Denial can be a useful coping mechanism, but when taken to an extreme it just gets sad.
People living in the middle east are dumbfounded at the ability of Americans to convince themselves that we actually have a moral high ground when talking about Russia's war in Ukraine.
Centuries ago governments would grant Letters of Marque to people who wanted to be pirates, but didn't want to hang for it.
The United States depended on these privateers during the Revolution and the War of 1812.
We haven't used them since.
“How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked.
“Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually and then suddenly.”
- from Ernest Hemingway’s 1926 novel, The Sun Also Rises.
The first thing you've got to ask is "How much pain will the sanctions inflict?"
Will they absolutely crush Russia's economy, or just throw it into recession? The correct answer is closer to the latter than the former.
Sanctions don't have a great track record for making political change possible. Just look toward Cuba as an example.
Yesterday I pointed out how the Biden Administration is now talking to the legitimate government of Venezuela, a government that Washington doesn't actually recognize, in order to get their oil flowing again.
Today the spin started.
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has figured out that NATO is prepared to fight Russia with the lives of every single willing Ukrainian. This has changed his perspective.
Technically the U.S. still considers Juan Guaidó the President of Venezuela, despite the fact that he never even ran for the office of President, nor holds an elected office of any kind, and only has a 15% approval rating.
Polls show that anti-Russia sentiments are at their highest levels since 1983, during the Cold War.
