It seems nobody actually thought the cornered bear would attack, but last week, it did.
Perhaps it was assumed that all the snarling and swiping was nothing more than political and military posturing, that the 200,000 troops amassed by Russia along Ukraine's borders would just complete their 'exercises' and go home...but nothing of that sort happened. Instead, what we have now is a full blown war - an invasion that has already turned a million people into refugees, thousands have been killed, buildings blown to bits, and countries struggling to prevent a nuclear war.
These developments have also been a revelation, and an unravelling of myths, at many levels.
First of all there is this myth about "rules based global order". When a big country invades a smaller, weaker country, the only rule that works is the Thucydides dictum - "The strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must". When USA invades other countries - Serbia, Iraq, Afghanistan - it is packaged as a noble venture, to promote democracy, to usher in a free market economy, as a saviour to the uncivilised, and so on. Turns out that this is a game other bullies can play as well.
Then there is this myth of "free speech". The Western media seems to have convinced itself that they alone know the difference between propaganda and news. BBC, CNN, and DW can barely hide their glee when news channels from other other side of the fence are banned or expelled.
'Experts' from the western media hold forth on why blonde fair-skinned European deserve to be treated more humanely than the hapless people fleeing wars - initiated by their own governments - in Africa and Asia. The levels of hypocrisy and racism has been just breathtaking!
It was also amazing to learn that over 20,000 students were trapped in the war-zone. While the government has managed to evacuate most of them, a few hundred still remain trapped in the war-zone. It seems a vast majority of them were studying medicine, revealing shortcomings in our own education system which seems to be better equipped at churning out engineers.
Then there is geography. Until last week I was aware of only a few cities - Kiev from Odgen Nash's famous poem - "The Muddlehead" from Petushkee, Odessa from Alister Maclain's files and novels, and, of course Chernobyl. The humanitarian crisis currently unfolding has made us aware of places far away, on the frozen steppes of Eurasia - Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk, Mariupol, Kheson...
As the father of political realism, Thycydides may have been right about the fact that relations between countries are dictated by just two factors - fear and self-interest. It seems not much has changed since 450 BCE.
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