When Phil Klay's book Redeployment was delivered to my apartment a few months ago, I was about to take a long subway ride down the eighty or so blocks to Columbia. I took the book with me. It wasn’t a good idea after all, to open it up and read the title story on the 1 train — crushed into the railing, rattling southward in the dark tunnel. My throat had closed up by the time I hit my stop. When I emerged out into the sunlight from underground, Sgt. Price, the bluntly insightful narrator of “Redeployment,” walked up the stairs and out onto Broadway with me.
President Putin made three foundational assumptions in launching his war against Ukraine that should have been correct but were not. First, Putin assumed the invasion of Ukraine would be a quick and easy fight. Second, he assumed the world would denounce the invasion but tacitly allow it. Third, Putin assumed the war would deter NATO expansion.
