His latest on Ukraine is America's 'Revolutionary Moment.'
What follows is his response to the comments made here on his earlier article Do Not Underestimate Russia's Resolve:
I just read through the comments this weekend. There certainly was a spirited debate.
The comments divide into two kinds, with Michael Brazier and Dimitri raising points about how I’ve mis-measured Russia’s intent and its imperialistic history. Dimitri seemed to be somewhat surprised that a retired Foreign Service Officer wasn’t better informed about Russian history. Since when is the State Department required to have a firm grasp of history? That principle has never applied to it in the past and I see no reason why I should conform to it now. Ha!
Ben made very good points pushing back against the Russia bogey. His comment about Churchill and Roosevelt approving the inflow of Russian power into Eastern Europe is noteworthy. That fact is typically ignored when an anti-Russia speaker talks about how the Soviet bloc was really a modern replication of the Russian Empire. It is as though Russia was the only actor on the scene and Eastern Europe was merely putty in its hands. But events were shaped by other actors as well, especially the Anglo-Americans who agreed to Russia’s westward advance (although they may not have liked it), as well as local Communist parties which looked to Moscow for support.
Joe Odegaard made a good point about Russia fighting to fend off the imperial reach of the West’s Woke agenda. That story’s out there in the blogosphere in various forms. It’s a two-part story: there’s the U.S. push for globalizing Woke, which R.R. Reno wrote about recently at First Things, and then there’s the resentment against it in the patriarchal and traditional societies of the so-called “Global South.” I think that’s one reason the Global South has not signed up to sanction Russia. It likes the idea of having a strong Russia and China around to curb American excesses.