THE GUNS OF AUGUST is a masterful tome by Barbara Tuchman, exploring how civilized Europeans,  in 1914, blundered into World War I. The key moment in that disastrous descent into vast destruction, was when German Kaiser Wilhelm II gave the Austro-Hungarian Empire, carte blanche to attack Serbia. Joe Biden has just given President Zelensky of Ukraine, permission to use American weapons on, not just Ukrainian soil to defend Ukraine, but  use in attacking Russian forces, on Russian soil. French President Macron has strongly suggested that NATO should send its soldiers, to fight Russian forces on Ukrainian soil. The German government has given notice that it intends to increase the readiness of 900,000 reservists, in case of an European War. The Guns of June, 2024. The Russians have a history of beginning wars with spectacular failures ;then they engage in a war of attrition, grinding out victory over military geniuses, such as Charles XII of Sweden, Napoleon I of France an...

Winston Churchill once described Russia  as :  "a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.,"   This Blogger has had cursory, limited, and superficial, dealings in Holy Mother Russia. He found that the best key to understanding it was reading E.M. Forster’s epic novel about Colonial India, A PASSAGE TO INDIA.    The novel explores the layers of India, riddle, mystery, enigma.   The good-hearted Brit colonizer, CYRIL FIELDING applies his Anglican modernity and tolerance to understanding India, and fails. DR. AZIZ applies his Muslim mental superiority to understanding the nation his religion conquered, and fails.  The Hindu mystic, PROFESSOR NARAYAN GODBOLE may or may not understand India, but he will never tell.   Russia has layers and layers and layers. The modernized Russian, the insular Russian, and, at the hidden core, the atavistic Russian, combining the Mongol and the Viking.   The atavistic Russian does not like suffering; ho...