Is the West going wobbly?

The war that everyone thought would last a few days is now into its third month, and Russia is hinting that it will settle for something less than the whole of Ukraine. Neither Putin nor Russia has ever been noted for honesty, so the embattled Ukrainians are right to be skeptical. What I fear is that Berlin and Paris will seize upon the Russian foreign minister's "compromise," in which the eastern Donbas region goes to Russia, while Ukrainians in other parts of the country can "decide their own future" for themselves.

If Scholz and Macron fold, will Biden be far behind? Our betters -- professors, politicians, actors, and even corporate chieftains -- enjoy lecturing us about the futility and waste of war. But if people don't fight when they are invaded, will anyone be free? Is there any country whose borders weren't secured by war?

Germany and France are the big dogs in Europe, especially now that Britain has opted out. They like the EU the way it is, and won't easily let Ukraine join the club, to form an Eastern European power block with Poland and the three small Baltic countries. The US, for its part, would like nothing better than to let Paris and Berlin manage European affairs, while Tokyo and Canberra take care of the Pacific, or as much it as China doesn't already control. We have our own wounds to heal! What do thousands of dead in Ukraine matter, when nineteen were killed in Texas?

Meanwhile, the Russian army does what Russian armies have always done -- murder, rape, steal, and kidnap, while blanketing their victims with bomb, shell, and missile. Things have improved marginally since 1939, when an Englishwoman living in Poland recorded how Russian soldiers looted the eastern part of the country (some of it later incorporated into western Ukraine), even stealing brooms from the closets and tearing up boards from the floors, loading them onto trucks, and sending them back to Soviet Russia. Stalin's troops stole like shoplifters in San Francisco. Putin's operate on a wholesale basis, stealing grain and metal by the ton.