Two years ago in a debate, President Obama took Mitt Romney to task for thinking Russia is still a foe, saying: "The 1980s called: they want their foreign policy back."
Well, it's a funny thing, because the 1980s called the White House today, telling the president: "You failed to learn a very important lesson from the 20th Century: you earn peace only through strength, and giving in to belligerent nations only encourages further hostilities. Also, our music was a lot better than what you have now."
And remember, those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
This recent Russian invasion reminds me of a similar situation about 80 years ago…
It seems some other strong-arm European leader held an Olympic Games, won the most medals, and then started annexing territories around his country using the excuse that ethnic peoples of his country needed to be protected. It turns out that he had been rearming his country, in violation of treaties his country had signed on to, after his country had lost a major war about 20 years earlier where they lost a lot of territory. Everyone was afraid of this guy, so they didn't do much about it, and so he kept being aggressive, until he just started invading other countries as well. And he always used blatant falsehoods to justify his actions. Sound familiar to anyone right about now? We had to fight that guy, and so did Russia. I guess Russia learned to use that guy's strategy for their own expansionist goals.
Oh, and Russia had a non-aggression pact with this guy before WWII, and the two countries planned to carve-up Europe between themselves, which is exactly what Russia did after the end of the war, repressing numerous countries and setting up barbed wire fences with machine gun nests to be sure nobody could escape. And they want those countries back.
So while we've been sitting around attacking and smearing each other over political correctness and offensive comments, Russia has quietly rearmed and are learning that they can do whatever they want hostilities-wise, and nobody will do anything about it except talk.
So much for peace through strength.
Almost every news person covering this Ukraine crisis can't seem to understand why Putin is doing this belligerent military invasion thing, and they say it doesn't make any sense, and that Putin must be crazy. (It worked for him in Georgia very recently, and he grabbed some extra territory, and he got away with it; so, um, he's trying it again now in Ukraine; and if he gets away with it here, he'll do it again somewhere else later and grab more territory: get it now?) Boy, this all looks very familiar to me, and I cannot understand how news people and so-called experts fail to grasp this situation. There are just way too many parallels to other historical events to miss, I would think. I guess they're all living in fantasy-land, where the world is beyond military aggression and power-hungry tyrants. Too bad the real world isn't like they think, or we might have been prepared for this eventuality. But then I suppose the 1980s would have called and asked for its foreign policy back. And being naive overconfident dolts, sadly, we gladly would have given it back, and we'd be right back where we are now: in a very easy to predict and understand conundrum everyone seems perplexed by; which is why it's so important to learn from history: so you're not doomed to repeat it.
(BTW: I saw this morning on CNN that Hillary Clinton noticed the same parallels as I did.)
