For as long as I've been alive Russia has been the "fuck you" state. From despots like Stalin and Krushchev, through to 1991, when Russia made the transition from a communist state to a criminal state in less than a year, they've gone their own way, ignoring the protests of the rest of the world.
Just this year, when a world consensus formed that the rule of Assad in Syria was a bad thing, Russia chose the opposite course and went to war to keep him in power. But it seems one bomb on a plane has changed all that. Sure, they're still saying they support Assad, but from ignoring the threat of IS they have suddenly become its biggest opponent, curiously bringing them into line with the west in a way that hasn't occurred since the end of World War II. Who saw that coming?
To me it demonstrates yet again what a complicated and unpredictable world we live in today.
The Paris bombings have united the world against IS, if the unanimous vote in the UN is anything to go by. But what happens next? The fight against IS is going to be at least as hard as the fight against the Nazis or the Japanese militarists. The world has changed out of all recognition since the 1940s, and we now face a foe like some many-headed hydra: cut one off and another grows, even more terrifying than the last. There are so many "soft targets" out there, places where people gather in large numbers and are virtually impossible to protect- shopping malls, sporting events, hotels, airports, the list is endless. We can't protect them all, and the more we try the more our freedoms are restricted.
The vote last night at the UN was unprecedented, and may mark a new phase in the fight against those men who would impose their medieval world view on us. But it's going to be a long, bloody road.
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