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Praetorium Honoris

Friday, March 18, 2022

War is Hard, Part III

The Battle of Towton
Richard Caton Woodville, Jr.
(Source)
The incumbent King of England, Henry VI, on the throne since 1422, was a weak, ineffectual and mentally unsound ruler, which encouraged the nobles to scheme for control over him. (Ibid)

Sounds kind of familiar, know what I mean?

Yes, having a weak leader encourages foreign leaders with an agenda to take advantage of that weakness. Nature abhors a vacuum, so does power.

Does anyone think Putin would have gone into Ukraine if say, Teddy Roosevelt was the President? Note well that I say "Putin" and not "Russia." Putin is a despot, a latter-day Tsar wanna-be. He is no better than Hitler salivating over the Sudetenland in 1938. "Hey, those are ethnic Russians in there, and they're being mistreated!" The Russian people are not behind this invasion. Most of them were just as surprised as the Ukrainians when the Russian Army went in. (As were many of the soldiers in that army!)

I'm not too spun up over the Crimea, it wasn't traditionally part of Ukraine, Khrushchev gave it to them in 1954. Nor the other "separatist" region of Donbas (which is broken into two areas: the Donetsk People's Republic and the Luhansk People's Republic). Those areas contain a majority of Russians (so my research shows), so them being a part of Ukraine is a bit of a stretch.

But the rest of the nation of Ukraine, Russia should stay out.

What gives me pause concerning this whole Russo-Ukrainian War (Part Deux) is the similarities between now and 1938. While history doesn't really repeat itself, it does, as they say, "rhyme." In other words, similar circumstances could lead to similar outcomes.

In 1938 Adolf Hitler was the Chancellor of Germany. He was actually popular from what I've read. He had reduced unemployment, he had remilitarized the Rhineland which the Treaty of Versailles stipulated could not have any German troops in it. This area borders the Netherlands, Belgium, and France. By keeping the German military out of a 50-mile strip in that region, it was thought to both deter German aggression and also provide an easy path to the Rhine from the West.

Hitler sent his troops into the Rhineland, suspecting that weak leadership in Britain (Neville Chamberlain) and France (Léon Blum) would do nothing to oppose him. He was correct.

To be fair, the people of the United Kingdom and France were in no mood to fight another war considering that WWI had ended only eighteen years before. This was territory they recognized as being German, people who were citizens of Germany in fact.

But it made Hitler overconfident. So he set his sets on Austria, after all didn't they also speak German? Shouldn't they be incorporated into Greater Germany (Großdeutschland)?

Truth be told, Austria had never been part of Germany, but no one was in any mood to contest that move either. Well sure, they are all German speakers, so why not?

In the former country of Czechoslovakia there was a region along the border with Germany called the Sudetenland. There were a great many German speakers in the area and that region had been part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire before the war. As had all of Czechoslovakia (and Hungary, and Yugoslavia, and a few other areas as well, that Empire had been pretty big). Hitler set his sights on that area next.

Once again the French and British leaders let him do it, they even persuaded the Czechs that they could do nothing about it if the Germans attacked them and simply took the region. They would not send French and British soldiers to die for Czechoslovakia.

The Sudetenland became part of the Greater German Reich shortly thereafter. (In truth the German generals were terrified that Hitler would attack the Czechs. The Sudetenland is rugged country and the Czechs had set up very rugged defensive works therein. They assumed that an invasion, even if successful, would be costly and set back Hitler's future plans for expansion.)

By the end of 1938, Czechoslovakia ceased to exist, the Germans absorbing parts of the country into Germany proper and creating the Reich Protectorate of Bohemia-Moravia (which contained Prague). The Slovaks declared their independence from Czechoslovakia and formed the Slovak Republic, which promptly allied itself with Germany. (Hungary also nicked a piece for themselves, the Ruthenian part – Subcarpathian Rus as it was known then.)

Are you seeing any similarities to today?

I am.

And it's unnerving to see this happening again.

But is modern day Russia the equivalent of 1930s Nazi Germany? I don't think so, but it certainly looks like Putin is using Hitler's playbook as regards Ukraine.

Consider this:
  • The American people are tired of war, after our two decades long idiotic involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq. What the Hell is "nation building" anyway but an attempt to impose an alien culture upon another culture?
  • The Europeans have been living under the American nuclear umbrella since 1945. Most of their armies are of no use in opposing Russia over Ukraine. They're too small and their governments have not been spending the money to maintain their equipment and training.
  • Where is the vital national interest in Ukraine? Should American men and women be sent to die there? Because they will if they are sent in by the idiots in DC.
I have no doubt that our government will do something stupid, that's pretty much their track record for the last eighty years (give or take). At the very least, it's going to cost the American taxpayer a lot of money. Qui bono?

Things could get pretty sporty here over the next few months, don't forget to keep an eye on China. I'm sure they're watching all this with a gleam in their eyes. Get the Americans and the West bogged down in Ukraine? Bye bye Taiwan.

Yup, war is hard.

And damned dangerous as well!




22 comments:

  1. American government doing something stupid? Question of when and where I fear. The gals and guys in uniform will pay the price, again. Right now, everyone is paying a price at the store and pump, thank you Sleepy Joe and the Fed. Spooky seeing a replay of the late thirties, just waiting to hear "Slav land for Slavs!" As for CCP land........they're just biding their time.

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  2. IMHO: Vladimir Vladimirovich is not Adolf and woe betide anyone who conflates the two; the former is a chess player, the Austrian was a gambler.
    I am unable to determine the former's endgame, but unless pushed into greater efforts, I believe he is just in the process of removing a thorn.
    I am only a dentist who is not noted for the understanding of foreign strategy, but, as of this moment, I see no profit in the spending of national treasure, either monetary or human, on this (what is presently) local affair. I do not believe we are being provided with any reliable information on which to base "our feelings." The media is pushing us (very hard and all in the same direction) to demand of our leaders that they "do something to alleviate this awfulness."

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    1. Nope, Putin is not Hitler, he's just using a page from his playbook.

      The media has a history of pushing the nation into places it shouldn't go. William Randolph Hearst, call your office.

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  3. Sarge, I am not a prophet nor the son of a prophet, but I think it is a reasonable statement that weakness encourages bullies and thugs to act. And weakness is a perception that extends far beyond just an individual: at least in my own estimation, I perceive it to appear to be as weak as ever.

    And that encourages action by those who think that the weak will not act.

    It should not (and hopefully will not) cost a single American service member life - but as someone wrote above, it has already cost us: it is costing us in aid and weapons when we are running a trillion dollar deficit, it is costing average citizens due to the spike at the fuel pump and the resulting downstream impacts, and it will cost us yet again when rebuilding is called for. Yes, I understand that dollars are nothing to the sacrifice of life. But I am sensitive to the fact that in a situation where we are giving money away to people that we do not have, we are crushing our own future.

    The wild card to me in this case is the Russian people: I have no sense they really want this war or this is as unwelcome a surprise as it was to everyone else. Hitler at least in theory had national support; I have no perception the same is true of Putin.

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    1. I read something yesterday that Vlad had replaced a thousand of his own personal staff. Someone is not confident of his seat on the throne. Hopefully the Russian people wake up before it is too late.

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  4. When I was in school, I was tall and skinny. When we mover to a new area I started having issues with "bullying". At first I tried to fight back, but, I was uncoordinated and didn't know how to fight. This went on for a few years until one Summer I worked on a family friends farm for the Summer. When I got there I could barely move a hay bale, by the end of Summer I was tossing them around by twos. One of the guys who worked the farm used to box and taught me the basics. Well the first day of class one of the same guys tried the same crap and I flattened him. I don't know who was more surprised him or me. He and I never had issues again and word got around so I never had problems with anyone else. The reason I mention this is that Putin is a "bully", plain and simple. I believe that he is going to press it until somebody flattens him. I don't see anybody in Europe doing it. Maybe it is time for the US to pull out and leave Europe to fend for itself.

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    1. Vlad is definitely a bully, an old school KGB thug if you ask me. As tempting as it is to leave Europe to handle their own mess, they have yet to show they're capable of doing such a thing.

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  5. Agree with just about all you say here. Unfortunately, I see no good end to this with the players as they are presently constituted. This is not far from blossoming into a war wherein we (whichever way you wish to state that - USA, or USA and allies) are outnumbered and outflanked (should China support the Russians, which they are, to my mind, far more likely to do tha support us). Just my (admittedly pessimistic) feeling.

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    1. A lot of us see things the same way, Suldog.

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    2. (Don McCollor)...China does not have to support Russia, just not support the US and allies. It looks similar to Germany and Japan in WW2 - different goals and little actual cooperation, but incidentally providing mutual support fighting a common enemy...

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  6. I was tall and quiet, picked on by the class bully and his buddy. After class (5th grade), one day he took a swing at me and I grabbed him. We went down and I started punching him. His buddy ran away, he started crying, I got off and left him. Didn't mention it to anyone. He and his buddy had a fist fight the next day. Neither of them ever really bothered me again, we slowly became friends. They're both gone, f cancer.

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    1. Sometimes it works out that way. Aye, f cancer.

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  7. Bullies... Yeah, I've had that issue in school. Always had to get into a knock-down, drag-out extremely painful fight or two per semester. One which I inevitably lost. But I made every single fight a pyrrhic victory.

    Even if you lose, you need to make it so damned painful that the victor can't victor anymore.

    Which is what the Ukraine is doing. Most likely they'll lose, and the victory will be horrible. But what will Russia have left? A third to a half of their airforce destroyed or damaged, loss of their main parachute battalions (not 10% casualties, but more like 90% casualty levels,) loss of a substantial amount of their modernized armor. And, of course, pulling all their good forces off the eastern border with China.

    Meanwhile, what is China doing? Maybe their focus has shifted from a really bad fight with the Republic of China to an 'easy' takeover of Siberia.

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  8. Be a lot better if "war was hard" for the folks who cause them and sit back profiting as other peoples children die. Just sayin.

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    1. If that were the case, we wouldn't have as many, if any. Good point!

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Just be polite... that's all I ask. (For Buck)
Can't be nice, go somewhere else...

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