Comment
Resolve
“History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.”
Bombs rained down upon London for 56 days and nights in September and October of 1940. Mostly nights. Unrelenting horror. By intent. Several times a day, sirens ushered folks underground for shelter. Thousands died every single day. Many more were maimed and wounded. Night after night. For months. Defeat at Dunkirk earlier that summer seemed the beginning of the end. France, the Netherlands and Belgium had already surrendered. Britain was alone. And withering.
Meanwhile, concentration camps were being erected and populated across Europe. On the other side of the world, Japan was seizing control of a wide swath of Southeast Asia. The massacre of hundreds of thousands of innocent residents and surrendered soldiers at Nanjing in 1937 had made it crystal clear the brutality and ferocity of Japanese ambition.
Yet, post-Great Depression, America wanted no part in another foreign war. President Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected to a third term in 1940, in part because he promised to keep the US out of Europe.
It would take the war coming to America to finally shift public opinion. Only after Japan attacked Pearl Harbour were Americans finally roused to action. There is a lesson in that.
This morning, Russian soldiers and the machinery of war are massed menacingly on Ukraine’s eastern border. The precise intent—intimidation or preparation for invasion— is not certain. What we do know is that just eight years ago, Russia invaded and annexed Crimea—formerly a province of Ukraine. Then it took the Donbas region. Thirteen thousand people died in the conflict.
We appear to be at a precipice of sorts. How will we respond? Future generations will judge our actions. And inaction.
Sooner or later, the world will have to draw a bright red line—this far and no further. And unlike the empty gesture in Syria in 2012, this line must be backed up by a demonstration of resolve. Can we manage this? Has history taught us anything?
Expansionary ambitions are never sated. Megalomaniacs are never done. They never consider what they have taken by force as enough. They will keep coming. Keep expanding. The justifications will get flimsier until they stop justifying them at all. Until they are stopped. The only question remaining is: Where will we stop Putin? Ukraine? Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia? Poland? Maybe Finland? Sweden?
To be clear, there are no ‘two sides’ to the looming conflict. As David Frum put it succinctly in a tweet last week:
“Putin created the crisis with Ukraine. Putin has any number of exits from the crisis. Everybody else—Ukraine, US, NATO, probably most Russian people—wants a peaceful resolution. There is only one aggressor here, it’s Putin.”
So it is that Ukrainians now wake up each morning mindful that war is imminent. Their only crime: gravitating toward the values of western Europe and away from the corruption and oppression that defines Russia in 2022.
If it is to be war, it will be bloody. Ukrainians are a hard people—accustomed to fighting for themselves. They have endured man-made starvation at the hands of another Russian regime that cost more than 3 million lives in 1932-33. They have endured. They will again.
But they need our help to demonstrate that the cost to Putin and to Russia will be profound. This week the world began to step up.
Denmark sent a frigate and a handful of F-16s to the region. The Netherlands, too, sent jets. The UK is supplying missiles. Turkey sent missiles. Even the Americans are assembling a $200 million military aid package for Ukraine. Canada dithered for a while, pressing for a diplomatic solution, but details of a military aid package began leaking out of Ottawa on Monday. Other nations need to find the resolve to stand with Ukraine. For the fight will come to their frontier soon enough.
Yet, government leaders must be mindful of their voters—many of whom have little interest in a foreign fight they poorly understand. They don’t know the history or context. Nor are they particularly curious. There is some bliss in ignorance.
It is, therefore, a moment leaders must lead. They must show the determination and character their best nation would want to put forward. They must be the nation for this moment.
They must explain why this must be done. Over and over again.
Until the lessons of history are understood. We will be judged.
Comments (0)