{"id":17526,"date":"2026-01-01T01:17:47","date_gmt":"2026-01-01T09:17:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=17526"},"modified":"2026-01-04T01:24:11","modified_gmt":"2026-01-04T09:24:11","slug":"issue-of-the-week-war-human-rights-economic-opportunity-disease-hunger-environment-population-personal-growth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=17526","title":{"rendered":"Issue of the Week: War, Human Rights, Economic Opportunity, Disease, Hunger, Environment, Population, Personal Growth"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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The Separation: <\/strong>Inside the Unraveling U.S.-Ukraine Partnership<\/em>, The New York Times, 12.31.25, and Dawn of the AI Drone<\/em>, The New York Times Magazine, 1.4.26<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And there it is, midnight on New Year\u2019s Eve here in Ukraine. The start of 2026. Complete silence. No crowds, no fireworks, there\u2019s no cheering. Every other capital in the world right now is exploding with sounds, with light and here, it\u2019s silence. …Right now, families are listening for drones instead of fireworks. New Year\u2019s Eve is supposed to be about noise, excess and celebration and here it\u2019s about getting through the night, about seeing another morning. …So when your city lights up tonight, remember that Ukraine has to stay dark and remember that this is not normal, and this should never be accepted as normal. …It\u2019s something that was forced on Ukraine. …So wherever you are in the world right now, whether you\u2019re with your family by the fire, whether you\u2019re scrolling TikTok in bed, or whether you\u2019re at a party you wish you never went to, think of Ukraine and think of the fact that this is the only capital of any country in the world right now that looks like this. And most of all, remember who caused it.<\/em>  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

–Caelan Robertson, Irish-born journalist and content-creator living in Ukraine since 2022, Honorary Ambassador of Ukraine Award for Digital Diplomacy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We know of what Robertson spoke about above accompanying an Instragram video sent to us by our Ukrainian guide in Kyiv today from our recent time there<\/a>, where we experienced close up and personal<\/a> missiles and drones by the hundreds being inflicted purposefully in war crimes against the civilian population. And the extraordinary deprivation, hunger, disease, destruction of energy sources bringing freezing conditions to civilians, trafficking of children and countless crimes against humanity, which have been the story of 2025 in so many ways and places<\/a>. But the cummulative story in Ukraine is unique in global impact, going not just back to 2014, but to the horrific starvation of millions of Ukrainians by Stalin in the 1930’s, and many historical atrocities by imperialist Russia for centuries, with Ukraine now on the front line of democracy versus dictatorship world-wide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, we begin the new year with the same issue we began with four years ago<\/a>–the one which continues to haunt the world with the possibility of global war more than at any time since World War Two, the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For all of 2022 and 2023, the U.S., along with virtually all democracies and most other nations globally, enthusiastically supported Ukraine as the bulwark of democracy, human rights and sanctity of national soveriegnty against authoritarianism and aggression against the borders of other nations–the framework of global order.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ukraine’s President Zelensky was welcomed as a hero addressing an historic joint session of the US Congress in 2022, a bipartisan congressional group in 2024 and multiple White House visits. President Biden and other NATO heads of state met with him in Ukraine. Virtually all Republicans and Democrats zealously supported him and the bravery of Ukraine, which by all odds should have been over-run by Russia in days, but held fast, took back territory and cities and was in position to win the war and expel the Russians from all their territory if properly and timely armed. President Biden, the US, and other allies, had made the survival of Ukraine possible (with Ukrainian resolve and courage as key), with substantial support. But with a policy that fell short of timely supplying enough arms and the type of arms needed to finish the job. The Russians, with Putin willing to send hundreds of thousands of Russia’s soldiers to be slaughtered if needed, were regaining the upper hand in 2025, if only to a small degree–but over a year with real consequences. This was becoming a clear threat at the end of the Biden administration and plans for stepping up aid were advancing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the political reincarnation of Donald Trump and increasing isolationist Republican sentiment under his sway, and political unwillingness by a majority who still supported Ukraine to buck Trump’s influence, flipped the script. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

[Comment here posted 1.3.26: The stunning contradictions of intervention in Venezuela, odious as the leadership removed was, with the flip flop of stated support for the actual winner of the Venezuelan election and Nobel Peace Prize winner who backed him, to the US as the power that would “run” Venezuela, was consistent with the inconsistency of policies except as determined to be resource and politically advantageous at the moment. The rationale and methods leading up to and utilized to justify this action have been questionable to put it mildly and the blowback is an unknowable black hole. The same oppressive government remains in power at the moment in Venezuela. It’s as if Hitler or Stalin was removed but the entire Nazi or Communist apparatus was left in place. Perhaps the pardon for the imprisoned former narco-leader of Honduras with investigation initiated by the first Trump Justice Department will now be somehow magically undone, as it is now an even more glaring contradiction in policy.]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The European members of NATO have strongly supported Ukraine and have upped that support in the past year as US support became questionable at best. But it may be too little too late when only the US has the capacity to make the difference it can. Further, the bigger elephant in the room has become clear. Putin has directly threatened other NATO and European nations and the head of NATO has made clear that it must prepare for war with Russia. In response, European nations are arming further or re-arming fast. Trump and company appear to have entered a delusionary world that can’t even remember what happened in the lead-up to World War Two. If Ukraine falls, it’s on. Except this time with nukes, and the US will be drawn in, like it or not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The idea that Russia will use nukes as it has threatened in Ukraine is absurd, unless Putin sees no consequences. There will be–this will effectively bring other European nations with nukes in, one way or another. And the US. No one is going to lie down and become slaves under such a threat and others in the neighborhood have the same weapons. The greatest threat of this happening is either a mistake (which can happen anytime anyway, a terrible risk of having such weapons in place at all) or the lack of unmistakable resolve in stopping aggression. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ukraine surely wishes it never gave up its nukes when it was the third largest nuclear armed power in the world in the mid-nineties. At the end of the Cold War after the Soviet Union dissolved (after the whole world danced on the ruins of the Berlin Wall–but the worst thing ever according to KGB agent, now dictator, Putin, trying to restore the Soviet\/Russian empire) the US, UK and Russia promised Ukraine that it would protect Ukrainian soverienty if it gave up its nukes. Russia appeared to be a new democracy in a new world, but Ukraine would never trust that, obviously rightly so. But trust the US, the only superpower on earth now? Yes. And a terrible mistake. Because the greatest democracy in the world was not to be trusted in living up to its own democratic institutions, as it now turns out. And besides, nothing is certain except what a nation has itself. If Ukraine had kept its nukes, Putin would never have dared to invade an inch of Ukrainian territory, starting with Crimea and staging a fake separatist war in Eastern Ukraine in 2014, then full-on invasion four years ago. Bill Clinton, who pressured the Ukrainians to give up their nukes (understandably at the time), now says he wishes he had never done so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the constantly rotating and contradictory excuses given by the current US regime for not continuing to supply Ukraine with adequate weapons, or arms at all, is the need to have an adequate supply to fight China. First, as if there was a rational or consistent policy related to China. And in case no one remembers, in the biggest war in history, the US fought in multiple theaters of war, and won, starting with practically a zero arms inventory, then amping up with all due speed (and the US is far from zero now, yet could and should amp up, in a redirected manner in types of arms, to properly be able to cover multiple contingencies, as The New York Times has pointed out in a current editorial series<\/a>.) Yes, China is ultimately the biggest threat to the US (and to what the US historically stood for in democracy versus dictatorship), but Ukraine is a critical part of this equation too. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

US buckles to Russia on Ukraine, China invades Taiwan tomorrow. China is Russia’s ally in wanting to use Ukraine to take down the US (and all things liberal democracy). A top liason between the US military and Ukrainian military leadership in the first years of the war told the author of this post that China, Russia and its allies (Iran, North Korea) had already declared war on the US in Ukraine, a war meant to be the first strike of a global war for dominance, which could only be kept from becoming World War Three as most people understand the reference by Ukraine prevailing, which is to say the US doing whatever needed to create this outcome. Again, this is the most likely thing to prevent nuclear war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the same time, speaking of weapons, just as the atom bomb was the result of needing to beat Hitler in getting it, a similar arms race is happening in a brand new weapons category: AI drone warfare. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ukraine is the testing ground for this. It may be its salvation or undoing, depending on who wins this arms race. Ukraine, and Russia, are ahead of the US and everyone else on this. And it’s a truly game-changing and terrifying universe of weaponry. Ukraine is increasingly an AI drone war. It’s the warfare of the future in real time now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We have written often of the history of the Ukrainian story and threats to the world involved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yesterday, on New Year’s Eve, The New York Times, which has covered these stories with extraordinary depth and breadth from the start, posted two long-form pieces of importance not possible to overstate. One ran yesterday, the other is an advance piece posted online that will run in Sunday’s New York Times Magazine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here they are:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Separation: <\/strong>Inside the Unraveling U.S.-Ukraine Partnership<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

As President Trump sought a peace deal and Vladimir V. Putin sought victory, factions in the White House and Pentagon bled the Ukrainian war effort.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Adam Entous<\/a>, Dec. 30, 2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Adam Entous conducted more than 300 interviews over more than a year with government, military and intelligence officials in Ukraine, the United States, Britain, Belgium, Germany, Estonia, Poland, Latvia, Lithuania and Turkey.<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Donald J. Trump promised that he could bring peace to Ukraine in a single day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What followed was nearly a year of on-again, off-again negotiations, apportioning of territory, administration infighting and a war still without end. This is the story of how it unfolded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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THE TRAIN LEFT<\/strong> the U.S. Army depot in the west of Germany and made for Poland and the Ukrainian border. These were the final 800 miles of a trans-Atlantic supply chain that had sustained Ukraine across more than three long years of war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n