The march of folly

India should work for an alliance of like-minded neutral states to restrain the adversaries in the new Cold War

Barbara Tuchman, the American historian, wrote the book, March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam, which if updated would certainly include the Russian and US failures in Afghanistan, the interventions by both powers in West Asia and the present Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The US follies were more affordable for the protagonist and less disruptive for the domestic economy than what the Russian invasion of Ukraine means for the aggressor country. The only basis for Russia as a superpower is not its economy or conventional military capacity but its vast nuclear arsenal, which hopefully it will not use in Ukraine, though