The current crisis in Ukraine conjures up another Munich analogy. Russia’s Vladimir Putin easily fits the bill as the new Hitler. He has already seized Ukraine’s Crimea region and now wants the rest of that country, just as Hitler first took Austria in 1938 and later that year demanded part of Czechoslovakia. The Munich Conference gave him the Sudetenland in the name of “appeasement,” a desperate strategy to avoid a second world war at any cost. We know how that worked out.
But not every bad guy is Hitler, and not every concession is Munich. For a century, from 1815- 1914, the Western powers relied on strategies like the “balance of power” and “spheres of influence” to keep Europe at peace. Despite many limited local wars during that time Europe managed to prosper and grow in wealth and power throughout the world, even exporting millions of Europeans to the New World as immigrants. What eventually destroyed that system was “some damned foolish thing”* and a series of miscalculations that led to the bloodbath of the First World War. * “One day the great European War will come out of some damned foolish thing in the Balkans (1888).” – Otto von Bismarck
The First World War began when Czarist Russia mobilized to protect its Serbian cousins from an Austro-Hungarian invasion, provoked when a Serb assassinated Austrian Archduke Ferdinand in 1914 – that “foolish thing in the Balkans”. Once Russia mobilized, other nations followed. With millions of troops in the field, it was easier to get the damn war started than to send them home to wait for the next mobilization. One foolish thing led to another – World War I led to Hitler.
In 1933, Benito Mussolini wanted to create a new security system he called the Four-Power Pact. The traditional powers of Europe – France, Great Britain, Italy, and Germany: two democracies and two dictatorships – would pledge to resolve their differences and those of the lesser nations peacefully. Mussolini was anticipating a resurgent Germany under the Nazis, which he clearly feared. However, the British and French preferred to entrust European peace to their new League of Nations, so they only agreed to a Four Power Pact subordinated to the League – essentially emasculating the Pact.
The League was a flop. Ironically, it was Mussolini’s watered down Four-Power Pact that led to the Munich Conference. Cursed by history, but Munich gave Europe another year of peace. Mussolini was hailed across the globe as a peacemaker in 1938.
World War II began as a German-Slav thing. Hitler wanted the Slavic lands of Czechoslovakia, Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia to accommodate his Germanic expansion. Vladimir Putin, today’s Slav-in-Chief, wants the same thing. But he’s willing to have Slavic puppets in these countries as opposed to colonizing them – essentially, his own Monroe Doctrine.
Maybe expanding NATO into eastern Europe and to Russia’s border after the fall of the USSR was a foolish thing. Perhaps treating post-Soviet Russia like a defeated power and a permanent enemy was a foolish thing. Could denying Putin his “sphere of influence” be a foolish thing? Do we need Russia to checkmate Red China? Can we afford to lose more European lives?
The one lesson that never came out World War II is how self-defeating was Britain’s and France’s rejection of Fascist Italy as an ally against Hitler. Our Institute will soon publish a report on that missed lesson. Suffice it to say, striving for a “balance of power” and allowing “spheres of influence” are still very much valid ways to maintain peace. Think of the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. The USSR was at our doorstep with offensive missiles. We mobilized and blockaded Cuba. Khrushchev blinked, but so did Kennedy. It was a balance of power – Soviet missiles out of Cuba/ U.S. missiles out of Turkey – and “spheres of influence”.
Seems now we are no smarter than the fools who stumbled into the First World War. Our “Archduke Ferdinand” of 1914 is President Viktor Yanukovych, Putin’s Ukrainian puppet who was overthrown in 2014, ironically 100 years later. Did we foment that “Revolution of Dignity” as the media called it – Putin thinks so. That’s when he seized the Crimea. That’s why he is cozying up to Red China. Throw in Hunter Biden’s escapades in Ukraine, Vice President Joe Biden’s ordering the dismissal of a Ukrainian prosecutor in 2016, and Trump’s “perfect phone call”, and the U.S. is up to its eyeballs in Ukrainian politics.
History is complicated. -JLM
It is the old story, yet learned. History is repeated but we fail to learn from it, event if it repeats it self. We have been there with Hitler and now Putin is repeating it with his troops on the border of Ukraine. Sorry to say we are not willing to stop Putin as we should. If Putin gets away with the invasion, think of what China will do.
Clearly, NATO has no military power to stop or even intimidate Russia. There will probably be a “secret” deal that will get everyone off the hook. A war over this issue would the most foolish thing of all.
Experiencing this Ukrainian mess does make me recall the history of the region…Regardless of the political dynamics of the Russian State from Czar to Communist to whatever Putin calls himself they are going to get their warm-water ports.(It would have been nice if global warming would have taken care of that for mother Russia…)!
At one time the Czars wanted to push their connections to the Orthodox Churches, and Constantinople to expand their interest in Mare Nostrum, after the Napoleonic Wars. They bungled that up bad but did set themselves up as the defender and protectors of the Orthodox Church, and part of the reason Serbia looked to Russia as an ally in WWI. But of course, somehow the British solidified their interest in the area taking Malta and Cypress for over 120 years and holding the Russians at bay during the Crimea War.
…as an aside, the Kingdom of Savoy joined the fray on the side of the British and French…and their reward was an agreement not to oppose Italian Unification….but of course, the French got Nice or Nizza (Garibaldi’s birth place) thrown in to sweeten the pot….I thought all that was behind us but wrong again…who knows what will happens next, a new Constantinople led by Czar Putin?????
Not to forget that during the Spanish Civil War, Italian subs torpedoed Soviet arms ships in the Mediterranean to prevent the Communist takeover of Spain. Stalin would have two great warm water ports in Spain, on the Med and the Atlantic.
John:
Do you think Putin would have done this with Pompeo still the Secretary of State?
I do not think so.
Putin is playing the apathetic Europeans in Nato against us. He knows there is no NATO – none of the European members even have a military draft or pay their fair share. They all depend on Russian gas. Italy just announced that they are against any sanctions on Russian gas. Germany depends on Putin’s gas. Trump and Pompeo at least knew how to play this game. Putin waited for our bench-warmers to pull this off. When Biden undermined the oil industry here he gave Putin the upper hand – we now import Russian oil and the increased pump price, if there are sanctions, will be Biden’s undoing.