Must-watch interview with @edwardlucas on Latvian television http://t.co/5XUFXxKUos Well worth 40 minutes of your time
— Brian Whitmore (@PowerVertical) September 24, 2014
Margaret Thatcher: Statecraft
For my part, I favour an approach to statecraft that embraces principles, as long as it is not stifled by them;
and I prefer such principles to be accompanied by steel along with good intentions.
~ Margaret Thatcher, Statecraft: Strategies for a Changing World (2002)
How To Inoculate Angry Teens Against Islamic Extremism
Maajid Nawaz used to be a recruiter for an extreme Islamist group in the United Kingdom. NPR’s Scott Simon speaks with Nawaz about how the recruiting process works, and how it can be thwarted.
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A Premature Party for Poroshenko
From Leon Aron, Director of Russian studies at the American Enterprise Institute:
…By withholding military assistance to Ukraine — the only thing that could have changed Putin’s mind by giving Kiev a chance to turn the tide on the battlefield — the West has greatly contributed to [Ukrainian President] Poroshenko’s decision to accept a very bad deal. No amount of ovation, not even a standing one, during Poroshenko’s address to the joint session of Congress today can obscure this grim reality.
Read more at A Premature Party for Poroshenko.
Defence With A “C”: The Russian Bear Cometh!
From Chris at Defence with a C:
Russia has spent the last decade talking about programs to upgrade its armed forces and spend more money on things like training, logistics and maintenance. The fruits of this investment, or even just the investment itself, appear to be taking a very long time to actually materialise.
This is not to say that NATO shouldn’t sleep with one eye open, or that NATO should stop investing in its collective defence. Vigilance is the first stage of preparedness after all. But to say that Russia is an imminent threat to NATO is over egging the pudding I feel….
Read more at Defence With A "C": The Russian Bear Cometh!.
Poroshenko: ‘Today Ukraine is bleeding for its independence and territorial integrity’
From Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko’s speech to the Canadian parliament in Ottawa on September 17:
Today Ukraine pays a very high price for defending what we believe in – democracy and freedom to choose our own future. For more than two decades we proudly stated that Ukraine gained its independence without shedding a single drop of blood.
Today Ukraine is bleeding for its independence and territorial integrity.
Read more at Poroshenko: 'Today Ukraine is bleeding for its independence and territorial integrity' VIDEO.
Putin Attacks the West’s Soft Underbelly | World Affairs Journal
From Arthur Milikh at the Heritage Foundation:
Alexander Hamilton lamented long ago, in Federalist 25, what may become our tendency to act as if “all that kind of policy by which nations anticipate distant danger and meet the gathering storm must be abstained from.” Putin knows we want to be deceived. But what nation would choose, as Hamilton puts it, to “receive the blow before we could even prepare to return it”?
Putin’s new genre of war in part stems from our Western intellectual deficiencies. He knows we cannot countenance full-on conventional warfare in such a critical region—but we can swallow ambiguity. He knows that we will likely intervene only on account of moralism or shame, but we will not act strategically, trusting in our judgment. Putin will provide us with empirical data to sufficiently muddy the waters and thereby destroy our confidence in our own intuition. The incursion of a “humanitarian” convoy of 200-plus trucks into Ukraine last month was a masterful example of this….
Read more at Putin Attacks the West's Soft Underbelly | World Affairs Journal.
Putin’s Playbook | NYTimes.com
From Maxim Trudolyubov, opinion page editor of the business newspaper Vedomosti:
…So what is Mr. Putin up to, my American friends and colleagues keep asking. He is, quite simply, bent on preserving and expanding his personal and Russia’s international power. Some of his methods were inherited from the Soviets, some were developed in the absence of domestic political traditions, and some were borrowed from the West. There is no consistent ideology. Nor is there is anything particularly Russian about his beliefs. But the methodology in his playbook is constant and ruthless. It involves techniques that function when all past checks on power — institutional constraints and traditional values — are gone. If it’s true that much of the world is moving in this same ruthless direction, then, yes, Mr. Putin’s methods are indeed political guidelines for the future.
Read more at Putin's Playbook – NYTimes.com.
The Madness of War
Today Pope Francis denounced war as “madness” in a moving homily delivered at Redipuglia, at a vast monument to the dead of the First World War located in northeasternmost Italy, a stone’s throw from the Slovenian border. The pontiff did not mince words:
“Humanity needs to weep and this is the time to weep … Even today, after the second failure of another world war, perhaps one can speak of a third war, one fought piecemeal, with crimes, massacres, destruction … War is irrational; its only plan is to bring destruction: it seeks to grow by destroying … Greed, intolerance, the lust for power. These motives underlie the decision to go to war and they are too often justified by an ideology.”
From the XX Committee.
Read more at The Isonzo and the Madness of War | The XX Committee.
Extent of the Russian “incursion” in Ukraine
Russian “humanitarian” convoy in Ukraine. Link posted by Gary Kasparov