Jametown Post-Journal
How History Repeats Itself
FEB 19,
2022
ROLLAND KIDDEr
A good friend
of mine related a story from one of his history classes in college. In a question
directed to him the professor asked: “What is history?” My friend
was silent, somewhat dumbfounded and didn’t know how to respond. “Well,” said the
professor, “it’s just one damn thing happening after another!”
It seems to me that this college teacher had a pretty good grasp on describing what “history” is. Another matter of note about history is that human beings tend not to change much and so what has happened in the past is likely to happen again in the future.
It should
really be no surprise that Vladimir Putin wants to invade Ukraine. Strong men,
autocrats, dictators–have always liked to invade other countries. Think of
Hitler, Stalin or Tojo during World War II. It didn’t matter whether it was
Poland, Finland or China–invading and taking over someone else’s territory is
part of what being a dictator is all about.
Why do
autocrats think this way? Probably because of the truth that “absolute power
corrupts absolutely.” It could also be because, in their view, being strong
means that you can push other people around. And, that idea probably stems from
the sinful side of human nature which posits that some people are superior to
other people–the opposite of the Golden Rule which says “we should
treat our neighbors as ourselves.”
Another lesson
from history is that, often, other nations are unwilling or ill-prepared to
stand up to such aggression. Think here of Neville Chamberlain’s attempt to
mollify Hitler by allowing him to take over Czechoslovakia in 1939. Part of
Chamberlain’s motivation was that he knew that Britain and the West were not
prepared at the time to stop Hitler.
Bringing all of
this back to our current crisis with Vladimir Putin threatening to invade
Ukraine–old lessons from history still seem to ring true today. We and the
democratic nations of the West are not prepared militarily to stop Putin. The
United States today only has a volunteer Army which is over-committed and
undermanned. The same could be said of NATO and our other Western alliances.
The hope is that the threat of sanctions and isolating Russia from the rest of
the world will be enough of a deterrent to stop Putin. Will it?
The last time
we came this close to having a war with Russia was with the Cuban Missile
Crisis of 1962. War seemed imminent then, but the Russian leader, Nikita
Khrushchev, finally realized that going to war with the United States would be
disastrous–and he backed off. Will Putin back off?
Let’s hope that
he does. If he doesn’t, is the United States ready to impose a sea and air
embargo on everything going in and out of Russia? Are we willing to mobilize
our population and reinstate the draft in order to carry on a war?
The
historical “repeat” we are all hoping for is that diplomacy can work
to save Ukraine, rather than having its failure lead to war. If Putin invades
Ukraine, will China be emboldened to invade Taiwan? History is unpredictable.
The whole crisis reminds us again that we still live in a very fractured world.
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