Attacks on civilians tend to backfire

As Putin attempts to bomb Ukrainians into frozen submission by destroying their utilities during winter, I am reminded of an important and unexpected point from Humankind, a book by Rutger Bregman that Natalie suggested for me and which turns out to have been recommended to her by Rob. Turns out that attempts to bomb civilians into submission never work, they only serve to bring people together and make them more resilient. Indeed, Putin himself might think back to Russia's own greatest moments of triumph, Napoleon's 1812 retreat, the 900-day siege of Leningrad, etc. That is in fact how the steel is tempered.

In the west, we need to be careful we don't do something similar with our economic sanctions. Thus far we haven't crippled Russia economically. Instead, we seem to have hardened the interdependence of Russia and China, or rather Russia's dependence on China. Geostrategically the most dangerous thing to have happened recently may well have been Xi Jinping's visit to Saudi Arabia a few weeks back. If the Saudis start falling more within China's sphere of influence and shipping oil to China settled in yuan rather than dollars, that erodes the dollar's primacy as global reserve currency, one of the key components of our economic standing. 

If we end up isolating ourselves on the world stage with only the EU -- the world's largest theme park and luxury manufacturer -- as an ally, things get tougher. The Global South has already showed us it doesn't care that much about one set of white people invading another, largely because we don't get worked up when people of color who don't own oil invade one another. The world is complex and we need to keep that in mind.