The nice thing about having a Democrat in the White House is that there is never any bad news...

...such as the re-assembly of the Russian Empire and the defeat of a pro-Western country.

//Make no mistake about this. The settlement is a deeply damaging blow to our values, to our prestige and to our geopolitical interests. The foolish and distracted Western policies that encouraged Ukraine into a confrontation with Russia in which the West was unwilling to back it; the shameful and feckless mix of triumphalist rhetoric and minimalist action; the cluelessness in the face of Putin’s skillful mastery of Western psychology and divisions; the miserable consequences of all this for the Ukrainian state: every country, every leader in the world has been paying close attention.

Historians, by the way, will also pay attention; the Obama legacy has been permanently tarnished. Unless some real changes take place, neither this President nor his close associates will cut an impressive figure when the accounts are drawn up.

The West may yet get its act together and come up with a coherent response to a war of naked aggression by an ugly despotism on its doorstep, but it would take more determination and imagination than is currently on display.

In the meantime, the Ukrainians are doing the only thing they can; like Hitler’s victims in the 1930s they are signing away territory and rights that they cannot defend and reflecting on the value of all those inspiring promises of support they received from their Western friends back when times were good and the bear was far away.//

But, you know, apres 2016, le deluge.