Two were fought in the heart of Europe, again five generations ago; the winner prevailed by inflicting battlefield defeats, not by seizing assets.