World

The legendary nineteenth-century showman P.T. Barnum is credited with first uttering the words, “all publicity is good publicity.” Barnum had the good sense to die a century before he had the chance to see the Zelenskys’ Vogue photo shoot. https://twitter.com/MayraFlores2022/status/1552267933501489152 Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky and his wife posed for renowned photographer Annie Leibovitz. In one shot Olena stands near Ukrainian female soldiers at the Antanov airport. In another she holds hands with her husband in the presidential office compound in Kyiv as the pair stare pensively at the camera.

There was a time in the not-so-distant past when Europe and Russia had a mutually beneficial relationship with each other — at least in the energy field. Europe, a major oil consumer, received reliable supplies of crude and natural gas from Moscow, while the Russians received tens of billions of dollars in return. The European Union imported 155 billion cubic meters of natural gas from Russia last year, equivalent to about 45 percent of its total gas imports. There was an ingrained assumption in European capitals that, even if relations with the Russians were thorny, fossil fuels would continue to head west. War, however, can change things in a flash. European and Russian officials now talk past each other, and sometimes they leave the room when the other is speaking.

Dutch farmers have had enough of government overreach. And they’re taking to the streets as only farmers can. The government of the Netherlands, in order to fight climate change, recently proposed a 50 percent cut in ammonia and nitrous oxide emissions by 2030 — which will disproportionately impact the agricultural industry. Small farms are thus faced with two choices: shutter entirely or face poverty after culling their livestock. The Dutch government is not sympathetic to these concerns. In their words, “The honest message...is that not all farmers can continue their business.

I think that Thomas Babington Macaulay had the last word about Boris Johnson’s forced resignation as prime minister of the UK: “We know no spectacle so ridiculous,” Macaulay wrote, “as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality.” Macaulay’s line needs to be slightly adjusted, it is true, because, ridiculous though public displays of puritanical moralism are, in this case it was mostly Boris’s colleagues in Parliament, not the public at large, that suffered that unbecoming fit of morality. Indeed, throughout it all, Boris — a politician with more élan than any prime minister since Margaret Thatcher — remained popular with the public. He was especially popular, I think, with the American public. And why not?

You might be wondering why Britain's government has rolled from crisis to crisis since the pandemic began, culminating today in the resignations of two leading ministers, and with the threat of more hanging overhead. Some would blame the character of 2020 and the pestilential years since; others the nature of Boris Johnson, the prime minister: his "colorful" personal life (a hard-working euphemism); his lack of focus; his indifference to the truth. I would look a little broader. Britain's political life is the product of the people who fill its parliament. And very many of them are deeply substandard people. The straw that apparently broke the camel's back this week was the government's former deputy chief whip, a man called Chris Pincher.

Cockburn woke up this morning to a good laugh over his coffee when he saw that British prime minister Boris Johnson had attributed Putin’s invasion of Ukraine to “toxic masculinity.” Johnson, the Conservative PM of the UK, told German broadcaster ZDF, “If Putin was a woman, which he obviously isn't, but if he were, I really don't think he would've embarked on a crazy, macho war of invasion and violence in the way that he has." He proceeded to say that the war is a “perfect example of toxic masculinity,” urging more countries to have “more women in positions of power.” While Putin’s bare chest on horseback may be the source of endless memes, Cockburn believes Johnson is focusing on the wrong things here.

NATO gatherings at the head-of-state level are ordinarily placid, even boring affairs. But this week’s three-day NATO summit in Madrid will be quite different. For the first time in twenty-three years, the alliance is meeting as a war churns on European soil. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has been an electric shock to the continent’s defense establishment, at least if their rhetoric is any indication. European officials have finally come around to noticing that Europe isn’t an exceptional zone of peace and tranquility, but a region no more immune to armed conflict than any other. NATO, which was straying out of theater in a desperate attempt to stay relevant, is now back to performing the defensive mission it was meant to do.

Alex Drueke and Andy Huynh are two former American military members now in Russian custody, captured by the Russians in Ukraine, where they were fighting for the Ukrainian government. What is going to happen to them? The most likely thing is that both men will eventually be traded to the US in return for captured Russians. Prisoners are very valuable and rarely wasted in executions unless those carry much more value than the prisoners held by the other side. The deal may be public or secret, and the US can expect to pay a premium. Israel usually releases ten or more Palestinian prisoners in exchange for one of its captured troops.