The Economist - UK (2022-04-02)

14 The Economist April 2nd 2022
Letters

Russia’s war aims

You have reported about the

failure of the Russian army to

achieve its immediate ob­

jectives in Ukraine (“No end in

sight”, March 19th). This might

well be the case. Yet without

really knowing Vladimir

Putin’s goals, we cannot really

tell. For once, should we not

take Mr Putin at his own word? 

He claims the “special

military operation” is going

“according to plan”. Two large

cities, which successfully

resisted separatists in 2014, are

being reduced to rubble; a land

corridor from Donbas to

Crimea has been established; a

quarter of Ukraine’s pop­

ulation displaced (10% as

refugees abroad); thousands if

not tens of thousands of civil­

ians killed, and all this after

only one month into the war.

These results are fully

commensurate with Mr Putin’s

obsessive hatred towards all

things Ukrainian. 

From the point of view of

someone who denies the

existence of an independent

Ukraine and considers that

state to be an anomaly, his war

seems indeed as if it is going to

plan. It reminds me of the Serb

campaign in Bosnia in the

1990s, which aimed at ethnic

cleansing. As we know, this

culminated in genocide.

ulf brunnbauer

Director

Leibniz Institute for East and

Southeast European Studies

Regensburg, Germany

Regina Ip (Letters, March 19th)

either misunderstands or

wilfully misinterprets nato’s

expansion into central Europe.

That expansion was not the

result of pressure from nato

but rather the free decisions of

democratically elected govern­

ments. They recognised the

threat from the Russian dicta­

torship, which thinks that

adjacent countries and their

populations are an indissol­

uble part of its polity. If the

central European governments

wish to leave natothey are

free to do so, though Russia’s

savage butchery of Ukraine

now makes their original case

a thousand times stronger.

If Ms Ip were to open her

window in the Legislative

Council offices in Hong Kong,

she might find that a demo­

cratic majority of Hong Kong­

ers see very distinct parallels

in their own Asian region.

david hart

Harrogate, North Yorkshire

The honourable member of

Hong Kong’s Legislative

Council wrote about one

incident when “a pair of

American bombers flying over

the Black Sea” in 2021 had to be

“escorted away from the

Russian border by Russian

jets”. Yet the Royal Air Force,

showing admirable restraint,

has had to escort Russian

bombers out of British air

space on and off for decades. 

richard sproulle

Royston, Hertfordshire

No one has provoked Russia.

Eastern European countries

wanted a Western security

umbrella after 40 years of

Kremlin dictatorship. Rather

than natomoving East, as Ms

Ip implies, these countries

moved West. Who should be

surprised, or even offended?

michael kuttner

Stege, Denmark

natocontinues to turn a deaf

ear to Ukraine’s plea to impose

a no­fly zone over the country.

There is a middle ground. If

they were allowed to resign

their enlistments, natofighter

pilots and maintenance per­

sonnel could find employment

in the Ukrainian air force as

mercenaries. They would fly

and service planes they are

familiar with. A cash bounty

could be paid for every Russian

bomber or fighter jet shot

down. These bounties would

be funded by private sub­

scription. So too would dis­

ability benefits, and a fund

to compensate surviving fam­

ilies of the airmen. This model

is similar to the Flying Tigers,

American volunteer pilots who

helped nationalist China

survive Japan’s campaign of

conquest in 1941. 

george botjer

Emeritus professor of history

at the University of Tampa

Belleair, Florida

Movingformorespace

“Nohomeruns”(March12th)

suggestedthatmanyofthe

peoplemovingoutofCalifor­

niaarefedupwiththestate’s

restrictionsonbuildingnew

homes.Actually,mostpeople

wholeaveCaliforniamoveto

placeswiththesamekindof

restrictivezoningthathas

constrainedhousingsupplyin

theGoldenState.Lookata

zoningmapofanycityin

ArizonaorTexasandyouwill

seethatit ismostlyrestricted

tosingle­familyhomes.Al­

thoughtheremaybelessred

tape,thefundamentalcon­

straintisthesame:almostall

residentiallandmayhaveonly

a singlehouseperlot.

ForfleeingCalifornians,

themainattractionofthese

destinationsisthattheyare

stillcomparativelylow­dens­

ityplacestolive.Thesepeople

arenot“streaming”tocitieson

theeastcoastthatdoallow

multiplehomesonthesame

patchofland,suchasNew

YorkorWashington.

antunkarlovac

SanFrancisco

Sportingfirsts

AnarticleaboutCleveland’s

baseballteamchangingits

namefromIndianstoGuard­

iansthatdoesn’tmention

LouisSockalexisisnotcom­

plete(“Prideandprejudice”,

March26th).Clevelandbe­

cametheIndiansinhonourof

Sockalexis,whowasfromthe

Penobscottribeandplayedas

anoutfielderinthelate1890s.

charleswhite

Portland,Oregon

Rules of grammar

Johnson tied the teaching of

grammar to the learning of

foreign languages and

development of natural­lan­

guage processing software

(March 12th). English does not

always rigidly follow a set of

rules, and the rules it does

follow were developed after

the language itself. With

computer­programming

languages, Python included,

the opposite is true. A formal

grammar needs to be estab­

lished first, and it must be

rigidly followed. Noam Chom­

sky’s linguistic work is invalu­

able to the engineering of

non­human languages. 

I wonder whether learning

grammar would affect

students’ performance on a

programming test? A formal

understanding of the verb “to

be” might not be necessary to

differentiate between identity

and belonging to a category in

English, but any Python code

you write won’t function

properly if there is even a

sliver of ambiguity.

chris shaffer

Philadelphia

Acomplicated author

You rightly say that by cancel­

ling Dostoyevsky because of

Russia’s war we will “miss

peerless insights into nihilism

and violence” (“Crime and

punishments”, March 19th).

But away from his novels, we

would also miss out

Dostoyevsky’s anti­Semitism

and disgust with the West. He

believed in the primacy of the

Russian soul, which should

avoid contamination by for­

eign cultures and customs.

Russians (except for the Jews)

should live in a paradise of

self­negation and brotherly

love. I am not suggesting that

he would have supported the

invasion of Ukraine, but his

Russophile rhetoric has echoes

in what we hear from the

Kremlin today, unlike any­

thing you can find in Tolstoy or

Turgenev.

andrew robson

Abinger Hammer, Surrey

Word of the week

I devoured Bagehot’s

“unappetising menu” that

Rishi Sunak will have to

swallow with a coprophagic

grin (March 19th). 

mitch hersey

Presque Isle, Maine

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