I would strongly urge people to stay away from social media, rolling news and news alerts currently. They are bad for mental well-being and typically full of misinformation. Notably, almost every single post on social media is too biased, too emotional or too ill-informed to be useful. For our own well-being, it is better to spend time in the real world with friends and colleagues making our own contribution as best we can.

If we absolutely must spend time thinking about Ukraine, we do need to deal with the uncomfortable parameters within which Western decision makers are operating.

Actually, it's not just Putin. Russians are paranoid about invasions from the West - and, after Napoleon and Hitler, this paranoia is not totally irrational. The average Russian was over 100 times likelier to be killed in World War II than the average American. Therefore, Russian geopolitical priorities are and always will be focused on creating buffers against invasion from the West.

We will not occupy Russia. Western allies have just left Afghanistan, effectively deeming a 20-year operation failed. Nor were they prepared to nation-build in Iraq. So there is absolutely zero prospect of the West occupying Russia or anything of the sort. That immediately places a restriction on what the outcome of the current war can be.

Put another way, we will always have to deal with a Russia which is huge and which is paranoid about invasion from the West. That will still be the case post-war and post-Putin.

We should not overstate the opposition to the War within Russia, nor should we assume Russians who do support it do so because of propaganda. Remember, Russian paranoia about invasion from the West may be wildly exaggerated, but it is not entirely irrational.

To emphasise, this is not remotely to suggest that indiscriminate shelling of cities is for one second justified. It is to say, however, that most Russians will seek to justify it, and we all live in a world in which that is the case. Remember, in a world of nationalism and fake news, sadly the truth is not the only thing which is relevant - anything which is remotely plausible to a group of people can become their reality and the rest of us have to find a way to deal with that.

After all, we also live in a world where over a third of Americans outright support last year's coup attempt in their own country, demonstrating a paranoia which is absolutely irrational. Remember, at the moment it is best to plan on a Trump-like candidate winning the next Presidential election and on ongoing racial tensions and democratic instability in the United States.

The argument is made, perfectly reasonably, that Ukraine is not Russia and that it must be allowed as a free and sovereign state, to choose its own future democratically. That is not really the question though. The question is how far Western allies should go to achieve this objective when they did not do so in Afghanistan, Iraq or Syria; or indeed when they allowed a hardman to wreck Zimbabwe and Venezuela; or when within the past generation they left genocide and brutal civil war to rage in Rwanda/Burundi or even Yugoslavia.

We may want to believe this is just Putin being mad, that the West can intervene to control Russia, that Russians themselves do not support the War or do not have historical impulses based on experiences very different from our own, that we are ourselves not guilty of fake news or nationalism, that the United States still provides us with a reliable democratic anchor, and that principles such as sovereignty and freedom have always been sacrosanct in post-Cold War international affairs. But what we want to believe is often not what we need to believe. That none of this is actually true provides the parameters within which we are operating - that is the uncomfortable reality.

I certainly don't have any answers. The only thing I am sure of is that, if we want to have a go at any kind of sensible public discussion, we do at least need to be honest about the questions.


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