Russia could no more accept NATO in Ukraine than France could have accepted neutrality in 1914. Both states were reacting to conditions created by an opponent, both saw themselves in jeopardy, and both had in front of them a no-war option leading to a peaceful exit.
Russians consider a loss in Ukraine as tantamount to Russia’s losing its historical identity—not merely as a country but as a civilization, a society distinct from the West.
Russia and the West have two fundamentally different ways of looking at the world, which threatens to indefinitely prolong the war in Ukraine.
Mark this date on your calendar: November 19, 2023. This date would sound the timer for the disestablishment of the People’s Republic of China if the Chinese Communist Party has the same life span as its late Russian cousin. Russia was a Communist dictatorship beginning with the Bolshevik coup in November of 1917 until December … Read more
Americans like to think of themselves as living in a classless society, and historically this is largely, but not entirely, true, with a large middle class dominating the country’s economic, political, and social life. In the traditional social model, there was a small and moneyed upper class above the middle class, typically marked by its willingness … Read more
In the Inferno, Dante Alighieri, a critic in his day of Church leadership, famously put the souls of at least three popes in hell, as well as countless other clerics who go nameless, their faces blackened beyond recognition. However, one cleric he does meet along the way is Ruggieri degli Ubaldini (d. 1295), the archbishop … Read more
On October 31, 1517, a 34-year-old Catholic priest affixed a notice of disputation, consisting of ninety-five theses, to the door of the castle church in the German town of Wittenberg. That act has come to be seen down the ages as a dramatic gesture of defiance and an open declaration of rebellion. It was not. … Read more