海角大神

News coverage of the war in Ukraine continues to foreground interesting words, such as sanctions and flywheel.听

The West鈥檚 primary response to the invasion has been to apply economic sanctions to Russia. The word sanction is what鈥檚 variously called an auto-antonym, contronym, or Janus word (from the two-faced Roman deity), because it carries two nearly opposite meanings. If your employer sanctioned your request to reduce your hours, it could mean either that your boss approved of your attempt to find a better work-life balance, or that she penalized you for it.听

Today鈥檚 newsworthy sanctions are the punitive kind 鈥� they are 鈥渆conomic or military action taken ... as a coercive measure, usually to enforce a violated law or treaty,鈥� according to the Oxford English Dictionary. The idea of economic sanctions is ancient 鈥� Athens applied them to a rival city-state in 432 B.C. 鈥� but the word first acquired this particular economic and political sense after World War I. 聽

Sanction鈥檚 opposite meanings make sense if we look at its history. It derives from the Latin verb sanc墨re, 鈥渢o ordain, decree鈥� or 鈥渢o render sacred or inviolable.鈥� Sanction was first used in a religious context, to mean a law or ecclesiastical decree. The word then came to refer to two ways that compliance with such decrees could be enforced: the carrot (鈥渞ewards for obedience鈥�) and the stick (鈥減unishments for disobedience鈥�). Today鈥檚 鈥渁pproval鈥� sense of sanction is the carrot; the 鈥減enalize鈥� sense, the stick.听

Since Russia invaded, opinion columnists and journalists have tried to identify the flywheels of the conflict. Thomas Friedman speculated in The New York Times that 鈥渢he core flywheel鈥� would be what happens between Ukrainian and Russian troops on the ground; Italian journalist Francesco Bussoletti wrote that a no-fly zone over Ukraine is inevitable because the March 10 Russian attack on a children鈥檚 hospital was 鈥渢he flywheel.鈥� A Ukrainian news agency argued for the importance of the moment when 鈥渢he flywheel of Western sanctions started moving at full speed.鈥�

Flywheels are large, heavy wheels attached to crankshafts in engines that 鈥渟mooth ... out delivery of power from a motor to a machine.鈥� Business guru Jim Collins popularized the flywheel metaphor in 2001, as a way to explain positive feedback loops or 鈥渧irtuous cycles.鈥� Momentum is difficult to build 鈥� it takes a lot of energy to get the flywheel moving 鈥� but once it鈥檚 turning, the rotation is easy to maintain. So, when journalists identify flywheels in Ukraine, they are talking about confluences of forces that flow into one another, making a conflict, or solution, self-sustaining.