With the Winter Olympics wooshing down slopes, the perilous state of global diplomacy would appear akin to a bobsleigh run. BRIC, the pithy acronym for Brazil, Russia, India and China was coined by economist-turned-elder statesman Jim O’Neill who usefully grouped together this cohort while at Goldman Sachs in 2001 (since which time South Africa joined the theoretical huddle).

Do you share concern for the white-knuckle state of dialogue being yodelled across the East-West gulf, particularly in virtue its cause appears to be the chasmic absence of emotional resilience?

Ukraine represents the red line for Mrs Putin, a man whose fragile sense of self supervenes on reconstructing the USSR, his homeland. Doing his all to bind China in to his southern flank, still it’s doubtful the inferred threat succeeds in protecting his ego.

Setting free someone you love is a natural response to wanting to see them grow and flourish. Using them as a buffer against perceived threats protects nothing: it merely diminishes everyone and shrinks the aggressive defender yet further.

Not being party NATO’s expansion ambitions makes musing on them fraught with potential for ridicule. Thus, rather than crash out at the foot of that slope, we pause for a moment to reflect on why some tend put their fragility on display.

Smallness doesn’t hide well, neither in nor out of plain sight. Smallness is tattooed across the brow, hums through words, colours action, vibrates around intention. Shoring up stature and stability with threats to lob mortar rounds … and the like … at those one fears smacks of cornered ratness.

Is NATO really trying to corner anything or wrest territory from them as unwilling to yield? Mayn’t Ukraine flex its autonomy and decide for itself?

Conjeuring a Sino-Soviet-against-the-World War could seem within conceivable possibility by virtue of a small man who wants to seem larger. Just because we have Pestilence and Famine-through-climatic-collapse, must it be inevitable War and Death gallop from their stables?

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