One of the more interesting aspects of the Ukraine war was the revelation of how badly compromised Russia's defense assets were. It was, honestly, a little startling to the public to learn that the feared Former Soviet State still had size on its side, but not a modern military; their tech was either out-dated or had been pillaged by corruption so badly that it couldn't be deployed as intelligence analysts had assumed it could be.

It is extremely fair to argue that Russia's greatest state-defense asset was perception and that the war in Ukraine damaged that and, in so doing, materially threatened the country's safety---that if they had simply never started a war, everyone would still perceive them as unassailable and incredibly dangerous to engage in combat and nobody would even think to try stochastic attacks, asymmetric drone warfare, or any other modern tactics under the assumption that such a grand superpower had a solution for all of that.

In short, all they had to do to keep everyone's perception of their strength was literally not start a war to test it.
Just a thing I'm thinking of right now for some reason.

https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/18/politics/us-ford-carrier-fire-iran-war

No lies detected.

#Trump

THINGS WE DID:
Built This City, Shot The Sheriff.

THINGS WE DIDN'T DO:
Start The Fire, Shoot The Deputy.

THINGS WE WANT TO DO:
Break Free, Know What Love Is.

THINGS WE WILL DO:
Rock You, Anything For Love.

THINGS WE WON'T DO:
That.

Daniel Immerwahr dissects Trump's worldview as a combination of "1890s certainties" and "1980s anxieties" that drive his protectionist imperialism, imperialist protectionism. This lens is exceptionally good at finding ideological consistency in the Orange Man.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/06/23/why-donald-trump-is-obsessed-with-william-mckinley