The events currently taking place in Ukraine are as much predictable as they are disturbing and, as stated previously in this blog, the world needs leadership. It isn’t going to come from the weak vacillating Europeans so therefore, once again, it has to come from the planet’s most powerful nation, the USA.

Somebody needs to buy two books for President Obama, the first a history of the 1930s and the rise of Nazism. This book will demonstrate to him what happens when a peaceful, tolerant but weak world decides against confronting a determined, ruthless, and cunning tyrant. The tyrant keeps taking and taking until ultimately the world has no choice but to confront him. If Hitler had been told by the world’s leaders at the outset what the consequences of his actions would be it is quite likely that the final catastrophe would never have occurred. He wasn’t and it did.

The second book would be a book of quotations by the great 18^th century Anglo-Irish politician and philosopher Edmund Burke. The book would be highlighted at the page containing the quotation “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing”. I have no doubt that President Obama is a good and decent man but he needs to act against Putin and he needs to act now.