Fighting the Last War

World News Roundup, Part 1

Ukraine is going through a lot of ammunition, fast.

There has been a lot going on in the world while we focus on our sordid domestic dramas. So it’s time for another roundup of news stories from around the world.

But that domestic drama is intimately connected to what is going on in the rest of the world, because the current transmogrification of one of our major political parties has emboldened the enemies of Western liberalism.

I was going to write this as one long piece starting with Ukraine, and going through Yemen, Iran, India, and China, but there was so much interesting material that I’ve decided to break it into three parts. To begin with, let’s catch up on the war in Ukraine.

The Copperhead Party

If I seem increasingly and implacably hostile toward the Republican Party, that comes partly from watching them turn against Ukraine and begin acting as the allies of Vladimir Putin. This is not being driven by the Republican establishment, nor did it bubble up spontaneously from the grassroots. It is a direct result of the whole party being refashioned in subservience to the whims of Donald Trump.

Republicans in Congress had been holding up additional military support for Ukraine by pretending to connect the issue to their demands for stricter anti-immigration measures. It was clear to me that these demands were intended, not to be the basis for a deal, but to be a poison pill. Republicans wanted to block funding for Ukraine without openly admitting to it. So their idea was to impose conditions on an unrelated issue that would be unacceptable to Democrats, then shift the blame for the failure to pass Ukraine funding.

Democrats did the obvious thing and called their bluff. A bipartisan group hammered out a “compromise” that was extremely favorable to Republicans, giving them most of what they wanted on immigration. Republicans responded by blowing up the deal.

The man behind this is very specifically Donald Trump.