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Keith Macdonald's avatar

Excellent piece. Thank you very much.

One issue is that there are two kinds of history - the truth, as best as can be realised, embodied in some of your principles and the myths, of which there can be many totally different versions. Most political leaders and their publics have only the myths and act on those.

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Michael Wild's avatar

First Point. The 9 Rules are brilliant and should be beaten into the Foreign Affairs Department of every state with a military big enough to invade another country.

Second Point. "Can we be confident that the current leadership group in Moscow will abandon its claims on Ukraine or stop it’s instinctive attempts to bully those who refuse to bend to its will?" Of course we can't. I'd say we could bet the house the current leadership group will continue to bully and invade if it has the opportunity to do so and think they could get away with it. Therefore as long as the Ukrainians are prepared to keep fighting we should be giving as many weapons as they want and consider it a cheap price to pay for the good chance of permanently weakening an aggressive and reckless power.

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