One Sunday morning shortly after the Russian invasion of Ukraine started, you wrote a post entitled, ‘The Hinge of Fate’ (which made me pull out my credit card an immediately subscribe). Our moment now makes me think of another turn of phrase from Churchill. In the month after WW2 ended a journalist asked Churchill, what he suggested that war be named , as WW1 had been called the ‘Great War’ there was popular discussion of what would be fitting.
Churchill responded without hesitation, “The
Unnecessary War, for never was there a war that could have been more easily avoided if the great democracies had stood together to stop Hitler when he first began his aggression”. The analogue to our world now is obvious but requires people to think of the future instead of only the now. I doubt it would change the minds of many non- interventionist types but maybe leading with
something to the effect of ‘we must avoid the unnecessary war….the war that is sure to come to the rest of Europe if we don’t arm our Allies in Ukraine’ would make the reader pause for thought. Thanks as always!
Churchill didn't go back far enough. It went back to the Treaty of Versailles when the "winners" decided a starving Germany had to pay for a war that the Allies gleefully decided would end by Christmas 1914. They then decided to carve up European nations that had existed for literally centuries. They also vastly underestimated the new weapons of war each nation decided to invest in before the war, and fought the battles as they had back during the Napoleonic era - which ended with the slaughter of millions of soldiers on both sides.
All true, and when the West didn’t repeat that mistake after WW2 but instead financed the rebuilding of their former enemies Churchill called it “the least sordid act ever committed in history”. If Russia is abandoned after Putin is eventually defeated, we will have planted the same seeds again.
True. But Russia is an outlier, has been since Napoleon was defeated. The US offered the Soviets, and the countries they held, help. Stalin refused, and tried to expand even further - that was the point of the Berlin Blockade and the Iron Curtain. As someone said (again, don't remember where), Russia needs the West even for their oil and gas extraction. Yet their "leadership" pretends they can do it all - as long as they can conquer western countries that have the expertise they desperately need.
That is all true as well, and we can’t let our hope blind us to reality. …we need some realistic hope now though. The exemplary behavior of Ukraine and some of her western neighbors should set the bar for what we expect of ourselves.
The can-do attitude that sent us to the moon and other great accomplishments of the past century seems have disappeared from large segments of the population. Despite their tough stance and their belligerent talk, many people are wedded to their "me-me-me" attitude. Any sacrifice for the public good is alien to a good number of Americans nowadays..
Too many are still under the delusion that history has ended and we won. So much success born out of WWI and then the cold war that we're trapped looking at our own glorious reflection, unable to see any problem or issue with that.
Too bad some fable or mythological tale didn't warn us about such things.
2 min ago
One Sunday morning shortly after the Russian invasion of Ukraine started, you wrote a post entitled, ‘The Hinge of Fate’ (which made me pull out my credit card an immediately subscribe). Our moment now makes me think of another turn of phrase from Churchill. In the month after WW2 ended a journalist asked Churchill, what he suggested that war be named , as WW1 had been called the ‘Great War’ there was popular discussion of what would be fitting.
Churchill responded without hesitation, “The
Unnecessary War, for never was there a war that could have been more easily avoided if the great democracies had stood together to stop Hitler when he first began his aggression”. The analogue to our world now is obvious but requires people to think of the future instead of only the now. I doubt it would change the minds of many non- interventionist types but maybe leading with
something to the effect of ‘we must avoid the unnecessary war….the war that is sure to come to the rest of Europe if we don’t arm our Allies in Ukraine’ would make the reader pause for thought. Thanks as always!
Churchill didn't go back far enough. It went back to the Treaty of Versailles when the "winners" decided a starving Germany had to pay for a war that the Allies gleefully decided would end by Christmas 1914. They then decided to carve up European nations that had existed for literally centuries. They also vastly underestimated the new weapons of war each nation decided to invest in before the war, and fought the battles as they had back during the Napoleonic era - which ended with the slaughter of millions of soldiers on both sides.
All true, and when the West didn’t repeat that mistake after WW2 but instead financed the rebuilding of their former enemies Churchill called it “the least sordid act ever committed in history”. If Russia is abandoned after Putin is eventually defeated, we will have planted the same seeds again.
True. But Russia is an outlier, has been since Napoleon was defeated. The US offered the Soviets, and the countries they held, help. Stalin refused, and tried to expand even further - that was the point of the Berlin Blockade and the Iron Curtain. As someone said (again, don't remember where), Russia needs the West even for their oil and gas extraction. Yet their "leadership" pretends they can do it all - as long as they can conquer western countries that have the expertise they desperately need.
That is all true as well, and we can’t let our hope blind us to reality. …we need some realistic hope now though. The exemplary behavior of Ukraine and some of her western neighbors should set the bar for what we expect of ourselves.
The can-do attitude that sent us to the moon and other great accomplishments of the past century seems have disappeared from large segments of the population. Despite their tough stance and their belligerent talk, many people are wedded to their "me-me-me" attitude. Any sacrifice for the public good is alien to a good number of Americans nowadays..
Too many are still under the delusion that history has ended and we won. So much success born out of WWI and then the cold war that we're trapped looking at our own glorious reflection, unable to see any problem or issue with that.
Too bad some fable or mythological tale didn't warn us about such things.
We must keep finding new ways to reach people, to get them to understand how the outcome in Ukraine will determine so much of our children’s future.