Political elites in the US and the West should have understood that humiliation is a disastrous tool in foreign affairs, with often lasting and catastrophic effects. The humiliation of Germany at Versailles played an important role in fomenting World War Two. Political elites avoided repetition of that with respect to West Germany and Japan after 1945 by way of the Marshall Plan only to repeat the catastrophe of humiliating Russia (both actively and inadvertently) after the end of the Cold War. Russia needed and deserved a Marshall Plan rather than lectures on the probity of neoliberal solutions in the 1990s. The century and a half of China’s humiliation by Western Imperialism (extending to that of Japanese occupations and the infamous “rape of Nanjing” in the 1930s) is playing a significant role in contemporary geopolitical struggles. The lesson is simple: humiliate at your peril. It will come back to haunt, if not bite you.

David Harvey: Remarks on Recent Events in Ukraine: A Provisional Statement