Possibly we've all seen the Russian
people endure privation under author-
itarians enough, not to join our pa-
per of record in applauding another
financial attack from the West, on
another Russian government. But the
exercise lays bare the futilities in
retribution's gestures of this kind,
in which satisfaction is based on
harming the weakest, to destabilize
the strongest.
This fantasy will not mature in fact,
and we know it. With this in mind, it
strikes one as especially disreput-
able, of the Times to link - can you
stand it - "the honor of France" to
its breach of our favorite kind of
contract, arms sales (and sales of
naval hardware, at that). If anything
is as predictable in Western diplom-
acy as an ostentatious tease with the
markets, it is this vulgar sort of
reference to France, which has absorb-
ed more blood of Western blunders in
its soil than any land on earth, save
Russia. That landscape can never re-
claim its endowments of Nature.
Another generation of spineless West-
ern politicians, intimidated into fol-
ly by the impulsive passions of a pub-
lic 'roused by unctuous media, bears
such little resemblance to our addic-
tion to novelty that, I suppose, all
that explains it is our forgetfulness.
Julien Benda
1867 - 1956
La Trahison des Clercs
1927
The Editorial Board
Stronger Sanctions
on Russia, at Last
July 29, 2014
The New York Times©
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