Resistance

When people search the map for the force that will ultimately stop Vladimir Putin, their eyes drift to the obvious places. To Washington, where the most powerful military on earth could in theory end the war with a stroke of the pen. To Beijing, the rising giant some imagine might one day inherit America’s role. To the negotiating tables in Istanbul and the choreographed summits where diplomats perform the rituals of peace. I want to argue that all of these are the wrong places to look. The real growth-point of resistance — the place where the future is actually being decided, quietly and unglamorously — is Europe. Not the flashy Europe of communiqués and photo opportunities, but the Europe that is, brick by brick, building an iron hedgehog against which the Putin regime will eventually break itself. ...

There is a picture of revolution that almost everyone carries around, and it is wrong. In it, oppression mounts until it becomes unbearable; the people, pushed past endurance, pour into the square in numbers too vast to suppress; the regime, faced with a sea of human bodies, loses its nerve and falls. It is a stirring image, and it flatters us, because it locates the decisive variable in something we can imagine summoning — courage, numbers, the willingness of ordinary people to finally stand up. If only enough of us were brave enough, the wall would come down. ...