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A World Besieged
From Aleppo and North Korea to the European Commission and the Federal Reserve, the global order’s fracture points continue to deepen. And everywhere, it seems, the political establishment is sitting on its hands.
A week, it is said, is a long time in politics. It certainly proved far too long for Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Syrian client, Bashar al-Assad, to honor the ceasefire both had just accepted. Instead of humanitarian relief for Syria’s shell-shocked citizens, the world is seeing what the French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy calls the “urbicide” of Aleppo: “massive, random, indiscriminate bombings” that Russia and Assad’s forces “have resumed with a vengeance in and around what was once Syria’s most populous city.”