Inviting Nuclear War
How we continue to increase the risk of Russian escalation
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Most parents fail to grasp the basic dynamic of the parent-child relationship. Consequently, most toddlers quickly learn to exploit their parents’ ineptitude, especially in public, in order to get what they want. Attention, sweets, and other rewards are reliably delivered to the screaming angry child and so most parents accidentally train their children to be unruly; thereafter these parents buy a temporary semblance of order by means of continual surrender to their child’s impetuous demands.
Not surprisingly, those who fail to become adequate parents also fail to become adequate adults. After a lifetime of appeasement — usually beginning with handing over lunch money to the schoolyard bully and thereafter advancing to the appeasement of aggressive colleagues in the workplace — the habit is so deeply ingrained that a toxic combination of clueless denial and rapid surrender is the only strategy most people have available.
We can’t be surprised, therefore, that the West has responded to Putin’s military tantrums by endless appeasement. Empty windy statements by feeble Western politicians have encouraged Putin every step of the way. When Russia massed its forces on the borders of Ukraine, Biden explicitly stated that the USA would not oppose the forthcoming Russian invasion, which was essentially a declaration to Putin that he had the green light for his plan. The UK’s clown-in-residence, Boris Johnson, mere days before the invasion — and after he’d been confidentially briefed by intelligence agencies that the invasion was definitely going to happen — happily declared that Putin was bluffing and that there was no need for anyone to do anything. Macron from France, meanwhile, was under the delusion that having dinner with Putin was all that was required to persuade the Russian dictator to live peacefully within his borders.
Once Russia invaded Ukraine and Russian troops began raping and slaughtering its citizens, the West continued to do nothing except issue meaningless statements, many of which babbled endlessly about an imaginary distinction between “defensive” and “offensive” weapons as a pathetic justification for letting Ukrainians die by the thousands. As Ukraine was reduced to rubble and millions of people’s…
