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A BDN guest columnist, Professor Kenneth Hillas Jr., presented the situation between Russia, the Ukraine and the USA clearly, substantiated with detail. His conclusion: the strategic equation remains unchanged.
Well, ladies and gentlemen of the press, there is a tiger on the loose. The ringmaster circles him bravely, cracking his whip with only a chair held up to defend himself. Clowns bunch up behind the ringmaster honking their horns. Choirboy, keeper of the keys, shouts, “Shoo, shoo! Get back in your cage! Naughty tiger!” The audience sits spellbound in their seats.
In our tableau, the ringmaster is President Joe Biden; the choirboy, Secretary of State, Antony Blinken. The clowns are the distraught and disoriented European heads of state; the fair maiden is the Ukraine and the escaped alpha tiger, Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The other young tigers sit still on their perches within the cage, tensely waiting. They will challenge the alpha tiger if he returns without the fair maiden — just as the ringmaster’s authority will ebb if he doesn’t crack the whip. Distracted with climate change, gender identity and forever chemicals, the press apparently had little free time to take cliffnotes on the law of the jungle.
Understanding he will be torn to shreds if he returns empty handed, the alpha tiger has no choice but to attack the ringmaster. Scornful of the ringmaster’s failure-to-commit, the fair maiden hops on the back of the alpha tiger who brings M’lady to his cage.
Tiptoeing behind him, the choirboy locks the gate and grandly announces to the audience that, henceforth, there will be no sirloin steaks for these beasts, but only grade-D chuck.
Tom Deegan
Orono