This Is Not 1989

Robin Sears: “This is not the era when Helmut Kohl, George H.W. Bush, Brian Mulroney and many other world leaders were able to gently nudge the Russians away from confrontation. Putin is not Gorbachev. We are at the end of the quiet decades of Russian integration into the global community, with occasional wrist slaps for Putin’s earlier, smaller aggressions against neighbours.”

“This is 1939, when a crazed autocrat drove his hundreds of tanks across the Polish border, only a few hundred kilometres east of where Putin invaded across the same vast, rolling plains, ideal for tank warfare. Then as now, the invader downplayed his strategic ambitions, attempting to soothe the world into not reacting. Both dictators got it badly wrong.”