A column in yesterday’s NYT made the interesting point that public perceptions of the war in Ukraine are being largely dictated by analogies to World War I and World War II. The World War II proponents see Putin as Hitler, and any attempt to negotiate with him as Munich; the World War I supporters, on the other hand, think the most important task is to avoid stumbling into a wider conflict. Which analogy is better?
The origins of the war, which is an exercise in naked unprovoked imperialism, much more closely resemble World War II than World War I. The war itself in every respect looks more like World War I. By my calculation, we have reached the 1917 stage of the war; neither side is capable of gaining much ground, but the possibility of outside intervention looms. In 1917, the Russian government was collapsing, but the US was entering the war; today, the issue is the American election, and the possibility of Trump changing sides.
The other part of the analogy that matters now is Putin’s ultimate objective in starting the war. Is he more Hitler or Hindenburg? The question is less significant than you might think, because under the pressure of the British blockade, the Germans were becoming more and more aggressive in their war aims by 1918. The Brest-Litovsk treaty was not far removed from what Hitler would have demanded in 1941, and the Germans probably would have turned France into a Vichy-like state if their 1918 offensives had been completely successful.
In other words, whether Putin is a figure from World War I or World War II, he cannot be trusted to stop with Ukraine.