Johnson, Samuel not Boris, on Charles XII of Sweden’s invasion of Ukraine in 1709, which was then part of Russia, and his defeat.
"He comes, nor want nor cold his course delay;
Hide, blushing Glory, hide Pultowa's day:
The vanquish'd hero leaves his broken bands,
And shows his miseries in distant lands;
Condemn'd a needy supplicant to wait,
While ladies interpose, and slaves debate.
But did not Chance at length her error mend?
Did no subverted empire mark his end?
Did rival monarchs give the fatal wound,
Or hostile millions press him to the ground?
His fall was destin'd to a barren strand
A petty fortress, and a dubious hand;
He left the name at which the world grew pale,
To point a moral, or adorn a tale."
This is a very interesting article by Dominic Sandbrook on Poltava and Putin. I agree with quite a lot of it.
*
I wrote this very short post four years ago because I love The Vanity of Human Wishes and Dr Johnson. No doubt I intended it as the start to a post I never wrote.
Mr Sandbrook's article still seems to me extremely topical. Do read it.
I wrote this very short post four years ago because I love The Vanity of Human Wishes and Dr Johnson. No doubt I intended it as the start to a post I never wrote.
Mr Sandbrook's article still seems to me extremely topical. Do read it.
I agree with it entirely except for one mistake - Putin did said he might want to join NATO - and this paragraph which as is out of date:
"Today it’s very common to regard Putin as a kind of anomaly. We think of the Western-dominated, rules-based international system as the norm. The West represents order, and Putin represents disorder. We stand for continuity; he represents change and chaos."
I certainly don't mean that it seems out of date to regard Putin as representing disorder. Very obviously he does. I am not in any way an admirer of Putin or an apologist for the Russian invasion of Ukraine, quite the contrary, but the rules-based order did not exist and it is a phrase that is archaic after the U.S. attacks on Venezuela and Iran and threats to Panama, Cuba and Greenland.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said something similar at Davos in January (so recently but it seems so long ago):
""We knew the story of the international rules-based order was partially false, that the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient, that trade rules were enforced asymmetrically... This fiction was useful, and American hegemony, in particular, helped provide public goods, open sea lanes, a stable financial system, collective security and support for frameworks for resolving disputes."
""We knew the story of the international rules-based order was partially false, that the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient, that trade rules were enforced asymmetrically... This fiction was useful, and American hegemony, in particular, helped provide public goods, open sea lanes, a stable financial system, collective security and support for frameworks for resolving disputes."
Has it occurred to you that we are living in the most interesting period in the world's history since the Reformation or more probably the fall of Rome?
I hope this is a period of creative destruction. The fall of Rome was obviously not.
Pax Americana (open sea lanes and so forth) is just the shadow of Pax Britannica. The British Empire foolishly truncated in the 1950s was what made American prosperity possible. Their fixation on self-determination of peoples (therefore destroying European empires) comes from their origin story, their myth about becoming a nation while opposing an oppressive empire, although that isn't what actually happened in the 1770s. Niall Ferguson notes in 'Colossus' that the US inherited a liberal mercantile empire from Britain, but cannot bear to admit to itself that it is running an empire.
ReplyDeleteThe Americans have never had what it takes.
From that contradiction comes white liberal guilt, isolationism, the failure of the US to protect Western hegemony, the rise of China, the new wealth of the Islamic Arabs.