Gongol.com Archives: February 2025
February 16, 2025
An award one would rather not receive
Kaja Kallas, until recently the prime minister of Estonia and now one of the European Union's top diplomats, has been honored with an award at the Munich Security Conference to recognize her "for her essential leadership in rallying support for Ukraine after Russia's full-scale invasion, recognizing her as a resilient and widely respected leader and staunch defender of the rule of law". ■ Unsurprisingly, she deflected praise from herself to the people of Ukraine. Kallas proves that clarity and direct language have a vital place in orienting a response to bloodthirsty aggression. Everything that has happened to Ukraine over the last three years has been the result of choices ultimately made within the Kremlin. The war could end tomorrow if the right order were issued from somewhere within sight of Red Square. ■ Kallas is one of the clearest voices about the tragic consequences if no such order is given, because it's clear that the aggressor's impulses aren't limited to Ukraine alone. But Europe needs to not only be included in discussions about peace, but to have broad popular buy-in over the importance of standing strong, too. ■ Europe's defensive posture has, in many ways, grown flabby and sclerotic. That's particularly so when looking beyond just the obvious measures of military capability: Depending on natural gas from Russia or telecommunications equipment from China leave European countries strategically tied up. That in turn makes the EU less of a credible threat, and people other than the leaders of the Baltic States need to be vocal about fixing that.
Iowa: No teams, six "home" markets
Major League Baseball makes life really hard on fans in Iowa, giving six different teams the right to black out games in a state that is home to none of them.
A plea for the integrated psyche
Samantha Hancox-Li: "[P]arodies of traditional masculinity or femininity can never fill the gaping void left by the absence of the other gender's virtues"
An assessment worth reading about what Ukraine has been able to do when challenged by a much more fearsome enemy
