The greatest tragedy about Russia’s potential invasion is how easily it could have been avoided.
By Stephen M. Walt, a columnist at Foreign Policy and the Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at Harvard University.

JANUARY 19, 2022, 5:49 AM
The situation in Ukraine is bad and getting worse. Russia is poised to invade and demanding airtight guarantees that NATO will never, ever expand farther to the east. Negotiations do not appear to be succeeding, and the United States and its NATO allies are beginning to contemplate how they will make Russia pay should it press forward with an invasion. A real war is now a distinct possibility, which would have far-reaching consequences for everyone involved, especially Ukraine’s citizens.






The Tonghua Iron and Steel Mill in Tonghua, Jilin province, China, in 2016, one of many state-run steel mills that struggled to modernise (Qilai Shen/In Pictures via Getty Images Images)Published 15 Apr 2021 10:00