The headlines scream of Ukrainian strikes plunging Crimea into darkness. A British defence source hails this as a sign of ‘resolve’. But let us pause and consider the mirror being held up to our own decaying civilisation.
Is a blackout in a contested peninsula really a testament to Western fortitude, or rather a symptom of strategic bankruptcy? We celebrate tactical pinpricks while the strategic map redraws itself against our interests. Every flicker of a light bulb in Simferopol is presented as a moral victory.
Yet we forget that the Romans did not triumph by cutting off Gaul’s grain shipments; they built roads and legions. The Victorians did not win by sabotaging colonial telegraph lines; they projected overwhelming force. This ‘resolve’—this nervous reliance on punitive blackouts—is the behaviour of an empire in decline, not one in ascendancy.
It is the petty gesture of a power that dares not risk a real confrontation. The Victorian mind would have found our current strategy laughable: a great power boasting about temporary darkness in a region it cannot even threaten conventionally. And what of the ‘resolve’ itself?
It is a word we cling to like a man drowning grips driftwood. Real resolve would be a clear declaration of objectives, a willingness to escalate, a commitment to victory. Instead, we have this: a shadow war fought with drones and sanctions, all designed to avoid the one thing true resolve requires—risk.
The blackout in Crimea is not a sign of strength. It is a light flickering in the dusk of Western will.
