Armas Weekend Reader
19-20 March 2022
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This week: the war in Europe, the virtues of the Russian dacha, the forbidden north, otium, and putting the Tampa Bay Buccaneers back on the list of 2022-season Super Bowl contenders. Let’s go —
0) The address of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to the Congress of the United States.
1) “The Biden administration’s foreign policy has entered a deep and possibly transformative crisis. Most, though not all, of the ideas Team Biden brought to the White House failed to work. But most, though not all, of the changes American foreign policy requires will be toxic to much of the Democratic base.”
2) “Understanding the interests of other nations may be easier if we first understand our own. How do we as Americans figure out where our own interests lie? And among our interests, how do we determine which are most important?”
https://americanmind.org/salvo/here-be-monsters/
3) “Politics is not a complicated game to win. Either your party fields compelling candidates that voters mostly like or your party offers a compelling and relevant enough agenda that voters mostly support. The one thing a party can’t do and expect to win is suffer double-digit deficits to the other party on the issues that matter most to voters. Yet this is exactly where Democrats find themselves today.”
4) “Ukraine and Russia have made significant progress on a tentative 15-point peace plan including a ceasefire and Russian withdrawal if Kyiv declares neutrality and accepts limits on its armed forces, according to three people involved in the talks.”
https://www.ft.com/content/7b341e46-d375-4817-be67-802b7fa77ef1
5) “Saudi Arabia is in active talks with Beijing to price some of its oil sales to China in yuan, people familiar with the matter said, a move that would dent the U.S. dollar’s dominance of the global petroleum market and mark another shift by the world’s top crude exporter toward Asia.”