articles
I found these articles regarding the conflict in Ukraine to be interesting.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-56720589
https://nationalinterest.org/feature/are-russia-and-america-headed-towards-disastrous-conflict-over-ukraine-200682
https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/02/18/biden-russia-invade-ukraine-kyiv-sanctions-war-donbass/
https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/02/19/russia-ukraine-crisis-belarus-north-korea/
Reed Klein Russia and Ukraine blog Post Articleshttps://nationalinterest.org/feature/do-russian-troops-belarus-mean-war-inevitable-200717
ReplyDeletehttps://nationalinterest.org/feature/why-russia-and-ukraine-are-likely-headed-escalation-their-war-189947
I as a jew find it quite repulsive when events in the modern-day or regimes are compared to the Nazi regime in 1930/40s Germany, however, after recent events, I feel pretty safe saying that Russian President Vladimir Putin is taking and has taken steps to escalate and start a conflict with Ukraine. While the Crimea annexation is a big deal and something we should care about, today I am focusing on another action that has happened in the past week which has unfortunate parallels with the actions the Nazis took to ignite the second world war. It is fairly well known that prior to the invasion of Poland the Nazis ran rampant taking over lost territories in the early days of the Nazi regime, from the Sudetenland to all of Austria the Nazi’s rapidly expanded their sphere of influence and got prepared to attack their larger neighbors (France, Poland, Britain). Right now actions of the Putin Administration are very much paralleling this, Crimea has been annexed for many years at this point and has been incorporated into the Russian Federation, but now Russia is using its other neighbors as it is moving troops through Belarus to get close to another corridor of Ukraine. The smaller nation has begun evacuating its citizens and moving them west away from potential attacks and for the most part, nobody is doing much. Ukraine itself is preparing for potential warfare, but bigger allies especially the US have not guaranteed that they would support the Ukrainian military efforts if they were needed. This feels eerily similar to the situation Czechoslovakia was in during the late 1930s. At the Munich Conference France and Britain essentially told Germany they could have the Sudetenland with literally no push back, appeasing Germany and raising its ego. While this is not the same situation in the modern-day, the way Russia has been able to gain so much ground in Ukraine and now Belarus is certainly frightening to not only the Baltic region but to the rest of the world. I do not think that anyone will ever resort to Nuclear Warfare, but there is certainly an incentive for Russia to reignite the Cold War that they have been written out of and declared a loser. A distinction I believe is also important to make is that I do not think the Russians or Vladimir Putin are as evil or despicable as Hitler and the Nazis. Sure I think what they are doing is pretty rancid, but to reach Nazi-level atrocities would be something that goes even deeper. I simply believe that the actions Russia is taking parallel how Germany ignited World War 2 with how they have made slow gains in their home region in preparation for a potential large attack. Do I have faith that cooler heads will prevail and there will be no bloodshed, yes, but that does not mean that this is not a discussion we need to have? American politics have been so divisive that many of us Americans have stopped caring about the world sphere, but events and actions like this make it apparent that we need to care, or else our world will be in a far worse shape.