With Charlie Harper

The sabres are certainly rattling in Eastern Europe these days. Americans, and doubtless millions of flabbergasted others around the world, are beginning to wonder if a bitter regional war is about to break out in Ukraine that will gradually suck in others and we will find ourselves in World War III.

Russian President Vladimir Putin misses the Cold War days of superpower duopoly with the US and longs for the reach and power of the Soviet Union. No particular surprise there - he made his career helping to advance Soviet interests at home and abroad. This is a very popular stance at home for Putin, especially with those over 30.

From the perspective of someone like Putin, it’s convenient and helpful that the US is a relatively open society with dissent and discord amplified by the internet and cable news. America must surely look weakened to him: President Joe Biden is saddled with terrible poll ratings, millions of people still profess to believe their last election results were fraudulent; willingness to follow federal leadership in Washington shows real cracks over a continuing, debilitating pandemic; gas and other prices soar as inflation rates not seen in 40 years threaten an otherwise pretty robust economic recovery; the sting lingering from the latest international “no win” in Afghanistan.

America’s European NATO allies all have their own issues, too, notably in the UK, where Boris Johnson’s party habits may be the fuse that ignites enough lingering resentment to bring down his government, and in Germany, where the solid and commanding figure of Angela Merkel is no longer around after 16 years to offer reassurance to nervous neighbours and allies.

It must seem to Putin like this is a great time to play a high-stakes international game of chicken with Biden and the West.

And imagine how people feel in NATO member nations which border the former USSR. They watch Putin’s Russia and leading world pariah Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus conclude a pact that practically portends political union between their nations. Russian troops are massing along Belarus’ border with Ukraine just as they are in the disputed areas of eastern Ukraine.

Modern Russian history is overflowing with evidence of a national paranoia about foreign aggression against the motherland. It’s easy from a Russian perspective to see evidence of Western determination to dismember Russia in the explosive NATO expansion in the 1990s when Russia was weakened. Russian history books remind readers of Adolph Hitler’s 1941 treachery in invading his Soviet treaty ally of two years’ standing, and the millions of lives lost in the resulting desperate, awful struggle for survival against the Nazis.

So now Putin sees a chance to continue what he began in Georgia by starting the 21st Century’s first war in 2008 and then proceeding to seize Crimea in 2014. Step by step, so the narrative goes, he’s on an inexorable course to recreate the glory days and add to Russia as much as possible of the old USSR.

In recent days, meanwhile, while Biden and his foreign policy team are mulling how to react to pugnacious Putin, the Chinese launched an unusual air sortie into Taiwanese air space. It is widely believed in Washington that Putin and Chinese President Xi have forged the closest military alliance between their nations in years; what if these two principal American antagonists are plotting simultaneous military forays to seize long-coveted “breakaway” lands?

It’s getting less easy to dismiss North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un and his nation’s missile threat to his neighbours and even potentially the US. What if his recent missile launches are in reality an ominous dress rehearsal for an assault on vital US treaty allies South Korea and/or Japan?

It’s no wonder Biden and his team decamped to the presidential retreat at Camp David in Maryland for the weekend. The US President and his closest advisors can’t be getting much sleep these days.

They’re going to have to figure out how to grab the initiative in the global game of chicken which they’re now playing. And how to do it without bringing us to the brink of another world war.

Catch your breath and here we go again

As the NFL’s quarterfinal Divisional Round of four games concluded late Sunday evening, it seemed America’s most popular sports league had finally transformed into a real-life video game. As the Kansas City Chiefs and Buffalo Bills swapped touchdowns and dramatic field goals in the last few minutes of what was a memorable and thoroughly enjoyable play-off gala, TV announcers, rabid but chilled fans watching from the stands, and even veteran television watchers were transported into a fantasy world of effortless pass-and-catch touchdowns and immediate retaliatory strikes.

One commentator, not normally moved to hyperbole, described the game two days later as “absolutely the best professional football game I have ever had the pleasure to witness”. Kansas City’s 42-36 triumph over the Bills meant the Chiefs will now host the AFC championship game Sunday against surprising Cincinnati.

The Bengals, rewriting and updating the team’s dismal last 32 years of post-season history with each unexpected triumph, erased the top-seeded Tennessee Titans’ Super Bowl hopes the day before the classic Chiefs-Bills game. Tennessee looked flat in its three-point loss, and this morning they might be the most rueful of the ten teams that have so far lost play-off games this year. They lost a game they were expected to win and should have won. But it is Cincinnati who move on, once again an underdog on the road as they were in Nashville.

The National Conference’s top seeded Green Bay Packers didn’t look as flat as the Titans as they faced San Francisco at home in the snow, but their almost unimaginable special teams’ failures - a blocked field goal and a blocked punt in the same game - proved to be their undoing in a game it seemed quarterback Aaron Rodgers would somehow contrive a way to win. Now Packers fans face an off-season of disappointment again, and an off-season of uncertainty about Rodgers’ future plans, also for the second straight year.

In Tampa, it also seemed like veteran magician Tom Brady would somehow manufacture a win for the defending champion Buccaneers. The Los Angeles Rams, after building a big half-time lead, fiddled all of it away with mistakes, then roared back and won the game by the margin of a field goal kicked by a former Buc.

Now, the Rams have only to win two games in their home stadium near the Los Angeles airport to win the pro-football championship. If they do, it will mark the second straight year the Super Bowl champions have triumphed on their home field. Last season in Tampa was the first time it had ever happened.

What are the odds? The Rams, losers of six straight to their Sunday foes the San Francisco 49ers, are nonetheless awarded the three-point home team’s edge by oddsmakers. It’s an axiom in the NFL that it is both difficult and rare for one divisional opponent to beat another three times in the same season. En route to their title last year, for instance, the Buccaneers lost both regular season games to the New Orleans Saints but prevailed in the third, play-off match. There are other less recent examples. Most analysts point to the intense rivalries normally at play, the teams’ intimate familiarity with each other’s patterns and players, and ultimately, the law of averages.

It says here the Rams will win on Sunday and reinforce the notion that in the NFL, the third time’s indeed the charm. While not all of their superstars performed well in their flawed triumph in Tampa, enough of them did when it counted, including astounding wide receiver Cooper Kupp from Eastern Washington University. They should end the 49ers’ upstart dreams.

In Kansas City, the Chiefs have been installed as big favourites over the Bengals. Cincinnati’s pitch and catch combo of Joe Burrow and Jamar Chase, who won a national collegiate title at LSU and then joined the Bengals as high first-round picks in successive years, have been prodigiously successful this year. But Kansas City has more experienced stars, a hugely successful coach and a real home field advantage. It is the Chiefs who will go on the road to Los Angeles in February in search of their second title in three years.