<
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/nov/29/the-week-europe-realised-it-stands-alone-against-russian-expansionism>
"Kaja Kallas, the European Union foreign policy chief, asked her officials this
week to dig up the number of times Russia had – in its various guises – invaded
other states in the 20th and 21st centuries. The answer that came back was 19
states, on 33 occasions. Kallas, the former Estonian prime minister, was not
just indulging in some form of historical mathematics. She was seeking to make
a point that lies at the heart of the dispute between the US and Europe over
Ukraine’s future, a dispute that has again revealed the chasm across the
Atlantic about the true nature of the Russian regime.
Kallas reads history books as a leisure activity and – drawing on her own
country’s history of Soviet occupation – has long maintained that the Soviet
Union fell, but its imperialism never did. “Russia has never truly had to come
to terms with its brutal past or bear the consequences of its actions,” she has
said, arguing that the nature of the Russian regime means “rewarding aggression
will bring more war, not less”: Putin will come back for more.
A similar warning was made this week by the German foreign minister, Johann
Wadephul, who said: “Our intelligence services are telling us urgently: Russia
is at least creating the option of a war against Nato by 2029 at the latest.”
Putin is recruiting nearly one new division a month, Wadephul said, adding:
“Divisions that are undoubtedly also targeting us, at the EU, at Nato.”
The French president, Emmanuel Macron, has described Russia “as a constant
destabilising power, trying to revise the borders to extend his power”. Putin,
he said, is “a predator, an ogre at our gates who constantly needs to eat for
his own survival”. In short, “he is a threat to Europeans”.
The British prime minister, Keir Starmer, told MPs: “We know that without that
deterrence, [Putin] has the ambition to go again, and he will go again – and we
must guard against that.”
All this is diametrically opposite to the view of US isolationists. Steve
Witkoff, the New York property developer currently representing the US on the
world stage – but also coaching Russia on how to win over Donald Trump – has
admitted he knows little history, telling the
Atlantic in May that he had
been watching some Netflix documentaries to rectify this."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
