Political Cynic comments.

The ‘The Long Form’ begins:

Heading: Crisis in Ukraine 

 Headline: How Russia has revived NATO 

Sub-headline: Ukraine has forced America and its allies to bond. But the country’s future is still uncertain

https://www.economist.com/international/2022/02/12/how-russia-has-revived-nato 

This is a 2,389 word essay, that attempts to tell/narrate the Ukraine Crisis Story, that begins with the Macron, Putin’s meeting:

Vladimir Putin’s giant oval table in the Kremlin is as extreme as it is kitsch. Sitting far from foreign visitors may be his way of social distancing. But it also betokens the gulf that separated Russia’s leader from his guest, Emmanuel Macron of France. It may also illustrate what diplomats say is Mr Putin’s worrying isolation from the world. None can claim to read his mind as he masses some 130,000 troops on the borders around Ukraine. Is he about to launch the biggest war in Europe since the fall of the Berlin Wall? Or is it all a big bluff?

This first paragraph devolves in to Anti-Putin Hysteria, that is unsurprising. And The Reader need only look to the use of ‘nato’ in small caps, instead of NATO in capital letters, as a maladroit attempt at diminishment, in this History Made To Measure. The Major Actors, ideas, descriptors, and other useful ballast, in this War Mongering Melodrama:

Putin, Macron, NATO, Olaf Scholz, Angela Merkel,2014,, Viktor Yanukovych, Crimea, eastern Donbas, Petro Poroshenko, the Minsk accords, Rada, Volodymyr Zelensky, the separatist territories, Zerkalo Nedeli , Arsen Avakov, “Finlandisation”, Finland, Sweden, Austria, Wolfgang Ischinge, Balkans, Afghanistan, European Defence Community, Jens Stoltenberg, Britain, Iceland, Norway, eu, Canada, nato’s Article 5, Nord Stream 2, ‘non-military “grey zone” actions’, “European sovereignty”, ‘refounding moment’, ‘eu’s growing sovereignty’, Intermediate-Range Nuclear Force Treaty, force de frappe, Jacques Chirac, Estonians, Britain, Russian brutishness, America’s commitment, Mr Trump, Middle East, China, Taiwan, Mr Ischinge, American hegemon, the Mediterranean, migration.

This panoramic vision of the Political Actors, places, ideas etc. that defies The Reader attempt at constructing a possible reply – like all War Propaganda, this is designed to evoke negative emotion, rather than to place thought, analysis and Historical Inquiry, as the central imperative/obligation of that Inquiry.

But the final sentence, of this call to arms, is instructive of the use of anonymous sources, with an attachment to State Power, that must be taken on ‘faith’!

“It is the European dilemma,” says a German diplomat. “European sovereignty is impossible. But it has never been more necessary.”

Political Cynic