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Showing posts from February, 2022

Some notes on Ukraine

  The first thing to understand about what’s happening in Ukraine is that Ukraine is a democracy, and has done nothing to deserve this. Right now, in our world, an aggressive, authoritarian Russian government is invading its democratic neighbor. This is criminal, and there will be no justice unless Putin and his oligarch friends are put in prison. When I was a bit younger, Americans seemed to think that the great evils of history were defeated. But greed and corruption will not go gently into that good night. Anti-democratic forces are rising in Asia, in Europe, and in America. The second thing to understand about what’s happening in Ukraine is that Russia is a fundamentally insecure political entity, and Ukraine is a source of its insecurity. Ukraine is in a precarious position for two reasons. One reason is that Ukraine is a fertile area, like the American heartland. This is a valuable resource (a resource that Hitler and Stalin both envied, and that Hitler opined for in Mein Kampf).