Since the very early days of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, advocates of war between between NATO and the Russian Federation have repeatedly invoked the so-called “lesson of Munich.” The ”lesson” is that any sort of military aggression by a non-NATO state requires an aggressive military response from the United States and its allies.
When they invoke “Munich,” politicians and pundits are referencing the notorious Munich conference of 1938, when UK prime minister Neville Chamberlain (and others) agreed to allow Adolf Hitler’s Germany to annex the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia as a way to avoid a general war in Europe. The “appeasement,” of course, failed to prevent war because Hitler’s regime actually planned to annex much more than that.
Now, more than eight decades later, we are to believe that Moscow’s invasion of eastern Ukraine must be viewed as analogous to Hitler’s invasion of Czechoslovakia. Anything else is “appeasement” enabling the next Hitler.
Thus, back in March 2022, Ukrainian legislator Lesia Vasylenko accused Western leaders of appeasement during Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, stating, “This is the same as 1938 when also the world and the United States in particular were averting their eyes from what was being done by Hitler and his Nazi Party.” The week before that, Estonian legislator Marko Mihkelson declared, ”I hope I’m wrong but I smell ‘Munich’ here. “
Little has changed in this respect over the past eighteen months of war. In September, President Biden made the Munich claim without using the word:
But I ask you this: If we abandon the core principles of the United States [sic] to appease an aggressor [i.e., Russia] can any member state in this body feel confident that they are protected? If we allow Ukraine to be carved up, is the independence of any nation secure? ... We have to stand up to this naked aggression today and deter other would-be aggressors tomorrow.
It’s the same old story over and over again. Every new war is another Second World War, and every foreign head of state who runs afoul of the US State Department is the next Hitler. This claim is often further supplemented by discredited, crackpot theories like “the domino theory” invoked by American hawks for decades.
We are coming up on the second anniversary of the Russian escalation in 2022, and it’s now more clear than ever that the cries of “Munich 1938!” were never plausible. The idea that Russian tanks would roll through Warsaw, Vienna, and Berlin after finishing off Ukraine have always been preposterous. It is now abundantly clear that Russia can barely hold on to areas with sizable minorities of ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine. This is true even though the much-hyped Ukrainian “counter-offensive” is an abject failure, and Kiev continues to send men into the meat grinder in vain.
Nor is it plausible that Moscow would have conquered much of eastern Europe had Washington not fleeced the American taxpayers for more than $100 billion in the name of deterring Moscow. Moscow has never possessed the kind of manpower necessary to carry out a military occupation in any place that does not already contain at least a sizable minority sympathetic to Moscow. The Crimea, for instance, is majority ethnic-Russian, which is why Russia’s effort to annex the peninsula succeeded so quickly.
But even if it were ever true that Russia was planning to “reestablish the Soviet Union”—as some Eastern European hawks claimed—that’s obviously not the reality now. Any attempt in 2023 to call in—yet again—the lesson of Munich smack of desperation or deception.
The crankery of the “Munich!” battle cry is now so abundantly clear, in fact, that neither the voters, nor a Congressional majority are enthusiastic about handing over another $100 billion to Kiev. In spite of the Administration’s claim that the war in Ukraine “advances our national security interests,” few are buying it anymore.
And thank goodness. Had the Poles and the Lithuanians had their way, the US would have imposed a no-fly zone over Ukraine, shipped countless jet fighters and other offensive weapons to Ukraine, possibly provoking a direct conflict between Washington and Moscow. Not even a threat of nuclear war was a deterrent to countless corporate media pundits who insisted that global nuclear war is a risk everyone ought to be willing to make.
Such bravado now looks downright absurd. Rumors now swirl that American and European officials are beginning to come to terms with reality and pressuring Kiev to negotiate a peace settlement. Many are realizing that fantasies of a total Ukrainian victory, promoted largely by Volodymyr Zelensky, has done little except prolong the war and the bloodshed in eastern Ukraine. The US involvement in the war is winding down. The regime has no intentions of actually cutting back its limitless spending on the US war machine, but the regime will gradually come up with justifications for the spending other than Ukraine. American spending on the conflict will gradually fall to the below-the-radar kinds of spending that continues in Syria and Iraq. Unless the Europeans step up their own spending on the war, the war itself will wind down as Russian consolidates its territorial gains and Ukraine gives up. The time has come for Washington to declare victory, pack up, and move on. Kiev has probably seen it coming. The US now has a tradition of encouraging its allies to invest themselves in unwinnable wars. Then, when the writing is on the wall, the Americans bail. There’s no reason why the Ukrainians will get any better treatment than the Kurds.
Exactly how this will all unwind is unclear, but one thing that is abundantly clear is that the cry of “Munich” and “appeasement” is increasingly tired and has long been the stuff of fantasy. Let’s hope that many remember this, so that next time the warmongers invoke this supposed “lesson,” the taxpayers don’t fall for it, yet again.
Read More:
- “A Brief History of Pundits Encouraging Nuclear War”
- “We Must Now Learn the Lesson of 1914, Not the Lesson of 1938.”
- “What Would Happen If the US Stopped Supporting Ukraine?”
