This piece is from the Political Theology Network archives originally posted on August 23, 2012.
While NATO had pursued discussions with Ukraine, there was no plan to add Ukraine to NATO any time soon. Indeed, most of NATO had resisted incorporating Ukraine exactly because it didn’t want to raise the prospect of conflict with Russia. So, what drives Putin’s aggression now?
“That which does not kill us makes us stronger,” Nietzsche wrote.
As the global neo-liberal order slowly unravels before our eyes, that recognition holds more true today than ever.
Viewing the film August: Osage County with academy award nominees Julia Roberts and Meryl Streep during the same week that Russia’s Vladimir Putin occupied Crimea and thumbed his nose at President Obama, it became impossible not to regard the movie itself as some sort of deep parable of the political age in which we live.