Flashpoints: The Emerging Crisis in Europe

The Russians understand that intentions can change quickly. Assume that Europe and the United States have only the most benign intentions. The Russians know from their history how quickly intentions and even capabilities change. Germany was weak, divided, and barely armed in 1932. By 1938 it was the prime military power on the peninsula. Both intentions and capabilities shifted at a dizzying rate. Russia remembers this and other affairs, like the Crimean War. It must assume the worst, as the worst usually happens.

The British clinging to their culture as if it were natural law seemed provincial, the behavior of a barbarian, but it created a fabric of rules that not only bound them together but also helped reshape their colonies in their own image. There was tremendous power in the British dullness. Their unwillingness to countenance variation on sutoms of everyday life was unimaginative, yet it forced those in the world who wanted to emulate the powerful English to adopt behavior that penetrated the depths of being. Feeling breathtakingly inadequate at a dinner had a power of its own. It was a far more decent weapon of empire than brute force.