Astance on an issue, or a group of issues

GLOBAL WARMING, YEMEN CIVIL WAR, VENZUELA,  

Explanation:

“the battle of stalingrad is not a turning point necessarily in strategic terms, because a lot more has to be done before the soviets can be certain of defeating germany,” says renowned world war ii historian richard overy. the germans had fought nearly a thousand miles across the soviet union to get to stalingrad.

nothing certain is known about what happened, but it seems that the country declined gradually, perhaps due to bad government, or, more likely, due to a series of bad harvests, which resulted in widespread and recurrent famine.