I’m not going to insult your intelligence by delineating the obvious symmetries/analogies any further. I’m merely imploring Western leaders—who might eventually have to play Churchill and FDR to Putin’s Hitler—to show that you’ve learned from history by standing up to this bully if he even attempts to take Crimea… Don’t stand by and let him take it, as your respective predecessors did when Hitler took Sudetenland; and the rest, as we say, is history.
This is how I pleaded in “Putin as Hitler; Crimea as Sudetenland” (February 26) for Obama and European leaders to learn from history. Therefore, I was encouraged as I listened to Obama echo my concerns during a speech in Brussels yesterday:
To be honest, if we define our — our interests narrowly, if we applied a coldhearted calculus, we might decide to look the other way. Our economy is not deeply integrated with Ukraine’s. Our people and our homeland face no direct threat from the invasion of Crimea. Our own borders are not threatened by Russia’s annexation. But that kind of casual indifference would ignore the lessons that are written in the cemeteries of this continent. It would allow the old way of doing things to regain a foothold in this young century.
(Washington Post, March 26, 2014)
But I would’ve been far more encouraged if it was British Prime Minister David Cameron (or even German Chancellor Angela Merkel) – instead of the American President Barack Obama – channeling Winston Churchill in this fashion. Especially because all indications are that European leaders are far more interested in protecting their economic ties with Putin than they are in stopping his territorial aggression.
This is why, despite their rhetoric condemning Putin’s annexation of Crimea, these European leaders seem every bit as prepared to accept it as their respective predecessors were to accept Hitler’s annexation of Sudetenland. They seem inured to the historical lesson which clearly teaches that it will cost far less to stand up to Putin now than later. Like I said in my very first commentary on this crisis, “Orange Revolution Turns Red … with Blood” (February 25):
Talk about being penny wise and pound foolish:
Meanwhile, am I the only one who wonders how much Putin is paying Steven Segal to sing his praises the way North Korean President Kim Jong-un paid Dennis Rodman to sing his…? But what are we to make of the man-crush these foreign despots have on B-list American celebrities…?
Interestingly enough, though, Putin has finally vindicated my frequent allusions to him as a delusional, neo-Stalinist He-Man by appointing the fat-Elvis-looking Segal as patron of his nationwide, Stalin-era physical fitness program to get Russian youth “ready for labor and defense.” (I guess Arnold was too busy filming yet another “Terminator” movie in a vain attempt to resuscitate his terminal acting career.)
But I suspect Putin is just trying to unnerve other former republics of the Soviet Union by giving them the impression that he’s using this program as a fertile recruiting ground to build a Soviet-style army to do to them what he just did to Ukraine. His patron saint, Joseph Stalin, would be proud.
Hell, all he needs to do now to complete his “Putinization of Russia” is to commission a Russian version of Mount Rushmore featuring busts of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin … and him. (Actually, for better symmetry, he might leave out Engels….)
NOTE: I’ve written enough on the WWII-like dangers Russia’s annexation of Crimea portends. Therefore, I shall refrain from commenting any further on the hostile rhetoric and tit-for-tat sanctions Western countries and Russia are now engaged in. I see no point in commenting even on any further military incursion Russia might make pursuant to the instructive historical analogies I’ve delineated.
Instead, I’m going to wait to see if Putin emulates Hitler by bullying European leaders so much that they finally feel compelled to emulate their predecessors by calling on the president of the United States to help them fight back.
Related commentaries:
Obama dissing Russia…
Putinization of Russia…