We learn in life from trial and error, repeating successful behaviors and avoiding outcomes but did not serve us. From learning to ride a bicycle to solving problems in our personal and professional life as adults, we use past experiences to guide present action.
“History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes,” says a quote often attributed to the author Mark Twain. Much of what faces the US in the current global situation resonates deeply with themes and events of the past. In foreign policy, the US is faced with diametrically opposed approaches to the war in Ukraine. Should we lean into supporting Ukraine defending its territory and expel the invader, or should we take an ‘America first’ stance, and tend to our own business, letting Ukraine fight alone?
This is not a new quandary for Americans. We faced the same dilemma in the early days of World War II. Much of America supported the America First movement, and it’s most prominent leader, Charles Lindbergh. President Franklin Roosevelt supported the lend lease program to provide military equipment to Britain, while Lindbergh, until the attack on Pearl Harbor discredited an American First approach, pushed for a nonaggression pact with Hitler’s Germany, guaranteeing that the United States would take no action to oppose Germany’s military expansion, nor help those opposing Germany.
Isolationist sentiment almost proved disastrous for the United States. When war found us, it was only the efforts by FDR to build up the United States military, and the industrial development prompted by lend lease and supplying Western allies with tanks and aircraft that expanded our industrial production necessary to supply and equip our Armed forces once we were attacked. The America First movement and its insistence upon neutrality remained active and strong until the Sunday morning bombs fell on Pearl Harbor, and America First was completely discredited.
The rise of neo-isolationism today, even using the discredited “America First” name, asks, no, demands that the United States provide no military aid whatsoever to Ukraine for its defensive war. We have parallels that should inform us from history, although, as per the quote, history does not repeat itself, but it rhymes.
In 1938, Britain and France were faced by the crisis in Czechoslovakia, when Hitler demanded the Czech border region for incorporation into newly-expanded Germany. Western leaders decided that avoiding conflict was more important than defending Czechoslovakia and they concluded an agreement with Hitler that Neville Chamberlain said achieved “peace in our time.” Of course, Hitler’s promises and written agreements meant less than nothing, and he promptly gobbled up or controlled the rest of Czechoslovakia, in complete disregard of the Munich Agreement he’d just signed.
One overlooked aspect of the Czechoslovakia crisis was the huge benefit it brought to the German Armed Forces. During the invasion of France in 1940, half of Germany’s effective tank force consisted of Czechoslovakian tanks Taken over by Germany or produced in Czech factories after the takeover of their country. Czechoslovakian citizens, like those of Austria, were deemed German and drafted into the German army. Without the military equipment provided by Czechoslovakia, Germany could not have defeated France as they did in 1940. The Munich Agreement, in retrospect, was worse than worthless and that it gave a huge advantage to a ravenous dictator, and would result in catastrophic defeats for the West in 1940.
The situation in Ukraine is both like and unlike the situation for Czechoslovakia and Poland in 1938 and 1939. Had Ukraine not defended itself, and Ukraine’s population and military equipment fallen into the hands of Russia, then Putin would have been tremendously strengthened, just as Hitler was by incorporating Czechoslovakia’s tanks. It would also put Russia’s frontier next to several Eastern European countries such as Moldavia and Hungary, where pro-Putin and anti-West sentiment could be inflamed.
Those who clamor for a negotiated settlement by which Ukraine would give up large and significant areas of territory in exchange for secession of hostilities are ignoring the fact that Vladimir Putin has never followed any of the treaties or agreements he has made concerning Ukraine. When the Soviet Union dissolved, newly independent Ukraine found itself the world’s third largest nuclear power due to atomic weapons on its territory from the old Soviet Union. The United States, Britain, Russia and Ukraine made an agreement by which these powers would all guarantee Ukraine’s territorial integrity and its present borders if Ukraine would turn over those nuclear weapons it possessed to Russia. Ukraine did so.
Russia, in successive invasions of Ukraine, demonstrated that the agreement, for their part, wasn’t worth the paper it was written on, as they seized piece after piece of Ukraine, commencing in 2014, and continuing through a full-scale invasion in 2022 through today. The United States and Britain, signatories to the agreement guaranteeing Ukraine’s territorial integrity, equivocated and provided military assistance once Ukraine demonstrated that it was not going to collapse under invasion. Vladimir Putin and Russia might see this as clear evidence that he can disregard not only his previous written promises to defend Ukraine territory, and, given the US and Britain were also signatories to the Minsk Agreement guaranteeing Ukraine territorial bountaries, casts doubt whether the US will honor another promise, Article 5 of NATO and defend any NATO country invaded by an agressor like Russia.
Another period of American history can instruct us. During World War I, prior to America joining the war in 1917, isolationist sentiment caused us to limit contributions to the Allied war effort. America was woefully unprepared when German unrestricted submarine warfare and German intrigues to have Mexico go to war with United States in exchange for US territory finally drew America into the war.
In examining America’s involvement in World War I, in postwar analysis, histories often decry the ‘vindictive’ and ‘unfair’ Versailles treaty “forced” upon Germany, as justififying the rise of the Nazi state and its desire for revenge that devastated Europe in World War II. This universal criticism of the Versailles Treaty and justification for German rearmament ignores some very inconvenient truths. When one is judging the ‘fairness’ of the Versailles Treaty, one never reads about the treaties Germany would have imposed on the Western allies if Germany had triumphed. The ‘”harsh and vindictive” Versailles Treaty was laughably mild in comparison.
Russia collapsed in 1917, and its successor, the newly created Soviet state under Lenin, was forced to accept the treaty of Brest-Litovsk, by which Germany gobbled up much of Russia, including 34% of the former empire’s population, much of its industry and most of its agricultural land (including Ukraine), 89% of its coalfields, and 26% of its railways. Germany planned to annex Belgium and much of France if it won the First World War, as well as seizing vast colonial territories from Britain and France in Africa and around the world, and seizing and incorporating much of the Royal Navy into the German Navy.
After defeating Russia, Germany sent several hundred thousand men to try and win the war on the Western Front before sufficient American soldiers arrived to turn the tide. Germany was exceptionally greedy though, and left over a million troops to occupy its newly-grabbed vast territories in Russia and the Ukraine. In defending these ill-gotten gains, the million man occupation army in the East was not available to turn the tide in the West. The last German series of offensives was eventually unsuccessful, due in large part to the growing American army in France.
The isolationist movement in the United States during 1914 through 1917, had it not been for the catastrophically clumsy German foreign policy that brought America into the war, would almost certainly have resulted In a victory for the German Empire. One shudders to imagine a post-1918 German Empire that stretched from central France and Belgium to the eastern borders of Ukraine. The German military, its prestige and power enhanced by victory in the First World War, and its scientific establishment, without the Diaspora of Jewish physicists and scientists created by Nazi policies, would have sat astride Europe as a terrible despot, and German ingenuity might have brought forth new and terrible weapons such as the atomic bomb.
How does this apply to the current debate over supplying military aid to Ukraine? In my examples concerning American isolationism and military non-involvement prior to World War I and World War II, our America First/isolationist movements rendered us unready for war and gave a distinct advantage to Germany, who followed no rule, no treaty, in their eagerness to gobble up additional territory and military resources for their country, despite the terrible carnage, suffering and devestation they imposed.
Given Vladimir Putin’s repeated disregard for any agreements that he has made, why does anyone still advise a negotiated settlement to the Ukraine war? Who can reasonably assess Putin’s past behavior and see a proposed peace agreement as anything other than a temporary armistice, in which Putin can prepare for renewing hostilities against Ukraine and other countries?
The Western allies showed no willingness to live up to their commitment to guarantee the territorial integrity of Ukraine, and Vladimir Putin took this as a green light for his invasion. The oft-criticized Versailles Treaty would have prevented World War II in Europe if the Western allies had honored it. That treaty required the demilitarization of the Rhineland, and Britain and France were required to respond to enforce the provision. However, Hitler defied the treaty and sent his armies in to re-militarize the Rhineland. Secretly, the German army had orders to withdrawal rapidly if the French or British responded militarily. Of course, given the public perception of the ‘harsh’ Versailles treaty that was ‘unfair’ to Germany, and wanting to avoid conflict, Britain and France did nothing. When Germany incorporated Austria, the West did nothing. When Germany incorporated Czechoslovakia, despite specific promises to the contrary, the West did nothing.
From these ill-gotten gains, Germany forged a military machine that brought the rest of the world to the brink of defeat, and had Germany not committed self-suicide by racial policies that drove the brightest minds into a scientific diaspora, there is no telling what terrible price we might still be paying for a German victory in World War II.
In the revised preface to his book, The Price of Glory, Verdun 1916, Alister Horne wrote “…a Frenchmen, Jean Dutourd, deploring the moral debility of his countrymen in 1940: “War is less costly than servitude,” he declared; “The choice is always between Verdun and Dachau.””
Our choice in World War I, in World War II, and today in Ukraine, should be based on evaluating the price to be paid for not supporting those who would oppose a power solely focused on gobbling up the territory of its neighbors in the fashion of Imperial Germany, Hitler’s Germany, Imperial Japan of the 1930s early 1940s, and Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Avoiding involvement, supporting an American First agenda of non-involvement, appeases the aggressor and encourages them to take advantage of the present situation in American acquiescence.
Since the American recovery from the Great Depression and World War II, the United States and Europe has seen the longest Period of economic prosperity in its history. Appeasing Russia in its aggressive war in Europe risks going back to a ‘grab what you can’ mentality that governed European history since the fall of the Roman Empire. Our isolationism and non-involvement does not protect us from military confrontation, it simply guarantees that conflict will rise out of control until we are forced to intervene, unprepared and under circumstances where the enemy has gained overwhelming advantage.
After World War II, America and the Western Allies promised they would never again allow the rise of an aggressive military power bent on plunging Europe back into war for territorial aggression. We betray that generation by mimicking the appeasers of Munich in our dealings with Putin in Ukraine. The price of involvement is high, although at this point we can do so without sending American personnel into the combat zone, by supplying military equipment to Ukraine. Should Russia win in Ukraine, Vladimir Putin, like Hitler, would double down on military adventurism, only this time, American contribution would include the lives of our children sacrificed on the altar of isolationist policies.
Before we face the price to be paid for either Verdun or Dachau, we must not ignore the lessons so dearly learned in World War I and World War II, that America First and appeasement never work, and that ignoring a military aggressor multiplies in blood and gold the price must be paid for ignoring our obligation to the World War II generation that we will never again appease a prospective enemy intent on conquering neighboring countries by false negotiations and standing by while they seize and invade other countries.
Start Where You Stand 