If you’ve studied history, you might know how this is going to end...
Not well for the Ukrainians, not well for the Russians, and certainly not well for the West.
"Does anyone think that persecuting oligarchs will force Putin to turn his tanks around?
The same applies to sanctions. It is pure magical thinking to imagine that sanctions, which have never worked with any country in the past, will have cast some kind of spell over Russia and make it desist. No media presenter ever asks the politicians to explain the precise mechanism by which this alchemy is to be accomplished, just as they never asked how lockdowns or masks worked in the face of all evidence. Neither do we hear anybody ask if the politicians and sages seriously think Russian soldiers will ever leave Ukraine while sanctions remain in place.
Myths need heroes as well as villains. Cue the Vaccines, the Holy Trinity of Pfizer, Astra Zeneca and Moderna, recently joined by NATO as heroes of the hour.
Vaccines, like baptism, used to be a rite of passage for children when I was growing up. Now in these infantilised times they are a rite of passage for adults. Alongside the use of face diapers.
NATO, the Sword in Horsemen of the Apocalypse terms, was not long ago seen by the Presidents of the United States and France no less than an example of the living dead. Now it has cranked up out of its coffin, been given a booster shot and is miraculously revived.
Pulling all these elements together, what we have here with the present war fever is a form of the millennialism which has been emerging and shape-shifting in various guises for over thirty years. Diagnosing the hysteria and showing by what threads its various strands are joined is a useful first step to overcoming it.
By the way, the Horseman of The Apocalypse yet to make an appearance is Famine. Have you checked forward prices for grain?"
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Author Peter Ford is a global affair analyst and former British Ambassador to Syria (2003-2006) and Bahrain (1999-2002).