Canadian Dimension: Hypocrisy and war

Russian President Vladimir Putin at a meeting of the Prosecutor General’s Office Board, 2019. Photo courtesy the Kremlin/Flickr. “The first casualty of war,” as the famous dictum coined by American Senator Hiram Johnson in 1917 has it, “is truth.” What fuels militarism is the belief that your side is completely

Continue reading

Canadian Dimension: How Western sanctions drove Belarus closer to Moscow

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko. Photo by Serge Serebro/Wikimedia Commons. Philosophers like to distinguish between “deontological” ethics on the one hand and “utilitarian” or “consequentialist” ethics on the other. The first—associated most famously with Immanuel Kant—involves absolute rules and places a great importance on intentions. The second—associated with the likes of

Continue reading