Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began last Thursday, I’ve been thinking about little but this war. Putin’s unprovoked assault forced an entire country to choose, overnight, between fight or flight. And it turned a whole lot of young Ukrainians and Ukrainian sympathizers into involuntary combatants.
Like many Americans watching from afar, I’m horrified and terrified for the people of Ukraine. The stakes of this conflict are almost unimaginable, not just for them but for all of Europe and for democracies the world over. If they lose, the global imbalance could well put us all at risk.
There have been plenty of other wars since World War II, but the potential consequences at this moment seem graver than any I can recall since the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. That, too, was a crisis of Russia’s (then the Soviet Union’s) utterly unprovoked making, threatening countless lives. Unlike that stand-off, however, today’s already involves the suffering of millions, and…
