Drifting Apart

I recently came across a bizarre correlation between vaccine status and support for war against Russia. The more vaccine shots a person has taken, the more likely that person is to support strict measures against Russia, including direct military intervention.

The vaccinated crowd will no doubt attribute this to the fact that both vaccines and harsh measures against Russia are proper things to do. They are the smart ones who know right from wrong. The unvaccinated will conclude that the finding shows how effective propaganda is. One thing is for sure, the two camps will not agree on the likely cause of the correlation. There's no point in starting any arguments over these findings.

The split in society between skeptics and conformists is becoming evermore apparent. However, another split appears also to be growing, and that is the divide between regions that I predicted back in October.

I noticed the first whiff of this when I was talking to my father on the phone the other day. He was much more concerned about the Russia Ukraine conflict than people are in Portugal. His angle on the conflict seemed strange. But one look on a map of Europe explains the disconnect perfectly.

Europe

By Rob984 - Derived from Europe orthographic Caucasus Urals boundary.svg and Europe on the globe (red).svg., Public Domain, Link

My father is in Norway, which has a common border with Russia in the north. Russia invaded Finnmark at the end of WW2. They may do this again. However, Portugal is as far away from Russia as it's possible to get and still remain on the continent of Europe. The Russians will never invade Portugal. The only possible danger to Portugal would come through its membership in NATO.

Everyone knows this, so there's no concern beyond the possibility of involvement through NATO. People are therefore much less concerned about Russia in Portugal than in Norway. Similarly, the sort of sympathy Germans and Austrians have with Ukraine is not reflected in Portugal. Nobody wants to ban the letter Z.

There are plenty of Ukraine supporters in Portugal, but they are not as rabid as they are in countries closer to Russia.

Adding to this disconnect, we have the fact that Brazil has refused to vent any opinion on the conflict. There's a BRIC wall across the Atlantic. Brazil is hugely influential in Portugal due to its size and colonial past, so their neutrality affects the way Portuguese people see the conflict.

To get an idea of how influential Brazil is, we can compare the relationship between the US and the UK with that of Brazil and Portugal. The US is about five times as populous as the UK, while Brazil is twenty times as populous as Portugal. While the UK can be considered an important partner for the US, Portugal is but a quaint peripheral place in Europe.

If Europe breaks into its traditional regional spheres, Portugal will almost certainly become a peripheral partner of Brazil. Even more so than the UK is a partner of the US, and this kind of splits are starting to show.

Mark Esper with Jens Stoltenberg

By U.S. Secretary of Defense - 200212-D-AP390-6107, CC BY 2.0, Link