PARIS \u2013 The shambolic diplomacy between U.S. President Donald Trump\u2019s administration and Iran provides further evidence that world affairs have become unintelligible. But take a step back and you will see that all of today\u2019s major conflicts are of a piece, and that despite the apparent entropy, a powerful logic of adaptation and resilience is at work.<\/p>\n
The four biggest flash points today stem from historical processes that made them largely predictable. The ferocity of Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine may have shocked the world, but the war itself followed from the Kremlin\u2019s well-known resentments and insecurities. President Vladimir Putin had long made clear that he abhorred the idea of Ukrainian independence or strategic alignment with the West. As former U.S. national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski warned in the 1990s, \u201cWithout Ukraine, Russia ceases to be an empire.\u201d<\/p>\n
The implication was that, with Ukraine back under its control, Russia would be made great again. Everything that has ensued stems from this historical longing. There is no need for chaos theory or psychoanalysis. The war is simply the result of a Russian determination not to accept its status as a post-imperial power.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PARIS \u2013 The shambolic diplomacy between U.S. President Donald Trump\u2019s administration and Iran provides further evidence that world…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":54525,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[12,3606,13,14,29,8,36167,33,23608,636,657,245,488,84,3282,17578],"class_list":["post-54524","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-japan","tag-china","tag-cold-war","tag-donald-trump","tag-iran","tag-israel","tag-japan","tag-korean-war","tag-nihon","tag-palestinians","tag-russia","tag-south-korea","tag-south-china-sea","tag-taiwan","tag-u-s","tag-ukraine","tag-vladimir-putin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54524","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54524"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54524\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54525"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}