“I feel only sympathy for the Russians. No people have suffered as much death.” That was the response of a colleague of mine, Jan, a Polish professor and adviser to the Solidarity movement in the 1980s. I had hosted Jan…
I “The wicked are estranged from the womb,” so the Psalms tell us, “they go astray from birth.” King David’s aetiology of crime was perhaps the first, and remains the most concise, prefiguring later theories of biological positivism. If criminality…
A century ago, on December 30, 1922, Russia signed treaties with Ukraine, Byelorussia (now Belarus), and Transcaucasia (combining Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia) to form the Soviet Union. The latter continued to expand, reaching its apogee after swallowing Estonia, Latvia, and…
President Joe Biden has humiliated himself and his country on the global stage. He let the Russians spring from American confinement a Russian arms dealer known as the “Merchant of Death” who sells weapons to terrorists and our adversaries in…
“Prediction is difficult, especially about the future.” That line is often misattributed to professional baseball player Yogi Berra, but it actually is a Danish proverb that was repeated by Niels Bohr, the scientist who figured out the structure of the…
“The resurrected political dinosaur from California proposes a … ‘policy of rolling back communism,’” scoffed Yuri Zhukov in the pages of Pravda in April 1975. “It is incredible but true!” That kind of language aimed at Ronald Reagan was standard…
The latest rhetoric from Mad Dog Putin is very concerning. He is dangerously escalating, again. The man is Hitlering up, again. If the very recent past is prologue, watch out. The rhetoric is now approaching literal nuclear levels. “Ukraine, saturated…
What can be expected from a leader whose mantra has been to impart strength, menace his neighbors, and project power to faraway theaters but whose military has been dealt a humiliating blow by a smaller, weaker adversary? The short answer…
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a turning point in world history. But what will it mean for future generations? It could affirm the right to self-determination, or it could mark the end of it. Vladimir Putin, a troglodyte left over from…
