Flawed democracies are not good. We can all agree on that. Taxpayer money gets lost in bureaucracy. Politicians are difficult to get rid of because of adjustments to the constitution as well as by appointing judges that make the judiciary susceptible to corruption, making that same corruption difficult to eradicate. …

I once wanted to study in the United Kingdom. I applied to Oxford University and Edinburgh University after finishing my undergraduate degree at UBC Okanagan, in British Columbia, Canada. I was denied at Oxford but accepted to Edinburgh. Ultimately, I decided to go to McGill University because the UK just…

My recent articles on Mearsheimer have created a storm, it seems. So, I thought I’d devote some more time to the man, as his ideas have created some confusion on this platform. In my view, it’s very clear that Mearsheimer’s view that the war in Ukraine is chiefly the United…

It’s reading break at McGill University, where I am completing my master’s degree, so I have a lot more time to devote to my blog — at least for the week. I thought I would take this opportunity to write up a brief history of Russian protest against its full-scale…

My recent article on John Mearsheimer, the prominent international relations scholar, is making a splash, so I thought — since it’s reading break and I only have a few essays to write — I’d write another blog post explaining who Mearsheimer is for those who might not be aware. I’ll…

The former US President George W. Bush had quite a complex relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Bush initially praised Putin as a trustworthy partner, but their relationship became strained due to disagreements over human rights violations, lack of press freedom, and conflicts like the 2008 “Five Day War” in…

In a recent interview with CCP media, John Mearsheimer claimed that there’s “no evidence” of Russian imperialism (let alone, colonialism) in Ukraine. He instead claims that there is plenty of evidence for “NATO expansionism.” Mearsheimer explains that Putin was “fearful” that the West would create Ukraine a type of satellite…

Today, Putin made a two-hour-long state of the nation speech to commemorate the upcoming one-year unfortunate anniversary of his full-scale invasion of Ukraine. He restated his typical tropes; let me know if you want me to analyze some of them in a future blog post in the comments. Here, I…

This week, I had the great pleasure of being joined on my podcast, “Loosely Eastern Europe” with Prof. Matthew Slaboch from the School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership at Arizona State University and author of A Road to Nowhere: The Idea of Progress and Its Critics. We talk…