So, they've done it! Ukraine in EU...

EU leaders approve candidate status for Zelenskyyland--and take one more step toward global war with Russia

Thucydides statue outside the University of Athens, Greece.

The 2014 Maidan square insurrection, promoted, and not-too-quietly supported by the US, was the unmistakable sign of brewing trouble between what we call “the West” and Vladimir Putin’s post-USSR Russia.

Even back then, there were (isolated) voices, especially in Europe, warning Moscow was not going to accept this blunt challenge to her ancient sphere of influence lying down. And, lo and behold, when pro-Russian insurgents began their own Vietcong-like guerrilla war in the Donbas, aiming to unite their land with Russia, Putin immediately rushed to help and keep the insurgency fed and promoted in open defiance of Kiev’s military attempt to suppress it.

The next step in that developing crisis was the election of T-shirted comedian Zelenskyy as Ukraine’s PM and his decision to pursue NATO and EU membership.

The Ukrainian pathos for joining the West naturally infuriated Moscow. The sequence of events that followed, with Tsar Vladimir getting increasingly nervous over Kiev’s apparent “insubordination” to Moscow’s imperial demands, paved the way to Russia finally invading Ukraine, this past February, to ensure keeping her post-Soviet sphere of influence intact.

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The Ukrainian drama is yet another manifestation of a phenomenon first articulated by the ancient Greek historian Thucydides, who’s widely recognized as the father of analytical scientific history based on political realism, known as the “Thucydides Trap.”

According to Wikipedia, “the term was popularized by American political scientist Graham T. Allison to describe an apparent tendency towards war when an emerging power threatens to displace an existing great power as a regional or international hegemon.”

In the case of Ukraine, the Thucydides Trap sequence worked like clockwork.

In his Melian Dialogue, Thucydides described how Ancient Athens, the “great power” of her time, blackmailed the Isle of Melos, whose inhabitants threatened to side with Sparta, Athens’ rival, in the developing clash between the two over predominance in the ancient Hellenic world.

When the Melians refused to obey the Athenian demands for surrender, Athens attacked and destroyed the island.

The parallels between what Thucydides described and Ukraine’s current predicament are obvious. Ukraine, in the role of Melos, defies Russia, in the role of Athens, and thus it is attacked and dealt terrible punishment—with the aim of re-absorbing the whole country into the post-Soviet sphere.

Right now, Ukraine, unlike Melos, remains a “hot” battlefield with extremely dangerous ramifications as both sides—the West and Russia—compete in tit-for-tat action involving both military and politico-economic weapons in the ongoing war—which took a potentially ominous twist with the triumphant announcement by Brussels that Ukraine is granted EU candidate membership status (along with Moldova).

Zelenskyy issues panegyrics, and Western leaders compete with the T-shirted PM heralding a New Age for the family of democracies, but no one is apparently in the mood to address the darker hard realities looming in the background:

• The “free world” has now formally accepted the possibility of a global war with Russia that could quickly deteriorate into nuclear battle.

• The “free world” seems to still assume imposing sanctions on Putin-land will undermine Moscow’s military operational capabilities, but… so far,

• …the ruble is stronger than ever; blocking Russian food and natural gas/oil exports has backfired creating new markets for Moscow outside the “free world” circle of wagons; and “strangling” the Russian economy appears increasingly difficult to implement.

• The constant trumpeting of plans to “devastate” Russia, through delivering more guns to Ukraine, encouraging others to follow Kiev’s example, and ever-expanding economic sanctions, mathematically increase the possibility of a Russian pre-emptive attack elsewhere along the line of contact between the “free world” and USSR’s successor—with Putin possibly choosing to go for broke.

The “free world” needs an urgent refresher in the lessons of politico-military history which it apparently refuses to do.

Bottom line: now we have to wait—and pray nothing goes terribly wrong.

[But this is the Russian roulette way of making ‘policy’].