Resolutions: The Promise of New Opportunities

The general consensus among NATO intelligence, international media, and now even the Russian Foreign Ministry, is that a military invasion of Ukraine is very much on the table. There is a further consensus that the tipping point has yet to be reached - however an inflection will almost certainly occur if Moscow’s “red lines” are not taken to heart (namely, no provision of advanced long range weapons and a formal promise not to accede Ukraine into NATO). Thus far, the conversation among the Western powers has been far more concerned with trying to develop effective economic countermeasures to deter Putin from escalating the simmering 7 year conflict on Ukraine’s eastern border to an all out war, rather than de-escalation through diplomacy. This is dangerously narrow-minded given that the Kremlin has undoubtedly taken these factors into consideration while setting in place the means necessary to launch a full scale operation, which are projected to be achieved by early January. More importantly, the United States and the NATO Alliance seem to be blind to the sheer magnitude of the threat that their westward enlargement poses in the mind of Russian leaders and military planners. For such bellicose and costly options to seem viable for Moscow, which has yet to recover from the last round of sanctions, the dangers of Ukraine entering the Western sphere of influence and military apparatus must be understood as inherently existential.

The November 2021 election in the Commonwealth of Virginia, a state that went for Joe Biden by 10 percentage points over Trump in 2020, resulted in a full Republican sweep of the state’s executive posts and the legislature of the House of Delegates. Glenn Youngkin’s 1.9 percentage point edge over his Democratic rival Terry McAuliffe, who was running for a second (and nonconsecutive) term, in the vote tally makes him the first Republican to win the governorship of Virginia since 2009. Youngkin’s victory was the result of all counties in the state swinging to the right and in particular a rightward shift in the suburban vote. A key issue that resonated with many who voted for Youngkin, who ran on banning Critical Race Theory (CRT) from public education, was antipathy toward CRT and its place in the state’s education system. Indeed, a survey of Virginia voters found that 72 percent of all voters found this issue of importance, with 25 percent of voters seeing this issue as the most important in determining who they would vote for.

Following the elections in September, the power dynamics in the Bundestag (the German parliament) shifted, creating for the first time a three-party coalition (if you don´t count CDU / CSU [the Christian Democratic Union party and its sister Bavarian party the Christian Social Union] as two parties) led by the head of the Social Democrats Olaf Schultz, who became the first German chancellor since Angela Merkel at the beginning of December.

At the beginning of December, the US announced a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing 2022 Olympic Games. Although no government officers or diplomats will be allowed to attend in an official capacity, athletes will still be able to participate under the US flag. White House spokesperson Jen Psaki said, “the athletes on Team USA have our full support” but said US officials would not be “contributing to the fanfare of the games” explaining that to do so would be treating these games as “business as usual in the face of [China’s] egregious human rights abuses and atrocities in Xinjiang.” China’s Washington embassy responded by seeking to downplay the American move saying, “no-one would care whether these people come or not” and that the move would have “no impact” on the success of the games. The US is not the only country that is not sending diplomatic representation. 10 other countries including Canada, Australia, Japan, and the UK] have delegations staying home, although some are choosing to do so because of health concerns and others have not officially listed this move as a “boycott” (such as Japan).