The Sorrows of Vlad the Conqueror

Striding masterfully through St. George’s Hall of the Grand Kremlin Palace, Vlad the Conqueror turned his thoughts once again to his place in the pantheon of History’s Immortals.

“Victory follows victory for my splendid military forces,” he assured himself.  “I have halted the offensive of the Ukrainian bandits and demonstrated to the world that a great nation―commanded by a great leader!―is unstoppable.”

“Of course,” he noted bitterly, “our national enemies will point to read more

Replacing a Disastrous War with a Just Peace in Ukraine

Although the unfolding humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza has captured the world’s horrified attention, the war in Ukraine has had even more terrible consequences.  Grinding on for nearly two years, Russia’s massive military invasion of that country has taken hundreds of thousands of lives, created millions of refugees, wrecked Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure and economy, and consumed enormous financial resources from nations around the world.

And yet, despite the Ukraine War’s vast human read more

Time to Abandon International Anarchy?

In December 1934, Arthur Henderson, a leader of the British Labour Party, declared in his speech accepting the Nobel Peace Prize that the immense human suffering caused by World War I “led to the very clear realization that international anarchy must be abandoned if civilization was to survive.”

Unfortunately, that realization did not go very far or very deep.  Although, since that time, international law has been refined, nations remain far from adhering to its provisions or accepting its read more

Two Ways That the Ukraine War Could Have Been Prevented and Might Still Be Ended

Perhaps the greatest tragedy of the immensely destructive Ukraine War lies in the fact that it could have been averted.

The most obvious way was for the Russian government to abandon its plan for the military conquest of Ukraine.

The problem on this score, though, was that Vladimir Putin was determined to revive Russia’s “great power” status.  Although his predecessors had signed the UN Charter (which prohibits the “use of read more

How Strengthened Global Governance Could Produce a Nuclear-Free World

It should come as no surprise that the world is currently facing an existential nuclear danger.  In fact, it has been caught up in that danger since 1945, when atomic bombs were used to annihilate the populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Today, however, the danger of a nuclear holocaust is probably greater than in the past.  There are now nine nuclear powers―the United States, Russia, Britain, France, China, Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea―and they are currently engaged read more

The Ukraine War Has Never Been America’s War

Although supporters of the Russian invasion, occupation, and annexation of Ukraine blame “U.S. imperialism” for the Ukraine War, the U.S. role has been relatively minor.  The major actors have been Ukrainians, striving for independence, and Russians, striving to end it.

For centuries, a great many Ukrainians, chafing under Czarist and, later, Soviet rule, longed for national independence.  This rejection of Russian domination―based in part on Stalin’s extermination of four read more

Whose Red Lines?

In the conflict-ridden realm of international relations, certain terms are particularly useful, and one of them is “Red Lines.”  Derived from the concept of a “line in the sand,” first employed in antiquity, the term “Red Lines” appears to have emerged in the 1970s to denote what one nation regards as unacceptable from other nations.  In short, it is an implicit threat.

Vladimir Putin, self-anointed restorer of the Russian empire, has tossed about the term repeatedly in recent years.  read more

Homage to Russian War Resisters

Given the Russian government’s brutal repression of dissent, the level of Russian resistance to the Putin regime’s war on Ukraine is quite remarkable.

Beginning on the evening of February 24, 2022, the date of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, many thousands of Russians, defying threats from the authorities, staged nonviolent antiwar demonstrations across their nation.  On the first night alone, police made read more