"The usual order has been reversed: this time, the war has followed the pandemic. The consequence will be a colder, poorer, grimmer world."

Source: Twitter, graphic artist unknown

 

"The usual order has been reversed: this time, the war has followed the pandemic. The consequence will be a colder, poorer, grimmer world. I am not sure we have yet grasped the extent to which both our standard of living and our relative global power are being hit....
    "At the same time, we must come to terms with our loss of influence. Sentences that begin 'What we should do in Ukraine is…' are a fantasy. We can expel Russian diplomats, hold football games elsewhere, maybe even send weapons if we are confident they won’t fall into enemy hands. But we can’t do much to alter the course of the fighting....
    "The truth is that democracy is in retreat worldwide and, as it ebbs, it takes with it the neighbourliness among nations to which we have grown accustomed. Every league table – the Democracy Index, Freedom House, the Economist Intelligence Unit – tells the same story. After seven decades of steady advance, global democratisation stalled at some point between 2010 and 2015, and began to go into reverse. The strongmen in their sunglasses are not throwbacks, but grisly augurs of the future. As liberal democracy recedes, so does the peaceful international order on which it rested....
    "As the parliaments and courts give way to the institutions of autocracy, so does the peace that they sustained. Civilisation itself is under attack in Ukraine. We shall miss it when it has gone."

~ Daniel Hannan, from his column 'Vladimir Putin’s monstrous invasion is an attack on civilisation itself'