The Historians Could Still Be Awfully Wrong About the War in Ukraine
Past performance is no guarantee of future results.
I’ve had a few historians dog me about my articles on Ukraine. They insist that history is dispositive. They tell me that what worked for other countries will work for Russia, too. They offer the following prescription with a fair amount of uniformity and confidence: Nothing but a humiliating defeat will cure Russia of its poor behavior.
I will admit that the overwhelming and undisputable defeat of Germany and Japan did bring about some peace in the wake of the Second World War. But we still had wars after that. We had wars in Korea and Vietnam. We had Iraq, twice. Bosnia-Herzegovina, too. We took forever to get out of Afghanistan.
All of them involved the United States in some way or another. America seems to be a common element in wars around the world. That’s one reason I’m not convinced that the war in Ukraine will end if Russia were to just leave Ukraine.
Some of the historians I’ve encountered seem to think that Russia would fit the same pattern. All we have to do is deliver a humiliating defeat, followed by a big dose of disarmament, and Voila! you have peace.
