Excuse me? Are you really serious, Mrs. Appelbaum? Only a Ukraine equipped with nuclear weapons could have secured peace? If such a judgment came from a small member state of the international community, it could be excused as an expression of a feeling of inferiority. Ms. Appelbaum, however, lives and writes and teaches in the United States. I fear that it is precisely this kind of half-blind perception of the present and unilateral obliviousness to history that serves as a compass for U.S. political action. But if a defective navigation device determines the actions and strategy of a hegemonic power, one must come to a different conclusion. Anne Appelbaum's military policy recommendations seem cynical and arrogant to me. I readily concede that her judgment in the current conflict is biased, but the choice of words in her criticism of Russian conditions would already be unacceptable in peaceful times. In these warlike times, this language exposes itself for what it probably wants to be: incendiary diatribe.