Putin must look at the West and laugh

Whatever the West’s response to Russia’s attack on Ukraine’s sovereignty, the crisis demonstrates the limitations of western politics and policy across the board. If Vladimir Putin understands any demographic better than the Russian people, it is the governing class of the West: that Harvard-Oxbridge-Sciences Po axis of toweringly smug and practically interchangeable global-liberals who weep for international norms they weren’t prepared to defend. Their ideas and their sanctions are tired because they are civilisationally tired. Putin knows this, but none of the rival ideologies aiming to replace liberalism have anything better to offer.

The failure of the global-liberals comes on many fronts but two of the most significant have been on hard power and energy independence. Two-thirds of Nato members do not meet the alliance’s two per cent of GDP guideline on defence spending, while 47 per cent of coal, 41 per cent of natural gas and 27 per cent of crude oil imported