Just as the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 damaged the image of the US in world affairs, Russia’s intervention in Ukraine has undermined Russia’s reputation in the world. The Pew Research Center has conducted a poll of how outsiders now view Russia, and the results show a dramatic drop in favorable opinions of Russia. For now, President Putin remains highly popular in Russia, but as economic sanctions bite into Russia’s economic growth, that support may drop as well. Unilateral interventions have heavy costs in the world, and it is often difficult to shake the image over time.
The rise of social media has uncovered all sorts of questions about how human beings communicate. Traditionally, the most effective means of communicating ideas has been through talking with each other. Talking is a very complex process, and it demands the development of important ancillary skills, such as reading body behavior. The ubiquity of electronic communication (such as this blog, or other forms such as email and texting) has reduced our reliance on these ancillary skills. The critical question is whether the loss of these other skills is going to ultimately affect our social development. I suspect that it will, and that loss, while incalculable, is possibly tragic.
The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute is one of the most highly regarded research organizations in the world. They publish a Global Firepower Index which takes 50 variables and makes a composite index measuring the military power of all the countries in the world. The list does not contain many surprises, but the index gives a great deal of depth to what analysts mean when they talk about the military power of a particular country.
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