One year after the undeclared declaration of Vladimir Putin, once and future (for a while) president of a Russia now seeming more and more 1914 or even 1916 than the sublime might not so long ago expressed by the bear waving its paws , president Joe Biden heralds one year of support for the former Soviet Union's second-most significant constituent state by his physical presence.
If you had asked, in 1983, whether an American president, present in Kiev, conducting a proxy war with the Kremlin, and a Kremlin roaring the cause of traditional values against Western decadence to that, emotions would have ran amok in despair and dazed amazement, and surely many minds on the right would have been keen to sense more love for the Russian bear, and many Cold Warrior hearts - dare I say Goldwater, even? - suddenly a lot less war-like and a great deal more concerned with the sake of humanity.
In line with this observation, we ought to ask whether the Cold War has not only re-emerged but gone positively warm, in a manner not seen since - or even in - the cold trenches of the Korean conflict, during its warmer and more blood-soaked years, and whether an armed intervention with apocalyptic weaponry make lie in the basket. This, I admit, seems the only immediately reasonable reason for staying the hand delivering the arsenal of the West into the hands of Ukrainians, in a spirit of liberty and brotherhood. If the Russian bear is to be culled, without him clawing the very world itself, it must be gradual and in the interests of the Russian leadership, rather than the cruel invasion of then seventy and two-thirds years past to which Putin himself made his relation, and the relation of the Ukrainian rebel ingrates, abundantly clear. The West would no longer use the constituent parts of the empire, steadfastly rolling forward to its just place at the temple of nations, regardless of mishaps, encountering any resistance to its course.
The Commander of the Free World, and its foremost, or most heralded spokesperson. But what weakness lie under the steadfast stride, which doubts rest beneath the soothing shades, as with so many before him?
But Biden has not been the unwavering friend of the free Ukrainian people, and (even) he knows it. Behind the hugs, the surely welcoming smiles, the physical presence of weaponry more advanced than anything in Putin's (still quite impressive) arsenal, and the many many days, and crushed and opened skulls, and drum-busting decibels ahead, the doubts and uncertainties cannot be quelled any more than the word invasion; whether it is Nazi-esque or not, aimed at annihilating Ukraine, or the Ukrainians, or not. The doubts over the designs and willingness of this West, if properly spelled in single tense, welcoming this Ukraine of the Ukrainians into its bosom, must be set against the certainty of the designs of the bear - as he is at the present moment - and
What would be the next step, depending upon whether the war ends with a comprehensive Russian retreat - if not in a number of weeks or months - or a decisive conquest and occupation and partial annexation of Ukraine - not necessarily the strategic objective even during the lead-up to war in February 2022.
