Appeasement Doesn’t Work

On a Twitter post I commented that President of Ukraine Zelenskyy should get the aircraft and tanks he’s asking for. Zelenskyy even warned us what would happen if Ukraine falls to Russia: westward expansion of the war. With nowhere to go but NATO member countries, that’s World War Three.

Well, I caught some flak, including graduating comments from one user that ranged from the mild to extreme, including something about a “new world order”. They seemed to think that withholding military equipment to Ukraine was best. Their reasons defy my ability to comprehend anything they wrote.

What they’re really saying, whether they are aware of it or not, is that the West should appease Putin. Macron himself tried to tell President Biden not to call Putin names like “butcher” because he’s still in “talks” with him.

Turkey’s president is doing even worse, potentially undermining NATO should the war expand.

Even people who hate Putin and despised Trump for worshipping the man are against help for Ukraine, which actually means they’re pro-Putin. That’s nuts, and it’s dangerous and damned irresponsible.

However we got here, this historic crisis is upon us all. Appeasement has never worked; it doesn’t prevent war and sometimes doesn’t even delay it. In fact it usually serves a green light. When a nation turns into an aggressor, you can’t fail to warn its leaders that any provocation will be met with equal measure.

While troops and armor were massed on the border, half of all humans thought it didn’t matter, it was just a bargaining threat. Well, more than half, really. Wishful thinking.

Appeasement led directly to Nazi Germany invading Poland. I trust you know what happened next. It made no difference that Great Britain and France declared war; France and Western Europe fell under Nazi invasions and Operation Barbarossa expanded the Blitz toward the Soviet Union.

You don’t give men like Putin room. You’ll reap the whirlwind every fucking time. I predicted Russian thrusts deep into Poland and Romania, but that was before Ukraine started teaching Putin a few lessons about invading a country that liked things the way they were. Russia has been bloodied by Ukraine but also embarrassed; rumbles in Moscow now hint that all of Putin’s highest ranking officers are missing. A new guy is proposing a new strategy. They’re not giving up, and anyone convinced otherwise is delusional. Russia cannot just withdraw as things stand now. It would lose far more than a war; it would be open to aggression and concerted efforts by hackers, economic sanctions that would make recovery from the loss impossible, and possibly more.

It is rumored, and nobody can truly confirm this, that Putin is in hiding, sequestered to the paranoid Nth degree and even has food tasters. Poisoning isn’t the way of the West under most circumstances. It’s a coward’s tool. Russia, on the other hand, uses poisons often for assassinations or “hits”. He’s literally afraid that he will be killed by his own people.

Before Russia begins its new strategy, which as an unknown has a good chance of finishing Ukraine, this is the time to show solidarity by NATO, which might just be involved in a war it doesn’t want if Zelenskyy doesn’t get help. He’s not asking for troops. Some aircraft and tanks are a small price to pay for sending Russia home with a lesson learned.

But the Twitter backlash wasn’t just about a war and a new world order. The comments said that Zelenskyy should negotiate for peace.

They either forgot or choose to ignore that those talks have happened and that Putin lied about not intending to invade, that he claimed a peacekeeping mission once he did invade, and that he continues to lie even now. How did they miss that little tidbit?

That’s easy enough to answer.

People see, especially in times of crises, what they want to see. People still see Trump as a man ordained by God. Fuck me, that’s the dumbest shit I’ve ever heard; a man so devoid of everything human that the blind readily see him for what he is.

In cases like this, however, people aren’t delusional in the clinical sense. They’re scared, and well they should be; the war that follows Ukrain’s fall would shake the four corners of the Earth. You let Putin slide now, and you guarantee war, an expanding one that Russia can never win unless it goes nuclear, and nobody retaliates.

These are not absolutes. Nobody can tell you how this will end. But I see no merit in allowing Ukraine to have Russian flags flying over Kyiv. When that’s done, Russia will gather itself, lick its wounds, and then settle to its springing position to strike again. The coarse Putin has put Russia on is one-way. Anything less, they lose face. Russia never loses that. Never.