I agree with much of what new Conspirator Eric Posner says about Russia in his recent post. Under Putin, Russia has clearly turned against Western liberal values and reasserted an ugly form of traditional Russian nationalism. It is also clear that Putin has no sympathy for either the American project of spreading liberal democracy or the Western European effort to promote international human rights law.
At the same time, the new Russia is less of a threat to American global hegemony than many understandably fear in the aftermath of events in Georgia. Relative to its Soviet predecessor, Putin's Russia is weak in both hard military power and the ideological influence of "soft power." It will also be difficult for Russia to establish a working alliance with either China or the radical Islamists, the two other significant forces with an interest in undermining American dominance.
Let's take the hard power first. The Soviet Union was able to pose a serious military challenge to the US by pouring vast resources into its military - as much as 40 or 50 percent of GDP, according to some estimates. Today Russian military spending is a tiny fraction of America's (about 10%). Even if it wanted to, Putin's regime lacks the power to impose the kinds of draconian sacrifices on its people that it would need in order to rebuild its military power to Soviet-era levels. The poor performance of Russia's military in conflicts with weak adversaries such as Georgia and the Chechen rebels suggests that its forces have deteriorated in quality as well as quantity.
Russia's "soft power" deficit is even more glaring than its relative lack of military power. Unlike Communism, which at its height appealed to intellectuals and others all over the world, the ideology of Russian nationalism has little if any appeal to anyone who isn't Russian. Indeed, most of Russia's neighbors find it offensive and threatening, which is why they are now uniting behind Georgia and drawing closer to the West. States such as the Ukraine, Poland, and the three Baltic countries are no match for Russia individually; but they can certainly hope to counter it collectively - especially given the poor state of the Russian armed forces. The more nationalistic and aggressive Russia becomes, the more its neighbors - most of whom have powerful historical memories of brutal Russian imperialism - are likely to unite against it.
Russia will have great difficulty in cooperating with either China or the radical Islamists, the two other major forces in world politics that seek to challenge American dominance. China and Russia are competing for influence in the oil-rich states of central Asia, and the Russians are well aware that Chinese nationalists have longstanding territorial claims on Russia's far eastern possessions. This doesn't rule out occasional Russo-Chinese cooperation against the West, but it does make a close alliance unlikely. In the case of the Islamists, a Russian nationalist regime would be reluctant to engage in more than very limited cooperation because Russia itself has a large and potentially restive Muslim population (about 10% of its people). Strengthening radical Islamism increases the chance that Russia's own Muslims will start to resist Moscow's rule, and the Russians surely don't want to repeat their painful experience in Chechnya on a larger scale.
Finally, it is far from clear that Russia will continue on the course set by Putin. If oil prices decline and Putin's military adventures meet with setbacks, the political pendulum could swing back in favor of more liberal forces. Similar nationalist regimes have evolved into liberal democracies in many Latin American and East Asian states. The same thing could happen in Russia over the next decade or two. Although I don't have space to argue the point in detail, I don't think that Russian culture is any more intrinsically inimical to liberal values than those of Korea, Taiwan, or various Latin American states - all of which successfully transitioned from authoritarian nationalism to liberal democracy over the last 25 years.
The rise of authoritarian nationalism in Russia is a tragic setback for liberal values, and poses some difficulties for American foreign policy. But we should keep the magnitude of the threat in proper perspective. Putin's Russia is a serious menace to its neighbors, though even they can minimize the threat if they cooperate with each other and with the West. It is only a modest danger to us.
Hell, unless we spend a ton of money to refit the Space Shuttle, we have until the 30th of September to get a waiver from Congress or plan to abandon the Space Station. It takes Russia three years to make a capsule, so we have to put in our orders that much in advance. With the Shuttles to be retired in 2010 and the CEV not to fly until 2015, and the SpaceX vehicle not yet proven, we have to play by Russia's rules if we want to maintain access to the Station. And this is just one example of how big of a hole we are in
And Russia's population is less than half what the Warsaw Pact's was.
You seem to imply some interim peiod in Russian policy.
...
>The rise of authoritarian nationalism in Russia is a tragic setback for liberal values, and poses some difficulties for American foreign policy.
How many generations between Egypt and the Promised Land for Moses and company? Why do people flatter themselves that modern folk are somehow different? Technology has changed, but human nature is relatively constant.
Goes for Iraq, too.
This is another reason why Russia wants to annex western Ukraine. The question is, will the West allow it to happen?
Besides, even a "weak" actor who happens to have a stockpile of tactical and strategic nuclear weapons and delivery systems isn't exactly to be trifled with. Especially if one assumes that actor has some level of paranoia and/or irrationality.
If Russia takes military action -- even limited -- against a NATO member, like it's been making veiled threats today about doing to Poland if it accepts a U.S. anti-missle system, we and the rest of Europe have binding treaty obligations to come to the member's defense. Sort of like the treaty obligations that were in place in 1914 and 1939. Although frankly if WWIII starts in Europe as a series of escalating mutual aid treaty invocations, I'm going to be ticked off -- I assumed we had left that particular calamity back in the 20th Century...
Russia has literally thousands of nuclear weapons, mounted on ICBMs capable of striking literally anywhere in the world at a moment's notice.
And Prof. Somin claims that Russia is not a threat to the United States?
Do the math.
Uh, why? Beyond the fond wishes of its expats, that is. In the case of South Korea, you had a rising tide of increasingly wealthy middle-class workers who were a bit sick of nationalistic authoritarianism, but disinclined to violently revolt. Nothing like that applies to modern Russia, which is demographically dying, and whose middle class is if anything contracting fast.
Also, when you aver Russia will not ally with radical Islam -- have you considered the possibility of an Iran-style transformation of Russia into an Islamic state? Given the respective birth and emigration rates of Christian and Islamic populations, I would worry, if I lived in Russia, which thank God I don't.
You nailed it. They don't need resources, they have plenty of those. They invaded Georgia to annex its Russian people. Unfortunately, even if they succeed in that, it won't change the longer-term demographic outcome. Russia is abandoning its future because it refuses to have children. All the oil in the world won't do any good for a country willfully engaging in civilizational suicide.
But there is an airtight way to make Russia back out of Georgia, and not invade again. Ever.
The worthless United Nations should have called an emergency session the moment Russian tanks crossed the border. But all we heard from the UN was the sound of crickets chirping. Isn't it the UN's job to prevent wars of aggression? Yes, it is. But they did absolutely nothing.
Any rational person can see that the UN's real job is to wheedle as much loot from the U.S. and the G-8 countries as possible. Therefore, if the U.S. immediately cut off all payments to the UN until Russia turned around and vacated Georgia, and if we made it clear that if it happened again, the money spigot would remain off permanently because the UN was failing at its primary job, the 100,000+ UN theftocrats on their cushy, audit-free payrolls would immediately begin loudly pestering Russia to do whatever it takes!!! to get the loot flowing again. They would raise such an enormous fuss that the Russians would have to retreat -- or face the prospect of a 100% hostile globe.
Russia needs allies, too. It can not afford to have the corrupt UN turn on it. Money is the key.
It's very easy to talk about a real or perceived danger that Russia presents to the "West." At the same time, not too many people seem to take the time to stop and think about the very real danger that the West (both as a political entity and as a philosophical/cultural concept) presents to Russia as a state, and to the Russian way of thinking about reality.
The best defense, after all, *is* a strong offense...
- Mikhail Koulikov
MLS candidate (expected, 12/2008)
Indiana University, Bloomington
Wouldn't a nuclear detonation be bad enough? Why discredit the point by calling the threat "existential?"
I prefer the last, btw.
I suggest Peter Vincent Pry, War Scare (1999). Things have only gotten worse in the ensuing decade.
That sucks for folks in that old territory. That doesn't include America. Maybe it's time for Europe to grow up and pay for its own defense.
Taken a good look at the mandatory history textbooks? Ugh.
We thought that twice before.
Back in the pre-Mongol Middle Ages, Russia was divided into a large number of autonomous principalities. Often enough they were at war with one another, sometimes at peace (generally owing to the mystical and pacifistic influence of the Orthodox Church) and sometimes at war with the several Turkic and Uralic tribes on their borders. Medieval Russia did not much bother its Western neighbors (but did have trade relations with them) and post-conversion to Christianity it was generally on good terms with Byznatium. Medieval Russia was decidedly not imperial, or even particularly militaristic.
Re: The Islamofascists present an existential threat to America through the mere possibility that they might obtain a nuclear weapon and set it off in the US
The detonation of a (presumably rather low yield) nuke in an American city would be a ghastly event, unparalleled in our history. But it would not destroy the nation or even seriously threaten its continuity. As WWII and our own Civil War shows nations can recover from far more extensive devasation than the loss of one or even a dozen cities.
Re: have you considered the possibility of an Iran-style transformation of Russia into an Islamic state?
Wildly unlikely. There aren't enough Muslims (and definitely not enough radical Muslims-- Russian Islam was also heavily secularized under Communism) for that to happen. Even at current demographic rates it would be centuries before that changed. And Muslims constitute a outcast underclass in Russian society. There is almost no historical precedent for an underclass to seize power no matter how numerous it is.
Re: Russia is abandoning its future because it refuses to have children.
Having children isn't the main problem is Russian demograhics: The rise in the Russian death rate, especially for males, is a far bigger problem. By the way, in the last couple of years there's been a bit of a turn around in both fertility and death rates. The doom-and-gloom demography people need to remember that fertility rates (and death rates) are capable of wide swings and it's generally foolish to extend any current trend indefitely into the future. Trees, as they say, do not grow up to the sky.
Well, приятель, we trust that you and your countrymen will not let that particular danger go unexamined. Keep us posted on your findings. kk?
This poses a real problem for Russia's neighbors, which perceive their aggression as . . . aggression. Having said that, we don't gain anything from challenging Russia in the Caucuses. Not, at least, in conflicts in which they are willing to deploy significant military force.
Two points: 1) Many folks, including George Kennan and most people with PhDs (from my head count), were dead wrong about the eastward expansion of NATO. Including Poland, as well as the Czechs, Slovaks, and Hungarians, in the Atlantic Alliance now seems like the best decision Clinton and co. ever made. Eastern Europe is NOT the "Near Abroad." And Russian and Germany need to be kept apart.
Ukraine presents a special case. Russia needs to know that Ukraine is not low-hanging fruit. Any attempt to stir up irredentism among Russians in Easter Ukraine will result in a significant response. This includes being booted from the G-8. Pressure on the EU to suspend negotiations on a new treaty with Russia. And an end to shipping their excess females to us via marriage websites. (Gore's plan for babe self-sufficiency within a decade is totally unrealistic. But we can find sources for alternative brides from more stable nations--like Vietnam.)
"How Dangerous is the Russian Bear?" More dangerous than Bigfoot, it now appears.
I guess the notion never goes out of style, that if you keep throwing the other guys off the sled, maybe the wolf won't eat you.
Which two times do you refer to?
I pose the same question that I pose to others. What evidence do you have that Russia poses a threat to others outside its general neighborhood? There is no internationalist ideology a a la Communism at play here. Or do you think Putin will be pulling the show off soon?
For those who haven't been following the negotiations with Poland for a US missile defense base, those talks were faltering, at least in part due to widespread opposition amongst the Polish populace. Almost overnight, the Bear's adventure in Georgia switched Polish public opinion and the treaty is now signed. It includes, to the best of my knowledge, mutual defense clauses with the US.
So one concrete result of the Georgian adventure for Putin was to scare the Poles so badly they not only took our missiles, but signed a mutual defense treaty with US. Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy (Putin, that is).
Remember, before this summer people were talking seriously about having Russia refine Iran's uranium so Iran could have nuclear power without weapons capability. Raise your hand if you still think, or ever thought, that was a good idea--but recognize that it's still possible.
The point is, we are so powerful and so connected to the world economy that we are very easy to screw with, even by people who can't hurt us badly. That's the real lesson of 9/11--3,000 people died in an attack that cannot be repeated (so we're not badly hurt), but lordy have we been screwed with.
It isn't so much that it "isn't our problem" as it is that it's more important to not confront nuclear powers and piss them off (especially if they have fewer levers other than nuclear weapons) than it is to protect the freedom of Georgians, Ukranians, Poles, and citizens of the Baltic states.
There's a jump that some people automatically make from "something is bad" to "the US must use any and all means to stop it no matter how much blowback it might cause". And then those people accuse anyone who points out that no, it's not a good idea to take that action of being naive and unwilling to admit that the predicate is in fact bad.
The claims of "poor performance" sounds like collective denial to me. Russia has invaded half of Georgia in a matter of days without many casualties. How would a good performance look like? Despite the protests from the West, Russia does not seem to be in a hurry to leave and it seems there is nothing we can do to stop it, as it has nuclear options as well as lots of oil and gas. So much for being a superpower...
Russia may have struggled in Chechnya initially, but how should we characterize our performance in Iraq or Afghanistan comparatively?
I don't think Russia is a threat to US, but it may dispel the delusion of being a superpower, which persisted despite our debt up to our eyeballs, our heavy dependence on energy from unsavory sources and our military getting bogged down in Iraq.
Comparatively? Magnificent. Perfection. The two most impressive military campaigns in the span of time dating back to when the monkey picked up the stick in the beginning of 2001: A Space Odyssey.
In PPP terms the value of ruble is almost twice of exchange rate value. Also, US spends a lot of money on personal, quite a bit more than Russians, even in relative terms.
So, Russians military expenditures are probably at least 20% and may be as high as 30% of the US expenditures.
Since Russians don't have and apparently not interested in blue water Navy, nuke subs are exempted, Russians could spend for Army and Air Force even more than 30% of US budget.
With careful management they should have a very capable force in a few years.
It remains to be seen if their oil revenues will continue at current very high level and that they will be able to spend military budgets wisely.
World Wars one and two. It appears that our European cousins cannot operate without adult supervision.
Also, it seems silly to suggest that Russia poses little or no serious military threat to the U.S. simply because its defense spending is lower than both that of the U.S. and of that of the former Soviet Union.
A threat exists in proportion to the power that it challenges. So long as the U.S. seeks a global hegemony enforced by military and economic force, a "threat" is anything that significantly impedes this vision. For better or for worse, Russia has already weakened U.S. hegemony in the former Soviet republics. This trend will continue for the foreseeable future, Russian defense (non-)expenditures notwithstanding.
For the last half century, the United States has engaged in conflicts around the world to stop perceived threats that were, in many cases, greatly overstated.
Closer to home we have invaded, in my boomer lifetime, Cuba (Bay of Pigs), the Dominican Republic, Panama and Grenada. It has also provided covert military support to factions in Nicaragua and El Salvadore.
So, no, I don't believe the Russian-Georgian conflict is any more a threat to the United States than our incursions in the Caribbean are a threat to Russia. However, we were ready to go to war when the Soviet Union placed nuclear missles in Cuba - that was too close for comfort.
I would submit that pushing NATO east and the U.S. entering into military assistance and alliances with breakaway states such as Georgia is viewed from Moscow in much the same way.
And just as Krushchev pulled back in the face of reality (that the possibility of a major war was not worth the possible gain), so too should the United States tread softly in Russia's backyard.
If history teaches us anything, it's that turning a blind eye (I'll avoid the emotionally-laden term "appeasement") to the bad behavior of dictatorships in the international arena is a recipe for catastrophe. I for one have no desire to relive either WW2 or the Cold War simply because of people cringing to the supposed exigencies of bad actors and their atomic weapons.
Putin's approach is no different that the patented methods of Hitler and others: manufacture a crisis on your borders with a weak and insignificant--perhaps even unsavory--neighbor. Gobble them up while the free world watches. Wash, rinse, repeat. Unfortunately, the free world presently realizes that each successive nibble simply whets the appetite.
Presently we are forced into war. In the case of WW2, fifty million had to die because the British and French weren't willing to risk any casualties at all, back when they could have gotten out with much smaller numbers.
If the threat of nuclear retaliation is too great for us to risk it over Tbilisi, I ask you, when is it no longer too great? Kiev? Vilnius? Warsaw? Paris? London? You pick when and where to draw the line, and explain why it's a better line than Tbilisi.
That is why, what we really need to do is to assume Putin is exactly like Hitler. It's a well known fact that all foreign leaders can be characterized as either Hitler, Chamberlin or Churchill.
Also, I nuclear weapons fill me with existential angst. We need to invade and decimate every country that has them except for us. Going to war with such nuclear powers is a well thought out plan.
Line: A city on U.S. territory.
Reason: Learned Hand's "calculus of risk": B < PL, where "B" is the burden of action, "P" is the probability of loss, and "L" is the magnitude of loss. One acts only when the burden is less than the expected loss. Since, in David Hecht's view, "B" is a nuclear holocaust (killing millions or even tens of millions in the initial exchange and causing tens of millions more deaths due to starvation, loss of medical services, etc., flowing from the substantial destruction of the world economy), and "L" is Russian conquest of Europe, "P" has to be a very high number.
Why didn't we think of this before!?!?!?
History also teaches us that meddling in foreign disputes based on marginal U.S. interests is also a recipe for catastrophe, with the size of that catastrophe varying as a function of the financial and military resources dedicated to that meddling, and the capacity of those who are meddled with to respond in kind.
People of sound judgment do not approach bears in their natural habitat to poke them with sharp sticks. They will tend to react like bears.
This assumes the UN has a separate source of authority independent of member governments. It doesn't. The UN only has as much power as its member states (particularly the Security Council Five) give it. The UN can do no more or less than whatever the permanent members want it to do. The US is just as guilty of preventing UN action as the Russians, British, Chinese, and French. This is why there is a lack of UN action on problems such as Darfur, Zimbabwe, Georgia, Palestine, the Rwandan Genocide, Bosnia, etc. One or more members of the Permanent Five have prevented votes or vetoed action.
So don't blame the UN. Blame the governments that run the UN.
Actually, history doesn't teach us much of anything that would be useful for making policy in the here-and-now. I suppose a knowledge of diplomatic history could, at best, inculcate a sense that prudence is a virtue in international realtions.
But then comes the hard question, namely, what is the prudent course of action in any given circumstance. Because history is largely silent regarding its potential alternatives, there's never a very satifactory answer to this question, even after the fact.
And since Russia is a veto-bearing permanent member of the Security Council . . .
So don't blame the UN. Blame the governments that run the UN.
Well, in this case you seem to be correct. But the UN is not just the will of the nations that compose it. It is also a very large muli-national organization. And in this capacity, it has a lot to atone for.
Perhaps now, but the move is toward more power and consolidation, more authoritarianism, building up an image, and so forth.
You are very optimistic, and I hope you're right that the move will be away from that, but the appointment of Medvedev doesn't point to it, and nor do the Putin youth camps. Add to that this Georgia war, and it looks bad to me.
If you approach the world by assuming that every potential threat is a potential Hitler, then you'll get yourself into a lot of wars (including several nuclear ones). That sort of thinking will get us all killed.
(Indeed, if Britain had listened to Churchill and went to war with Germany over Czechoslovakia, Britain would have lost that war. Churchill was right about the Nazi threat, but it is forgotten that he also wanted to commit Britain to a war with the German war machine when it did not yet have the military capability to defeat it. Even when Britain finally did go to war with Germany, it needed the help of the US and the USSR to defeat the Nazis.)
In fact, even in the Cold War, the conflict you reference in your post, your thinking was exemplified by Curtis LeMay, who wanted to start a nuclear war over the Cuban missile crisis. Instead, a deal was made with the supposedly untrustworthy Soviets, and the missiles came out of Cuba. In other words, "appeasement" sometimes works just fine.
I find it hard to credit that intelligent people can actually argue with a straight face that what happens on Russia's borderlands isn't our problem.
I guess the notion never goes out of style, that if you keep throwing the other guys off the sled, maybe the wolf won't eat you.
I can't believe intelligent people think NATO is a sled. Or Georgia is a guy. Or that a country that beats up the statelet next door is a realistic threat to devour a country with twice its size and ten times its wealth located on the other side of the world.
1. I was astonished to read today that the U.S. has a mutual defense treaty with Poland which obligates the U.S. to come to Poland's defense if Poland is attacked. With what would we come to Poland's defense? Our troops are stretched all over Afghanistan, Iraq and Korea. Do we really want to fight Russia? I am concerned that we are entering into foreign entanglements (another example is the expansion of NATO, which obligates us to come to the defense of a growing list of NATO countries) with small counties traditionally within Russia's sphere of influence, the territorial integrity of which is irrelevant to our national interest (except perhaps if our national interest is defined in the broadest possible manner, to include the territorial integrity of all other nations who are friendly to us).
2. In the long run, Russia is still a declining country. Look at all the other countries which have a lot of oil wealth. Their wealth is a crutch allowing them to maintain undemocratic institutions, and inefficient and unbalanced economic systems. They don't know how to create wealth, they just pump it out of the ground. When the oil runs out (or declines in value due to alternative energy technologies developed by oil users like the U.S.) then countries like Russia, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela and Iran will find themselves worse off than if they had been forced earlier to compete in the global economy in industries other than oil and finance.
3. Russia is in the midst of a demographic implosion and in a world where people = creativity = economic growth = wealth = power, that's a huge handicap. While its population decline has slowed (perhaps due in part to an influx of oil wealth in the past few years), when the oil wealth runs out (or runs away to Monaco, London, Lichtenstein and Switzerland) the population decline will steepen again.
So I think the upturn in Russian foreign policy adventurism which we are seeing now (invasion of Georgia, threats to attack Poland in response to the installation of 10 defensive missile interceptors) is a short term phenomenon and I hope we can outlast it without any bloody battles to contain it in the meantime.
GG
You wrote "It isn't so much that it "isn't our problem" as it is that it's more important to not confront nuclear powers and piss them off (especially if they have fewer levers other than nuclear weapons) than it is to protect the freedom of Georgians, Ukranians, Poles, and citizens of the Baltic states. There's a jump that some people automatically make from "something is bad" to "the US must use any and all means to stop it no matter how much blowback it might cause". And then those people accuse anyone who points out that no, it's not a good idea to take that action of being naive and unwilling to admit that the predicate is in fact bad."
That I can agree with. But I can't agree with this:
"(Indeed, if Britain had listened to Churchill and went to war with Germany over Czechoslovakia, Britain would have lost that war. Churchill was right about the Nazi threat, but it is forgotten that he also wanted to commit Britain to a war with the German war machine when it did not yet have the military capability to defeat it. Even when Britain finally did go to war with Germany, it needed the help of the US and the USSR to defeat the Nazis.)"
In fact, the German military leadership was acutely aware, at every stage of German aggression through the invasion of Poland, that Hitler was taking a series of gigantic gambles. When Hitler reoccupied the Rhineland, occupied the Sudentenland, invaded Czechoslovakia, and invaded Poland, in each case he took the risk that if the British and their allies the French were to go to war and go on the offensive, he would have no troops to defend against France's huge army. But he correctly read the French mindset (weary and afraid of war, and when finally forced into it by Hitler's invasion of Poland, unwilling to take the offensive) and knowing that Chamberlain and his cronies were unwilling to push the French, knowing that the British would have to join the fight. If the French and British had opposed any of the above listed incursions by Hitler (including by taking offensive action when Hitler invaded Poland), the Germans would likely have folded and the war would have been shorter and less disastrous for all.
Any military opposition by France and Britain to Hitler at the time of the reoccupation of the Sudentenland or the invasion of Czechoslovakia would likely have resulted in Hitler's overthrow, according to many sources. But when the French and the British were finally forced to fight in the spring of 1940, they faced the entire German army, now experienced and confident, they didn't have the Rhineland as a buffer zone, and they didn't have numerous Polish or Czech troops threatening Hitler's flanks and rear, because they had already thrown those allies off the sleigh....
I don't think the situation now is very analogous to the one in 1935-1939, because I don't think Putin's Russia constitutes a threat much beyond its immediate borders, but I did want to try to clear up the historical record.
GG
You're a bad sport.
You're not clearing up the historical record.
You are, however, demonstrating that ordinary people can't be fooled by nonsense such as Dilan peddles.
No historical parallels are perfect of course, but I would contend that the liberal democratic shift in the former Soviet Bloc countries over the past twenty years may be the most hopeful development of my generation (raised under a cloud of Cold War armageddon), and not just in the U.S. I have difficulty seeing how sitting idly by while the most illiberal regime on the world stage reverses this shift one country at a time can be considered remotely liberal or can be counted in any way as progress.
I'm not sure what disturbs me more: Dilan Bunker's continual uncritical spouting of 40-year-old dogma, or my reflexive need to always argue with him, which means I'm Meathead. Edith!
No doubt he was. But that's rather different from claiming that the British Army, which would have gotten killed by the Germans without US and Soviet help and a years-long 2 front war later on, was in a condition to defeat Germany, with or without the French (who were a pushover), when Churchill wanted them to.
Look, we lionize Churchill because he was right about the Nazi threat. But he was also a hothead and a warmonger who wanted to send his nation's army on a suicide mission. And his historical reputation is saved by the fact that Chamberlain was there to say no to him.
People with an ideological interest in promoting hawkishness or Churchill's reputation (including Churchill himself) have an interest in advancing such theories, but they are laughable.
I just don't agree with you on the merits. Which is not to say that I think that Britain and France would have intervened militarily in '38, if only the leadership had been different. But that the result might well have been different if they had? That is quite "credible."
You are missing the Soviet factor, for one. Stalin was biding his time. But he quite definitely thought, in 1938, that Hitler's eastward expansion was a dire threat. Keep in mind as well that the Czechoslovak army was quite a significant force, and would have conducted a vigorous defense--if not deprived of at the green table of its natural, fortified, defensible border with Germany in the Sudeten Mountains. By contrast, the plain of Bohemia and Moravia was not defensible. Once forced to surrender the so-called "Sudetenland," that powerful military was taken out of the equation.
In addition, Germany was in many significant ways unready for war in 1940. Most significantly, they had build lots of tanks, but not trucks. They also lacked a strategic bomber. In 1938, they were not well-off off in terms of aircraft, supply vehicles, and airborne troops.
As for Churchill, your portrayal of him as a "warmonger" is at odds with the historical record. He was quite assertive about the need for Britain to arm itself. And "Appeasement" was largely a postwar Churchillian invention. But he was statesmanlike in the mid-to-late '30s, especially in light of the worsening situation. Chamberlain, far from "saving his reputation," was indeed fortunate to have had him on board at Zero Hour. Who else would he have turned to after March of '39? Halifax? Unthinkable. Eden? Not without Winston in the lead.
Churchill was the only possibility. The Free World can thank its guardian angels for that.
Wrong again. Do I have to ask if you're tired yet?
The generals knew that France alone could defeat them in 36 when they went into the Rhineland.
Germany prepared hard and Britain did not, which led to an imbalance later on.
But not at the time.
The generals knew, Hitler knew, that this was a great bluff against not the French and British military, but against their political leadership. Which worked. Dilan is concerned that knowing this means that too many people like him were in the British and French governments in the late Thirties, hence the war. So the war has to be promoted as both inevitable and unstoppable, no matter what the facts are.
Churchill was a great wartime leader and he was right about the Nazis when others were wrong. But had he actually been in power when Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia, he would have gone down in history as the man responsible for the fall of Britain to the Germans. Or, perhaps he would have done the same thing Chamberlain did. It's mighty easy to call for war when you are out of power and the guy who is in power is pursuing a peace treaty.
You can do thirty minutes of basic research on the web (start with Ludwig Beck) or in a good encyclopedia to disabuse yourself of your illusions. I know military history isn't cool these days, but you're not doing yourself any credit here.
Anyway, the pertinent parallel is the Anschluss, not Czechoslovakia. The pertinent thing not parallel is that Putin is not insane.
They got stronger while the Brit version of Dilan kept the Brits from getting stronger. As we know. Give it up.
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Here's a tip: Reread your post, and think of what people would think if you said this over dinner. If you think people would view you as a crank, a blowhard, or as someone who vastly overdoes it on the hyperbole, rewrite your post before hitting enter.
And if you think this is the other people's fault -- you're one of the few who sees the world clearly, but fools wrongly view you as a crank, a blowhard, or as someone who overdoes it on the hyperbole -- then you should still rewrite your post before hitting enter. After all, if you're one of the few who sees the world clearly, then surely it's especially important that you frame your arguments in a way that is persuasive and as unalienating as possible, even to fools.
Our goal is to provide an interesting and pleasant environment that can help inform readers. To do that, we'll occasionally have to exercise our editorial discretion. Think of this as an in-person discussion group, where having different voices is critical to a great conversation -- but where sometimes the leader has to deal with cranks who sour the conversation more than they enliven it.
Naturally, there's always a risk that this discretion will be used erroneously, no matter how well-intentioned the editor. But discussion groups (especially on the Internet, but also off it) generally need an editor who'll occasionally make such judgments.
And, remember, it's a big Internet. If you think we were mistaken in removing your post (or, in extreme cases, in removing you) -- or if you prefer a more free-for-all approach -- there are surely plenty of ways you can still get your views out.