Chess is not dominoes

We shouldn't forget that in the case of Georgia, a problem was done away with that bothered [Vladimir] Putin personally - that is, the security during the Winter Olympics in Sochi in 2014. Security not in the sense of a guaranteed absence of a terror attack, but in pursuing the aim of moving hot spots of possible conflict farther from the site of the Olympic Games, which are to be held a stone's throw from Abkhazia - that is, in de jure Georgia.

So many dictators trying to blackmail the free world because they have no way to compete on ideas, innovation or creativity. The Cold War was two competing visions of the future. I was always anti-communist but it was an idea at least, an alternative idea. We do not have a competing vision for the future because the ideals of these dictators are in the past. They are time travellers. They need confrontation and destruction to survive. The problem is, many people in the free world are sympathetic to Vladimir Putin.

Many people think they are too refined, or too rational, to entertain a real sense of wonder in themselves or in others. This is preposterous to me, since the natural world is full of endless wonders, both on Earth and especially in space, no matter how you think it was created.

Values-oriented foreign policy of the free world would be much better, supported by the self-awareness of being on the right side of history.

Many Republicans who traditionally were for a positive role in the world, anti-Russian, now they want to defend their party and leader, and they don't care about real arguments. The paradox is the Democrats were so timid in criticising Vladimir Putin. Barack Obama appeased him and now they are criticising Putin's interference in American democracy. It is a strange reversal of the roles.

Rosneft, for instance, was mainly built upon capital stolen from [jailed oligarch Mikhail] Khodorkovsky's company, but the IPO was successful with many Western corporations investing in it. This means that it is extremely difficult to detect these assets in their pure form.