With no stomach left to fight Covid, the West has shown it has no spine to oppose Russia in Eastern Europe, either.

(Originally published Jan. 21 in “What in the World“) As Russia’s sociopath President Vladimir Putin prepares to invade Ukraine, Moscow is already recruiting a puppet government to run its new Ukrainian S.S.R., according to the U.S., which has imposed “sanctions” on Ukraine’s future managers. Washington is also allowing Russia’s former Baltic Soviet republics—Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania—to send anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons to Ukraine. The Baltics are surely next on Putin’s list, and the only thing between them and Ukraine is Belarus—already a Russian client state where Putin is sending troops for “military exercises.”

Putin’s efforts to restore Russia’s Soviet-era greatness mirror the long-term narrative of his neighbor, President Xi Jinping of China, and underscore America’s chronic failure throughout history to understand the motivations of its adversaries, both potential and “defeated.”

Watching from the sidelines (and hopefully not part of some coordinated strategy) is North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, who has escalated his own efforts to capitalize on Covid-induced disarray between Washington and its allies in Europe and Asia. After celebrating the New Year by launching several missile tests, Kim has now threatened to resume long-range and nuclear weapons tests after a four-year respite.

After the shocking news that Covid is bouncing back and forth between cats, dogs, American deer, Hong Kong’s hamsters and now bunny rabbits, South Africa has found it may also be circulating among lions. Given that even people can’t be relied on to wear masks without turning savage, there seems little hope that we’ll be able to stop Covid now that it’s back in the wild kingdom.

So the world seems to be tacitly surrendering to Covid despite its persistent mortality rate, using the flawed logic that the death-to-infection rate is lower than before and that infection rate is now dropping, therefore we must be safe. In California, 100 people die every day from Covid, but the state government won’t shut the schools. Nearly 2,000 Americans are dying of the virus daily, but the best Washington can do is dole out free masks and test kits.

France is following the United Kingdom’s lead and laying down its arms against Covid. Why not? The French have already allowed Covid to spread too rapidly to be stopped. The virus is infecting French citizens at a rate that would see 100% of the country infected in just six months.