Vladimir Putin's war is a watershed. It's time for us to act like it.
I've sat in the back of an armored vehicle, trundling down the rutty roads of a foreign land, and thought: "Christ, I hope that the next I.E.D. hits the other guy." There was no light. Just the nightvision scope. There was no sound except the rumble of the road. Only darkness. And time. |
In 2007, the vehicle ahead of me got the boom. My little truck (Stryker armored vehicle) survived. Such is the logic of war. There is no logic. There is no harmony. There is no justice. Just an order you're in, going down the road. Some are first. Some are not. There's no method. Only madness. |
The war in Ukraine is no different. Many theories of international relations have floundered on the shoals. Realism. Pragmatism. Neoconservatism. Political science works in textbooks but it can struggle to explain how a man in Moscow, bent on reconstructing his own version of the Russian empire, thinks. |
A voice that I turn to help me try to make some sense of it all is Charles Kupchan, a professor of international affairs at Georgetown University and a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He's able to see beyond the next turn. As he wrote in our pages this week, "The war in Ukraine now confronts the United States with the need to tilt back toward the practice of realpolitik. Washington's commitment to keeping NATO's doors open to Ukraine was a laudable and principled stand against an autocratic Russia. Yet America's idealist cause has run headlong into Russian tanks; Washington's effort to do right by Ukraine has culminated in Russia's ruthless effort to put the country back under Moscow's sway." |
I don't know if Kupchan has ever ridden in the back of an armored vehicle, hoping that he wouldn't get blown up. But I am absolutely certain that his theory of international relations is grounded in concern for people who do. |
His is an important voice calling us in directions we might not always want to go. |
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