Good Government/Citizenship: I Should Have Known, by David Barrows

I have taught and trained many students and participants in executive education. I have also published a number of articles on the topics of public policy, public administration, and economic development. You would have thought that after all of that I would have learned something.  

This Ukraine business this is something I did not anticipate. My understanding of Ukraine was that it was half Russian and half western with a great deal of corruption. I assumed that the Russians would simply walk in and take over, which is what they obviously assumed. That was my first error. The second error was my complete misunderstanding of the Russian military. I assumed that they were competent. They certainly have a lot of nuclear weapons. My mistake was in misunderstanding the nature and depth of corruption in Russia. Why did I assume that the Russian military was immune to the pernicious corruption that pervades Russian society. My third error was overestimating the strength of the Russian military system. The only recent examples of Russian military intervention occurred in Syria. However, the nature and extent of Russian military power was to bomb unarmed civilians who had no capacity to fight back. For this action the Russian military gave itself medals of distinction.  

Many years ago, I was working for KPMG in Toronto. A nice young man joined the firm, and we played basketball together. He was Israeli. It was the early 1970s and I asked him if he had participated in the latest war. He said yes, he had. I asked him what did he do? He said he commanded a tank in the Sinai. I said that was impossible, he was in his early 20s. He said that's how it works over there. I said did he see any action. He said he was in the desert when the Egyptians attacked. The Israeli tanks were massively outnumbered.  I said, "what did you do”? He said that they could not retreat, and they could not surrender So they signed a death pact to maintain their position. I then asked him how it worked out. He said well I'm here aren't I Dave.