Are We Seeing A Repeat Of History?

 I remember a conversation from watching the movie, Thirteen Days (click here), that pertains to Russia's immoral invasion of Ukraine. In that movie, President Kennedy and his top staff had to figure out how to respond to the then Soviet Union placing missiles with nuclear warheads in Cuba. Such a placement gave the Soviet Union a tremendous first strike capability. 

In that conversation, attempting to peacefully negotiate in order to remove the missiles was immediately ruled out because such attempts would be to repeat the same mistakes made Munich.  Munich was where Hitler and Prime Minister Chamberlain and others agreed that Hitler could annex parts of Czechoslovakia in return for not invading that country. The lesson learned from Munich was that trying to appease an aggressor only emboldens the aggressor. However, history showed that the Soviet Union was not trying to be an aggressor in placing offensive missiles in Cuba. So Munich was not the right analogy.

When President Eisenhower was trying to fashion a response to North Vietnam's attempt to take over South Vietnam, the domino theory dominated the analysis of what was going on there in Southeast Asia. It was WW II's Japanese invasion of Southeast Asia that gave Eisenhower faith in the domino theory. Also, with having lost China to the Communists in the latter part of the 1940s, there was sensitivity about losing another country to Communism. Eisenhower and others then reasoned that if South Vietnam fell to the Communists, other nations in the region would fall too. But that did not occur in part because the Vietnam War was about the reunification of the two Vietnams instead of Communist expansion. 

And so we come to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Fiona Hill, a former State Department official claimed that Russia's invasion of Ukraine was an attack on the West suggesting that other attacks would follow if Russia succeeded in Ukraine. Such an analysis requires that the West must defend Ukraine at all costs. Of course, all costs could include suffering attacks with nuclear weapons. 

Western Europe is making a stand by supporting Ukraine with weapons and other means of support in an effort to foil Russia's plans for Ukraine. And why shouldn't they? After all, Hitler's attempts to create his own empire in Europe is is still fresh in their memories. 

And so the past is being heavily employed in interpreting Putin's invasion. We should note here the analysis of Putin by some of his fellow countrymen. And that analysis does not just consider his invasion of Ukraine, it also is aware of Putin's past brutal policies in Chechnya and his harsh, Stalin-like suppression of free speech in Russia where voicing opposition or criticism of the war could win one years in a Russian work camp. Here, we could consider the words of Mikhail Gorbachev who after seeing Putin taking freedom of speech away from his fellow Russians said that all of his work in bringing openness to the Russian people was now in vain. 

Or we could consider the analysis of the Russian art collective, Pussy Riot, which says that Putin is the most brutal dictator in the world today. And it is necessary to remove Putin from office asap.

Indeed, Putin's words and actions seem strikingly similar to past Russian and Soviet leaders, For example, the Tsars saw themselves as being such a part of Russia that they believed that to oppose them is to oppose Russia itself. Then when we come to the Russian Revolution, Lenin and the Bolsheviks believed that to oppose Lenin and the Central Committee was to stand against the Revolution and the Proletariates. And now we see Putin talking and acting in the same way. Putin believes that those who oppose him and his policies are enemies of the Russian people.

There is one more piece of the puzzle that we must look at here. And that is the facts that we live in a nuclear age and Putin has even threatened to use nuclear weapons if opposition against his policies reaches a certain, but undefined, point. It is this last set of facts that makes accurately understanding Putin and his future plans and why he is invading Ukraine. But what makes a good analysis of Putin and the situation possible is that there is so much that we don't know. We don't know if Putin is willing to use nuclear weapons to get his way. We don't know what Putin's plans will be if he succeeds in Ukraine. The near past and present show us how brutal and coldhearted he can be when waging war.

All of the above must be considered in terms of what lengths that the West should go in supporting and even defending Ukraine. Is Ukraine a hill to die on or should there be a point when we concede Ukraine to Putin. What could we accomplish if we knew that we would have to let Putin win in Ukraine? Could we support such a resistance to the invasion that Putin would not be willing to invade another neighbor? Or should we draw the line Ukraine even if it risks a nuclear war?

There are enough serious risks to go around regardless of what the West decides to do. To let Russia have Ukraine would not only subject many Ukrainians to Putin's cruel and tyrannical rule, it could embolden Putin to invade again and again. To make Ukraine a hill to die on is to risk the use of nuclear weapons that could grow into a nuclear war. 

Here we should note that there is one lesson that we could take away from the current Russian war against Ukraine. That is that just as technology makes people more powerful, it also makes them more vulnerable. Let's hope that our leaders get this right in their response to Russia. Let's hope that our leaders are using both history and the most up to date information and analyses of both Putin and the situation. Not only must their information be correct, but their analysis, though using the past, must not be limited by what happened in the past.