Author: dcroxton
Peace of Westphalia in the News, 6/2022
This post is a welcome change, for me at least, because it brings the Peace of Westphalia into completely different contexts than I’m used to reading about. The first article is “Spy x Family: 5 Things You Need To Know About Westalis,” an article at gamerant.com — not the usual source of Westphalia references. “Spy …
The Nuclear Threat and How to Avoid It
After a period of relative calm during the summer, the threat of a nuclear exchange coming out of the Russia-Ukraine war seems to have increased drastically in the last few weeks. How serious is it, and how can we avoid it? Someone commented to me recently that dictators such as Putin enjoy a lot of …
Peace of Westphalia in the News, 5/2022
The last entry reminded me why I stopped doing these: so little relevance to the Peace of Westphalia (mostly as the origin of nation-states, sovereignty, and/or balance of power), poor writing, mostly partisan works from nationalists. But, I will forge on, especially as there are some better things forthcoming. I also noticed that I had …
Peace of Westphalia in the News, 2/2022
It has been a busy year and I am way behind my attempt to keep up with this subject; but, no time like the present. In case I have not mentioned it previously, I will be skipping anything from the Executive Intelligence Review (EIR) or the Schiller Institute because they are LaRouchite, and, frankly, have …
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. …