Russia’s “big concession is they stop fighting, and they don’t take any more land,” U.S. President Donald Trump said on Tuesday, when asked what Russia was conceding in the thinly disguised surrender document he was trying to shove down Ukrainian throats. He truly is a 19th-century man at heart.

Those were the good old days, when anything you could conquer, you could keep. France took North Africa, Britain took South Africa, the United States took half of Mexico, and Russia took a big chunk of China (but then lost it to Japan).

Actually, it was always like that. Every little human hunter-gatherer band fought to defend or expand its territories. And nobody changed the rules when they developed civilizations a few thousand years ago. War still delivered satisfactory results for the winners

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