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https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/03/putins-war-dispelled-the-worlds-illusions/623335/>
"History has accelerated; the impossible has become possible. Shifts that no
one imagined two weeks ago are unfolding with incredible speed.
As it turns out, nations are not pieces in a game of Risk. They do not, as some
academics have long imagined, have eternal interests or permanent geopolitical
orientations, fixed motivations or predictable goals. Nor do human beings
always react the way they are supposed to react. Last week, nobody who was
analyzing the coming war in Ukraine imagined that the personal bravery of the
Ukrainian president and his emotive calls for sovereignty and democracy could
alter the calculations of foreign ministers, bank directors, business
executives, and thousands of ordinary people. Few imagined that the Russian
president’s sinister television appearances and brutal orders could alter, in
just a few days, international perceptions of Russia.
And yet all of that has happened. Volodymyr Zelensky’s courage has moved
people, even the hard-bitten CEOs of oil companies, even dull diplomats
accustomed to rote pronouncements. Vladimir Putin’s paranoid ranting,
meanwhile, has frightened even people who were lauding his “savvy” just a few
days ago. He is not, in fact, someone you can do business with, as so many in
Berlin, Paris, London, and Washington falsely believed; he is a cold-blooded
dictator happy to murder hundreds of thousands of neighbors and impoverish his
nation, if that’s what it takes to remain in power. However the war ends—and
many scenarios are still imaginable—we already live in a world with fewer
illusions."
Via Dewayne Hendricks and Dave Farber.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
