A profound failure of the Western imagination has brought Europe to the brink of war.
About the author: Anne Applebaum is a staff writer at The Atlantic, a fellow at the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University, and the author of Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism. Oh, how I envy Liz Truss her opportunity! Oh, how I regret her utter failure to make use of it! For those who have never heard of her, Truss is the lightweight British foreign secretary who went to Moscow this week to tell her Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, that his country should not invade Ukraine. This trip was not a success. At a glacial press conference he likened their conversation to “the mute” speaking with “the deaf”; later, he leaked the fact that she had confused some Russian regions with Ukrainian regions, to add a little insult to the general injury. Lavrov has done this many times before. He was vile to the European Union’s foreign-policy chief, Josep Borrell, last year. He has been unpleasant at international conferences and rude to journalists. His behavior is not an accident. Lavrov, like Russian President Vladimir Putin, uses aggression and sarcasm as tools to demonstrate his scorn for his interlocutor, to frame negotiations as useless even before they begin, to create dread and apathy. The point is to put other diplomats on the defensive, or else to cause them to give up in disgust. But the fact that Lavrov is disrespectful and disagreeable is old news. So is the fact that Putin lectures foreign leaders for hours and hours on his personal and political grievances. He did that the first time he met President Barack Obama, more than a decade ago; he did exactly the same thing last week to French President Emmanuel Macron. Truss should have known all of this. Instead of offering empty language about rules and values, she could have started the press conference like this: Good Evening, ladies and gentlemen of the press. I am delighted to join you after meeting my Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov. This time, we have not bothered to discuss treaties he won’t respect and promises he won’t keep.
