Taking On Revisionist Russia
The struggle for influence in Ukraine is a game that Russian President Vladimir Putin cannot afford to lose. Since gaining the upper hand with the annexation of Crimea, he has been shrewdly forcing a divided and risk-averse West to choose between war and accommodation.
MADRID – For some countries, military or political defeat is so intolerable, so humiliating, that they will do whatever it takes to overturn what they view as an unjust international order. One such revisionist power was Egypt, which resolved to undo its 1967 defeat by Israel and regain the Sinai Peninsula. This was ultimately achieved, but only after President Anwar Sadat embraced a strategy of peace by journeying to Jerusalem. The most ominous case, however, was Germany in the 1930s, which systematically shredded the European order that had emerged after World War I.
MADRID – For some countries, military or political defeat is so intolerable, so humiliating, that they will do whatever it takes to overturn what they view as an unjust international order. One such revisionist power was Egypt, which resolved to undo its 1967 defeat by Israel and regain the Sinai Peninsula. This was ultimately achieved, but only after President Anwar Sadat embraced a strategy of peace by journeying to Jerusalem. The most ominous case, however, was Germany in the 1930s, which systematically shredded the European order that had emerged after World War I.