Ukraine's Dilemma

Have you ever noticed how often life appears to

resemble a badly written impassioned pulp novel

replaying the immemorial melodrama between 

lovers in a marriage gone sour where the errant

husband recalls all the fine times the marriage 

brought him and the wife lingers on humiliations

and loss of human dignity in the relentless demands 

of a possessive man who once again courts the 

unwilling woman whose attention has been caught 

by overtures from a handsomely wealthy foreigner 

of great power promising a future unlike the one she

so recently escaped. The adversaries snarling threats 

at one another, the husband preparing to storm 

his former wife's steely rejection to restore the 

faulted marriage and none involved know how the 

situation will resolve. Ukraine cringes with horror 

at the prospect of a return to Russia's embrace

determined to defend her sovereign rights on the 

world stage among peer nations. Hegemonic

command of a new alliance contends with the

struggle between ideologies' contrasting values

leaving Ukraine to resist not only domination

but the coercive declarations of violent conflict

in an aura of panic to induce an appetite for war.