‘We’re in 1938 now’: Putin’s war in Ukraine and lessons from history
‘We’re in 1938 now’: Putin’s war in Ukraine and lessons from history
Interesting article that talks about the similarities between now and 1938, and the sort of lessons we can learn from history.
He argued: “There is one actor that has reorganised its strategic engagement to fight a war and the other has not. One side is not participating in the battle. You have hosted conferences supporting Ukraine and then do nothing more. But when it comes to action, Russia 2.0 is grinding forward.
“It tells countries like us that if something like this were to happen in the Indo-Pacific, you have no chance against China. If you cannot defeat a $2tn nation, don’t think you are deterring China. China is taking hope from your abysmal and dismal performance against a much smaller adversary.”
This, in a nutshell, is where the world is headed ... unless the self-proclaimed defender of democracy (USA) and the EU pull up their britches and start taking Russian aggression seriously.
The problem with learning from history is that everyone has their own idea about what those lessons are that we should be learning.
I've played that hoi4 scenario as Czechcoslovakia and the only reason it's winnable is because it's a game and the ai makes huge mistakes.
I've been comparing this invasion of ukraine to Czechcoslovakia since almost the start, but there are differences. Not really between the justification or the foreign policy that the Russian government is using. Between the relative strength of Czechcoslovakia v nazi Germany and ukraine v russia. Also between ukraine's negotiated treaties. Ukraine appears stronger than Czechcoslovakia but never obtained a defensive pact with a single other country. The Czechoslovaks had a defensive pact, but it was quickly abandoned. I still see letting them fall as akin to appeasement, some vying for leadership positions have suggested that abandoning defense pacts is justified sometimes. If it's justified sometimes you may try to find a hole to make it justified all the time. All ukraine had been promised was weapons and we may be in a position where we tell ourselves we did our part even if we didn't do enough.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The proximate causes of the current conflicts in Ukraine, the Middle East, the South China Sea and even Armenia might be different, but the bigger picture showed an interconnected battlefield in which post-cold war certainties had given way to “great-power competition” in which authoritarian leaders were testing the boundaries of their empires.
In a sign of the times, Michael Roth, the SPD chair of the Bundestag foreign affairs committee and a supporter of arming Ukraine, is quitting politics, saying he found it was like stepping into a refrigerator to hold the views he did inside his own party.
Critics say this fatalistic narrative – dovetailing with Russia’s main objective, which is to convince the US that further aid is futile – also makes little attempt to identify the lessons of the past two years about the failure to organise a war economy in Europe.
Liberal market economies are inherently likely to be slower to adapt to war than their authoritarian counterparts, but one of the lessons of the 1930s, and those locust years, is that organising for rearmament entails planning and not just false reassurances, which were the stock in trade of Chamberlain and his predecessor Stanley Baldwin.
Incredibly, the adviser to the Polish chief of staff, Krzysztof Król, admitted to a conference last month that after two years “we have not yet created proper conditions for a Ukrainian victory with our plans because political leaders had not yet told them the objective”.
It will take two meetings, one involving the G7 leaders in Italy next week and then the 75th anniversary Nato summit in Washington in July, to reveal whether the west wishes not to contain Putin, but to defeat him – with all the risk that carries, including for China.
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Fast forward to where pooty pants shoots himself in the head in a bunker
It seems odd to me how the author compares Ukraine to an alternative reality of 1938 imagined by their favorite historian.
Flat comparing 2020s to 1930s is already tenuous enough.
It feels like your dismissing the idea of learning from history.
Far from it: history is an account of things that happened. Learning from it requires a solid adherence to what is known about what happened.
The value of speculating on alternate timelines is not to learn from the theorized history but to illustrate how interwoven it is with the events of the time.
You can still call that learning from history, but it is a very different avenue of inquiry. I love alternate timelines, and I also respect the limits of their value.
Literally 1938
Just out of curiosity, can anyone name one war the US has been involved in since WWII where a high ranking government official did not compare it to WWII to drum up support?
Well for one if you read the article the persons comparing it are the Estonian prime minister and her favorite history professor
The reason I specified is that random people may make random comparisons all the time, so if I just said "where people did not compare it" it wouldn't really mean anything. Estonia doesn't tend to have as many wars they need to drum up support for so they don't do it as often, but it's still a greatly overused analogy in general. People said it about Korea. They said it about Vietnam. They said it about Iraq. All of those comparisons were ridiculous in hindsight but worked well enough at the time. It's basically just a go-to thing you can say and people will just knee-jerk get on board with whatever military endeavor you're doing at a given time, regardless of what it is.
How does this argument work, the military spending of the Nazis was insane in the build up to the war, up to 40% in 1939, no such numbers in Russia. Even now it’s just estimated at 10% and they clearly need all of it just to fight the war in Ukraine. How are they ever gonna steamroll Nato with those numbers, there is no tangible proof that they are planning for this.
The Putin is Hitler mantra also doesn’t make any sense, he has been a moderate (all be it an authoritarian) politician for decades, and now he suddenly is the rebirth of Hitler. Just looking at his politics he’s clearly not a fascist.
We’ve been sold that Ukraine can win this war militarily, and the collective west can cripple the Russian economy with sanctions alone. Now that this turns out to be complete BS, they (a subset of western politicians) are looking for a way out, and clearly their preferred way is further escalations. So now they are selling us even more BS to justify this.
I mean the percentages are different, but the argument remains the same, Russia is attacking a sovereign nation and feels they can do it with impunity. Getting access to all of Ukraine's resources helps them rebuild faster and help destabilize the West more since they would be able to affect food supply chains.
Putting being "moderate" is irrelevant (though I didn't agree Putin, who is homophobic is moderate), his similarities are with his actions in attacking a country for personal Gain.
There is no other option to counteract Russian aggression, supporting Ukraine and sanctioning Russia are the major tools the West has. Ukraine can defend themselves but the West has been slow to provide sufficient support, quickly. This stems from Russian influence on the West as well (Republicans warming up to Russia, or things beneficial to them). Sanctions take time, to affect countries. Russia is currently selling oil at discounts and also may have to begin to import more oil. These are all problems for Russia that will continue to get worse.
If Russia succeeds in occupying Ukraine completely it will take an immense amount of resources to subdue the population, I don’t see why this will be any different than Iraq. Given the current resistance it might even be impossible for Russia to simply occupy Ukraine and extract its resources, this is also probably the reason why they have tried to sue for peace multiple times.
Putin is a moderate in Russian politics, and it is relevant because it means there are ways to negotiate with him.
May I add: Hitler was largely supported by the youth. Putin is mostly supported by the elderly.
Russia is already fighting all of NATO in some areas, Ukraine already uses NATO training and aerial reconnaissance/space reconnaissance resources, British troops on the ground perform some of the steps (Ukrainians performing the others) to fire missiles
"he almost mocked the inability of the west’s $40tn economy to organise a battlefield defeat of Russia’s $2tn economy." <- this really bothers me. There is no will here for Ukraine to succeed.
Very interesting link, thank you.
Yep. The vast majority of liberal and conservative politicians are doing the absolute minimum to support Ukraine, if they're doing anything at all in the first place. I can understand conservatives wanting Russia to win because they idolize Russia, but how everyone else seems to also be fine with the idea is just mystifying.
It’s unbelievably frustrating, because most people at the outset of the conflict were horrified and strongly against just letting Russia do what they wanted.
Instead of capitalizing on that fairly universal public outrage and doing the right thing, the ossified thought processes of pretty much everyone in charge of anything in the west made them hem and haw and delay and prevaricate and play right into Putin’s hand.
It’s pretty clear that Putin’s geopolitical tactics, while completely malevolent and fairly transparent to a HUGE number of people, clearly work incredibly well on our political leaders - in fact, that’s ultimately the only audience he’s ever been playing for.
Idk If you're talking about the US, but liberals/the left have to deal with Republicans having enough power to block any additional funding. The left does want to do more, it's just difficult when one side wants to do things that help Russia
That being said, I do ultimately agree with your sentiment, the West is not doing enough quickly.
This war is very profitable to everyone, but Ukraine. And why would you kill your cash cow?