What peace for Ukraine?
#314
My Dear Friend of Democracy,
Anyone who wants to read about what could happen if the USA and Russia agree to a so-called peace over the heads of the Ukrainian people, including ceding territory to Russia, will find plenty of illustrative material in the history books.
I know, I know, history does not repeat itself one to one, but there are structural repetitions. For example, the repetition that becomes apparent when a policy of appeasement is pursued to contain the aspirations of great power, as France and Great Britain attempted to do with Nazi Germany in 1938, and in doing so, with the so-called Munich Agreement, de facto sealed the end of Czechoslovakia.
Czechoslovakia was not even at the table when it was decided at the end of September 1938 that it would have to cede to Germany one-third of its territory, 70 per cent of its heavy industry, 80 per cent of its textile production, 66 per cent of its coal reserves, 70 per cent of its electricity generation, 40 per cent of its timber stocks, as well as around one-third of its total population of 4.75 million people.
In Prague, the government was blamed for the Munich fiasco, whereupon the right wing of the Agrarian Party took power and, from then on, oriented itself almost unreservedly towards German hegemony.
What we can learn from the past:
- An imposed peace weakens the democratic forces of the country.
- Wars are difficult to prevent through appeasement policies.
- What is needed instead is signalled and actual strength. Only if there is a prospect that expansionism will not pay off will the attempt not be made (if Putin had known what tremendous support Ukraine would receive after his invasion, he probably would not have attacked the country in the first place).
After the Second World War, Winston Churchill said in his famous "Iron Curtain" speech in 1946:
"From what I have seen of our Russian friends and Allies during the war, I am convinced that there is nothing they admire so much as strength, and there is nothing for which they have less respect than for weakness, especially military weakness."
The speech has lost none of its relevance. The thinking and actions of that time should be an example for us today.
See you in Germany,
Johannes Eber
📸 Federal Archives Image 183-R69173, Munich Agreement, Heads of State.jpg; created: September 29, 1938. From left: Chamberlain, Daladier (Chairman of the French Socialist Party), Hitler, Mussolini, and the Italian Foreign Minister Count Galeazzo Ciano