Of Lessons Learned And To Be Learned

 There are times when what we've learned in the past can help us, and there are times when those same lessons can hurt our efforts to learn something new. Sometimes what we have learned from past mistakes applies to today. For example, I learned from my father's alcoholism to be careful about participating in potentially addictive behaviors. Thus, I no longer drink alcoholic beverages, but when I did drink them, I was very strict with myself regarding how much I drank. And though my personality type lends itself to addiction, I have avoided being addicted to drugs, gambling, smoking, and alcohol.

But sometimes the lessons learned in the past interfere with learning new things. The video below illustrates that point by showing kids, who were raised on modern cell phones, trying to figure out how to use a dial phone:

I saw the same two effects when teaching computer science. I saw times when past learning sometimes helped people learn something new and I saw times when past learning interfered with learning something new.

When leaders face a new problem or crisis, they often try to understand that problem or crisis solely in terms of  past lessons. I remember part of the movie 13 Days, which is a movie about the Cuban Missile Crisis,,when our nation's leaders were hesitant to negotiate a deal with Russia regarding the removal of their nuclear armed missiles in Cuba because of the lessons learned from WW II's Munich agreement. And yet, unlike what happened after Munich, the deal brokered with the USSR saw a successful resolution to the crisis.

And so we face a problem, or perhaps even a crisis, regarding Putin's intentions toward the Ukraine. Should we compare Putin to Hitler who was being driven by imperial desires and thus no agreement could quench his hunger for new territorial acquisitions? Or is Putin more comparable to Khrushchev who was reacting to American nuclear armed missiles located near Russia's border in Turkey?

Determining with whom we should compare Putin requires both a good knowledge of history as well as an understanding of who Putin is as a man and a leader.

History tells us this: because of past invasions from Western European nations, Russia easily feels threatened by the West. After all there was the Swedish invasion of Russia in the early 1700s, the French invasion of Russia in the early 1800s, the WW I and WW II German invasions of Russia, and the Western incursion into Russia in the Russian Civil War following the October, 1917 Russian Revolution. Was it any wonder then that following WW II, the Soviet Union created the 'Iron Curtain' where it controlled and used Eastern European nations as a buffer against the West.

Of course, the Soviet Union finally dissolved and part of that included the reunification of Eastern and Western Germany into one nation. Part of the understanding between the two leaders, George H. W. Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev, was that NATO would not move eastward by offering memberships to former Warsaw Pact nations that were part of the old 'Iron Curtain.' But not long after that, under President Clinton if memory serves, NATO did exactly that by offering NATO memberships to Eastern European nations. Here we should note that NATO is a nuclear power. And around the time that John McCain was running for President, there were proposals that floated the idea of putting putting strategic defensive equipment in Eastern European nations  that bordered Russia. Russian leaders countered with the threat of using tactical nuclear weapons to removes those defenses.

Well that is at least a part of the historical context to the current standoff over the Ukraine.  What we should also note is that Putin is an authoritarian tyrant who, according to Gorbachev, should have loosened his controlling grip on the Russian government by allowing the freedom for Russians to form their own political parties that would produce viable contenders to his candidacy in elections. Furthermore, Putin's past actions in the Caucasus along with the strong suspicion of his ordering of assassination and incarcerations of political rivals and public critics testify to his authoritarian personality. And there is also the question of whether Putin wants to revive the territorial boundaries of the 9ld Russian Empire that existed under the Tsars.

So what should we make of Putin's troop buildup on the Ukrainian border? Does Putin have imperial desires or does Russia feel threatened by NATO's relationship with the Ukraine and is planning to act as the US did in Latin America during the 1980s when it opposed Leftist revolutions in Nicaragua and El Salvador or in nations that saw Leftist leaders win democratic elections in Guatemala and Chile? We should note that with Chile, the US did to that nation what some, including myself, suspect Russia of doing in the US today: trying to destabilize the nation to prepare it for a coup.

An overview of the potential Ukrainian crisis tells us that not enough of us are willing to share power and wealth, traits that will lead to our self-destruction regardless of what Putin's intentions are. In the meantime, all we can hope for from our President is that he will take actiong that will give him time to accurately read Putin's intentions before determining what further actions to take. In addition, we can also hope that these two nuclear-armed giants will not play games of chicken with everyone's future on the line.