You inadvertantly hit the nail on the head. Your final line 'I think I'll learn more about some of the other conflicts that involve my african brothers and sisters' - does that mean you don't care about the middle East? Does that mean you don't care about the Muslims struggling under the Chinese autocracy.

Of course not.

But you're biologically programmed to think within a subsection of people. That can be your nation - because those people are your national tribe - or it can be people who look like you - because that is your genetic tribe. What you're seeing in Europe is Europeans being interested in a war because a) it's pretty damn close and b) the people look like them. You didn't intend to be racist when you said you were going to look out for your African brothers and sisters - but Asian people might take it that way and it would be fair interpretation. You said... all war is hell and we should stop playing favourites then immediately went on to play favourites - that's because human beings are really really complicated.

We have to differentiate between what is racism and what is human nature. There are plenty of racists in Ukraine - I've written an article about them recently and yes, there are problems at the border but those problems are quite contained given the scope of what could go wrong. The last time white folks had a war, it was all encompassing and fucktonnes of people of all colours were killed - it pays to pay close attention to what's happening here because the ramifications aren't limited to a small nation state.