The Russian leader’s actions express essential and unalterable truths about human nature, which we ignore at our peril
When Vladimir Putin sent Russian forces into Crimea in 2014, then-Secretary of State John Kerry professed bewilderment that such imperial aggression could happen in the modern age. It was like something out of “the 19th century.” Kerry’s reaction to Putin’s recent invasion of Ukraine was equally baffled, as the patrician American diplomat lamented that the war would distract Putin from working with him on climate change. Common to both reactions was the astonishment that the material calculations and preoccupations of Western democracies might be blown away by a resurgence of old-fashioned tyrannical ambition.
