still MAD

It doesn't matter what your specialty may be in everyday life, teacher or psychiatrist or retired clergy or bus driver or mechanic or clerk or professional athlete, everyone, especially in times of high international tension, everyone is a foreign affairs expert. No matter, we are all experts on human relationships, and it doesn't take a nuclear physicist or a prophet from God to know that being threatened with economic and other sanctions will not intimidate a nation into submission to the will of other nations. 

There is the matter of showing the white feather: a nation cannot back down and lose face and disgrace itself and destroy confidence in its leadership. 

What the threat of sanctions accomplishes is to put national pride on the line and strengthen determination. Just so with Iran, just so now with Russia. Russian leadership knows full well that the greatest American horror is the prospect of war with Russia, and that no American is willing to send American troops to die in defense of Ukraine. I mean, U-WHO? Die for South Korea? Die for South Vietnam? Keep on dying in Afghanistan, or cut and run fast? Die for Ukraine, aykm? 

Every schoolboy remembers the scenario of, while the whole fifth grade class watches two boys who hate each other, as they glare back and forth, fists clenched and jaw jutting, one boy draws a line in the sand with the toe of his shoe and tells the other boy he better not cross that line. When the other boy steps across the line, the boy draws a new line in the stand and tells the other boy yeah, you better not dare cross THAT line, both boys hoping the bell will ring to end recess.

And, as Ralphie reminisces, there's the dare, and the double dare, and the double-dog dare, and finally the ultimate triple-dog dare that no self-respecting boy who wants ever to show his face in public can refuse to lick the frozen flagpole.

In the confrontation between American and Russian presidents over Ukraine, the current stage is the American threat to kill the gas pipeline project. His gaz company may want the profits, but the Russian president is not much bothered about whether or not he will be able to sell natural gas to Germany; it's the German people, economy, and ecology who are much bothered. Here's a line from Al Jezeera this morning:

“The more the US talks about sanctioning or criticises the project, the more it becomes popular in German society,” said Stefan Meister, a Russia and eastern Europe expert at the German Council on Foreign Relations.

WW2 put us in pretty good stead as being one of two or three, then one of two, and finally after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the remarkable overnight, virtually bloodless collapse of the Soviet Union, we stand as the world's one and only Superpower. But our actions since then have shown that there is greater to power than military might: threats run stale, one's determination and national will and followthrough are the proof that sustain or destroy credibility and reputation. Vietnam? Iraq? Afghanistan? 

Ukraine? 

Shall we reestablish the draft, or will recruiting stations be able to attract enough Americans to volunteer to die in Eastern Europe?

The American may have been stupid enough over the decades to promote dissension and taking sides instead of promoting development of the international economic interdependence that discourages war. The Russian may have been stupid enough to build up forces on the Ukraine line thinking to bluff the powerful but gutless American into backing off; but the Russian need be in no hurry, he is his own boss and can keep his tanks there as long as he wants to. Further, he is not stupid enough now to disgrace himself by pulling back his forces and going home because the American is threatening all manner of sanctions, though definitely not the shedding of American blood. 

If all out war including the threat of nuclear retaliation is promised absolutely as the cost of Russia invading Ukraine, everything will change and we will really be back in the Cold War where Europeans are not the only pawns, even back to Mutual Assured Destruction.

It's madness. There's nothing funny or profound about this. There was a Time when I'd say we need to fire all the men and put grandmothers in charge of everything, except that I keep remembering Golda Meir.