How could Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine backfire on him — and what does Russia's aggression mean for American domestic policy? AEI's scholars tackled these and other essential questions this week.

Leon Aron explains that no matter how the war in Ukraine ends, it will have "serious, if not fatal, domestic repercussions" for Putin. The threats to Putin, Aron contends, could come from Russia's oligarchs, military leaders, and ordinary citizens, and they increase with every day that Ukraine repels Russia's invasion.

Russia's aggression also means that the United States and its NATO allies must increase defense and security spending, argues R. Glenn Hubbard — and that will require making difficult choices about raising taxes and slowing the growth of social-insurance spending.  

Elsewhere in foreign policy, Danielle Pletka and Brett D. Schaefer of the Heritage Foundation evaluate China's influence on the International Telecommunications Union (ITU). Pletka and Schaefer warn that Beijing is exerting greater influence on the ITU, an organization that wields enormous influence on Americans' daily lives by establishing standards for communications and digital technologies. They recommend that the United States works to maintain its independence.

Robert Pondiscio argues that school choice advocates should welcome parents who are concerned about the values promoted in public schools. "Schools are the institutions we build to transmit to children the values, habits, stories, and ideas we value: in a word, our culture," he writes. "To think there should be no debate about what that comprises is to misunderstand entirely what a school is and the purpose it serves in civil society."

Chris Stirewalt contemplates the apocalyptic politics of our time, in which we see every controversy as deciding the fate of mankind. Although inherent in the human condition, Stirewalt argues, this way of thinking obscures real solutions to our long-term problems and blinds us to how good things are now.