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Ukraine Still Winning?
Time flies, and I haven’t gotten back to the Russia-Ukraine war in months. As far as peace negotiations go, I don’t seem to have missed much, as the talks have long since been suspended. As far as the war is concerned, we left off with Russia’s continuing the war in spite of making little apparent …
Ukraine and Westphalia
I have fallen behind in reporting on Westphalia in the news. Here is a down payment toward catching up, starting with two articles relating to Ukraine. The Global System Has Failed. Ukraine Is Showing the World How to Build A Better One, published in Time, is written by a Ukrainian political figure. He considers the …
And Still It Continues
It is always hazardous to suggest when a war might end, as experience shows that people have been extraordinarily bad in their estimates, especially early in wars. And yet, I thought I saw a reasonable end to the Russia-Ukraine war just a month or so after it started. Russia’s progress was slow and its military …
Peace of Westphalia in the news, April 2022
I’m not sure what I expected from these alerts, but they turn out to be more depressing than anything. Most of the references are in obscure online journals and have nothing interesting to contribute, even by way of reference. Here are some from the first part of April: The first one is not so bad: …
Mercenaries, Continued
The Thirty Years’ War is famous for the use of mercenaries; it has even been called “a war between the Scots and the Irish, fought in Germany.” (I love this quotation but I have been unable to locate its source.) We can look at mercenaries in the war on three levels: individual, unit, and army. …
Mercenaries and Volunteers
The Peace of Westphalia Google alert brought my attention to a surprisingly thoughtful article on the subject of mercenaries, something that is highly relevant to the Thirty Years’ War and the Congress of Westphalia. The article groups the two categories in the title of this post, mercenaries and volunteers, under the general header of “foreign …
Victory Day
I read an interesting article recently arguing that Putin may be planning a major offensive of some sort leading up to May 9th, when Russia celebrates Victory Day commemorating its victory over Germany in World War II. The idea is that the Russian people expect some show of strength on that day, and recent comments …
Not Quite a Ceasefire
As you probably know by now, Russia is pulling back from Kiev “in order to create conditions for successful negotiations.” The withdrawal seems to be real, although the reasons for it probably are not. I would imagine that Putin has given up on seizing Kiev, so by pulling back he can avoid further attrition to …
On War Crimes and Trials
Alan Dershowitz has a very interesting video up in which he discusses the possibility of trying Putin in absentia. The gist of it is, he probably won’t be tried in absentia, but Dershowitz thinks we should still have a tribunal of some sort to gather and evaluate the evidence, just so it will be available …