Man in a red Japanese outfit talking to the Russian Bear in green army trousers and brown army boots as he sits on the ground and holds his head. Stars over his head indicate the hits he took. There is ocean behind them and then the sun, indicating the far east. On the horizon, four warships have been blown into the sky.

“Your size and weight don’t count in my style of wrestling.”

This was the last in a series of six postcards that marked the Russo-Japanese War (1904–05).1 I chose it because its caption speaks to Russia’s current war against Ukraine. The Russian Bear’s smaller opponent says, “Your size and weight don’t count in my style of wrestling.” Unlike today, Japan, not Russia, began this war with a surprise attack. Still, observers assumed the Russian Bear would prevail. It did not, and the Tsar faced revolution at home. The bigger the beast, the harder the fall.

The war in Ukraine is different, but there, too, Russia is running up against the limits of its strength. It is facing economic collapse and worse. Rather strangely, the new-old U.S. president wants to throw his weight behind the corrupt old Russian Bear. Doing so will cost more Ukrainian lives and the United States its reputation and influence. But Ukraine will come up with new ways to stop Russia. Meanwhile, the political cartoonists will continue to do their thing, if not on postcards.

  1. Written in ink partly over the English caption are some words in French I can’t quite make out. Source: The Newberry Library, John I. Monroe collection of artist-signed postcards, https://collections.newberry.org/asset-management/2KXJ8ZS64D8UI. ↩︎