The Seeds of World War 3 Are Being Sown Right Before Our Eyes - And We're on the Wrong Side
Just as Europe initially appeased Hitler, the United States - not Europe this time - is appeasing Vladimir Putin, who will not stop at Ukraine.
Three years ago, Democratic nations watched in concern and horror as Russian forces marched unprovoked into Europe’s largest democracy, Ukraine, attempting to finish what Russia had started in 2014 when it invaded and re-occupied the Crimea in Ukraine’s easternmost region.
The United States should have considered that a red line and come to Ukraine’s defense as we promised to do in the Budapest Memorandum signed in 1994 when Ukraine agreed to give up its Soviet-era nuclear weapons in exchange for assurances Russia would not invade it.
Aside from some significant sanctions, we did not follow through more aggressively. This might be due to the fact that Ukraine is not a member of NATO and therefore not obligated to receive NATO nations’ aid if attacked.
Fast forward to 2016.
A former reality-TV slumlord who had been fired from NBC for disparaging Mexican immigrants, who ran for president as a publicity stunt disparaging Mexican immigrants is elected president with copious Russian assistance.
While he was not president in 2022 when Russian president Vladimir Putin ordered Ukraine invaded, the former occupant of the Oval Office had done enough of Russia’s bidding that the United States’ influence in NATO and the United Nations had been diminished. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine was another test to see how much further he could go.
Fortunately, the United States and Europe stood up. What was supposed to be a quick roll over the sovereign Ukraine turned out to be a slog the Russian military was ill equipped to handle.
Now that Vladimir Putin’s man on the inside is back playing president of the United States, Ukraine’s future again looks bleak.
But it’s even worse than just the future of Ukraine.
America’s defense of Ukraine during the Biden administration was preventing a next potential world war. Now that an administration cowing to Putin is back, world war three seems more likely.
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on Wednesday at a meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact group at NATO headquarters in Brussels that a return to Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders, before Russia invaded Crimea, is “unrealistic,” insisting “Members of this contact group must meet the moment”.
In other words, we are turning our backs on defending democracy with the “negotiated peace” Putin and even some far-left Putin apologists have been hoping for.
That “negotiated peace” consists of surrendering the mineral-rich land Russia has stolen.
It involves no NATO or defense guarantees.
It lets Putin get away with invading a peaceful neighbor, murdering tens of thousands of innocent civilians, and trafficking over 100,000 children. (Russia is the only country where child pornography is legal.)
Our own felon-in-chief said last week:
Russia fought for that land in Ukraine and lost a lot of men doing it, so they should just keep it.
This is, unfortunately, where the comparisons to Hitler and World War II must inevitably come in.
Most familiar with the history of the time know that in 1938 then-British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain announced he had achieved “peace in our time” with a negotiation with Adolf Hitler that allowed the German dictator to annex the ethnically German part of Czechoslovakia known as the Sudetenland under the auspices it was all Hitler was asking for, it used to be part of Germany, it would prevent further military escalation.
We know what happened.
Appeased, Hitler craved more.
The following year, before executing an invasion of Poland, thereby ensuring a second world war, Adolf Hitler wanted to guarantee German soldiers attacking from the west would not encounter aggression from the Soviet Union in the east. While wishing to remain out of the increasing tension long enough to bolster his military, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin agreed to sign the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with Hitler, promising Soviet forces would not interfere with Germany’s plan.
September 1, 1939, World War II began with the German onslaught of Poland.
Two years later, Stalin learned an agreement with the German dictator was about as good as a handshake with fingers crossed behind Hitler’s back when Nazi forces invaded the Soviet Union in violation of the pact.
Last June, Russian dictator Vladimir Putin was in North Korea for talks with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un that culminated in both men signing a “defensive” pact requiring each country come to each’s aid if either is attacked.
Andriy Kovalenko, Ukraine’s Defense and Security Council lead on countering disinformation, explained:
The enemy’s plans are to use [the North Korean presence] to reinforce conscripts and border guards in the border regions of Russia. But it’s too early to say whether they will be deployed directly on the territory of Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy added, “This is a clear step in Russia’s escalation that matters.”
Evidence also suggests North Korea is manufacturing missiles for Russia. Damien Spleeters, investigator with the U.K.-based investigative organization Conflict Armament Research that tracks weapon ammunition supplies in armed conflicts, explained:
This illustrates two things. The first thing is that there wasn’t just a one-off transfer of missiles in late 2023. We see that there’s at least been another transfer in 2024. So it’s an ongoing type of relationship. The second thing is that there’s a very tight window between production, transfer and use.
He added:
It would make sense for people involved in the production of those missiles to be close to where they are being used and assess how effective they are, in order to make improvements to those missiles.
Two years ago, Chinese president Xi Jinping met with Putin to ostensibly discuss trade at a time when there was — and still is — growing concern China may invade Taiwan. Like Putin’s claim Ukraine is really historically part of Russia and not a separate country (like Hitler claiming Austria and Czechoslovakia were historically part of “greater Germany”), Xi claims the island democracy of Taiwan is really part of mainland China and should be “united by force,” if necessary. He asserted he is prepared to go to war with western powers over it.
The main thing preventing Xi from going ahead with a takeover of Taiwan is international condemnation of Russia. If Ukraine’s western allies take their eyes off Ukraine’s fight for survival--as we are in the process of doing — it will provide Xi and other dictators permission to follow suit with their own invasions, emboldening autocrats all over the world at a time when more democracies are backsliding toward authoritarian regimes.
Historian and author of On Tyranny, Prof. Timothy Snyder, explained in a Guardian piece titled, “We’re in 1938 now: Putin’s war in Ukraine and lessons from history”:
If Ukrainians give up, or if we give up on Ukraine…It’s Russia making war in the future. It’s Russia making war with Ukrainian technology, Ukrainian soldiers from a different geographical position. At that point, we’re in 1939. We’re in 1938 now. In effect, what Ukrainians are letting us do is extend 1938.
The American republican party wants nothing more than to leave Ukraine twisting in the wind, as it demonstrated in December when GOP lawmakers met for a closed-door two-day Heritage Foundation-funded summit with Hungary’s hard-right prime minister Viktor Orbán, a staunch opponent of Ukraine aid.
We’ve already cut Ukraine out of talks with Russia; moreover, Vice President JD Vance met the leader of Germany’s far-right “Alternative for Deutchland (AfD) party on Friday and proceeded to hector European leaders with what has been characterized as “full of laughable hypocrisy, distorted portraits of European democracy and insensitivity to Europe’s trauma with fascism”.
Just as Europe initially appeased Hitler, the United States — not Europe this time — is appeasing Vladimir Putin, who will not stop at Ukraine.
This was never about NATO nations encroaching closer toward Russia. It was never about potential Ukrainian membership in NATO. It was always about a colonialist ideology that will not end with Ukraine. Russia has its sights on reunifying the Soviet Union. That means Poland is at risk of invasion. Moldova is at risk. Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania.
All at risk, which will destabilize Europe and existing western democracies.
Jim Stewartson wrote in his Substack newsletter Mindwar recently in a piece titled “The West is Dead”:
The embarrassing American National Socialist parade currently traveling Europe including JD Vance, Pete Hegseth and Jack Posobiec on the “negotiating team” for the United States, is pure theater, kayfabe. They have every intention of complying with [Russian philosopher and Putin advisor Aleksandr] Dugin’s — and Putin’s — demands. There will never be a “peace deal” except to give Putin time to gear up for his invasion of Europe.
Of course, the carrot that Putin is dangling in front of the Musk-Trump regime for their appeasement of Putin’s imperialist ambitions is a North American Reich from Greenland to Panama.
The United States is choosing to take sides with the new Axis powers, Russia, China, and North Korea.
Not good company to be in, but when we have a “leader” installed into office whose explicit objective is to chip away at the guardrails decades of diplomacy, legislation, and human lives have toiled to achieve, what can we expect?