One is struck, amidst the alarums, to read the following words of a Western journalist:
I admit. I have not seen The Intelligence. But there's never been a time when my understanding of Russia – my 15 years of reporting on Russia and Ukraine – has been so at odds with what the U.S. government says about Russia and Ukraine. I hope I'm right, and they're wrong.
This contrast recalls the famous lines of Alan Taylor:
The policy of Western statesmen also rested ultimately on force – French policy on the army, British policy on sea-power. But these statesmen hoped that it would not be necessary to use this force. Hitler intended to use his force, or would at any rate threaten to use it. If Western morality seemed superior, this was largely because it was the morality of the status quo; Hitler’s was the immorality of revision. There was a curious, though only superficial, contradiction in Hitler between aims and methods. His aim was change, the overthrow of the existing European order; his method was patience. Despite his bluster and violent talk, he was a master in the game of waiting. He never made a frontal attack on a prepared position – at least never until his judgement had been corrupted by easy victories. Like Joshua before the walls of Jericho, he preferred to wait until the forces opposing him had been sapped by their own confusions and themselves forced success upon him…. Perhaps this waiting was not at first conscious or deliberate. The greatest masters of statecraft are those who do not know what they are doing.