Gerard Laval
Washington Times, Nov. 29, 2022
“If Mr. Putin’s ambition is to dominate Europe in emulation of Hitler, then he must be stopped and he must be stopped now before he is in a position to act upon his ambitions. But if he is merely trying to reconstitute Russian hegemony over an area that has traditionally been the home of ethnic Russians and Orthodox Russian adherents, then a full-fledged Western intervention may unnecessarily turn an age-old regional struggle into a major international war.”
In the course of a recent meeting with French colleagues, the conversation inevitably turned to a discussion of the Russian war against Ukraine. In the context of that discussion, seeking to provoke a historical analysis of the situation, I asked the question: Is the current situation more analogous to the world of 1914 or to the world of 1938?
Much of what we have been reading in the press presumes that Russia’s attack on Ukraine is reminiscent of Adolf Hitler’s threats against Czechoslovakia in 1938 or his attack on Poland in 1939, with the conclusion being that any appeasement of Vladimir Putin would be reminiscent of the treatment accorded to Hitler, thereby encouraging Mr. Putin and leading to a war even greater in scope than World War II.
As I have thought about the current situation, however, I have been inclined to focus more on the dynamics in Europe in 1914 at the time of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo and on the aftermath of that event.. … [To read the full article, click here]