Russia

THOMAS MCARDLE was a White House speechwriter for President George W. Bush and writes for IssuesInsights.com. Thomas McArdle

Economic Anschluss

The similarity of Putin to Hitler is unmissable

In invading ukraine, where he is encountering heroic and unexpectedly effective resistance, ex-KGB officer Vladimir Putin has unabashedly embarked on step one of what in effect will be a restoration of the Soviet Union. The primary cause of this unfolding catastrophe is the completely avoidable European—and even American—over-reliance on Russian energy resources.

“The virus of nationalist ambitions is still with us, and the mine laid at the initial stage to destroy state immunity to the disease of nationalism was ticking,” Putin said in his blood-curdling speech several days before the invasion began. “As I have already said, the mine was the right of secession from the Soviet Union.”

On the day his forces were rolling into Ukraine, he referred to the United States and our NATO allies as “those who declared themselves the winners of the Cold War.” He said “the whole so-called Western bloc formed by the United States in its own image and likeness is, in its entirety” an “empire of lies.” And he declared, “In territories adjacent to Russia, which I have to note is our historical land, a hostile ‘anti-Russia’ is taking shape.”

When Putin falsely claims that “since time immemorial, the people living in the southwest of what has historically been Russian land have called themselves Russians and Orthodox Christians” and so “I made a decision to carry out a special military operation ... to demilitarize and denazify Ukraine,” the similarity to Hitler is unmissable.

In September 1938, days before taking the Sudetenland, Hitler declared, “With regard to the problem of the Sudeten Germans, my patience is now at an end! ... Now at last give to the Germans their freedom, or we will go and fetch this freedom for ourselves.”

As commentators now mull Putin’s ultimate objectives, his state of mind, and Russia’s historic inclination toward imperialism, the 800-pound gorilla in the room is the European Union’s avoidable economic dependence on Russia—for Putin, a 21st-century economic Anschluss with former Warsaw Pact nations and those beyond. Germany, for instance, imports well more than half of its natural gas from Russia. Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s defense minister, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, admitted in a tweet “our historical failure.”

“After Georgia, Crimea, and Donbas, we have not prepared anything that would have really deterred Putin,” she wrote.

Merkel and her predecessor, Gerhard Schroeder, who cozied up to Putin and after his premiership ended up taking a generous stipend from Russian gas monopoly Gazprom, turned to Moscow for their energy needs, most ominously after Merkel closed down Germany’s nuclear power industry.

It was symbolized well by an incident that few Americans remember. In 2007, visiting Putin’s presidential residence to discuss energy and other economic matters, the dog-fearing Merkel was subjected to a surprise visit by his abnormally massive black Labrador, in full view of the press. Merkel was terrified and Putin delighted.

Outrageously, the United States itself currently imports more than 20 percent of our gasoline and refined petroleum products from Russia.

For years, the perennially naive, dovish EU and the foreign policy operatives surrounding President Joe Biden and President Barack Obama have regarded Putin as a cartoon figure, either part of their fantasies aimed against Donald Trump or a faraway irritant well down on their list of concerns. As Obama put it nearly a decade ago, dismissing concerns over Putin’s Russia, “You know, the Cold War’s been over for 20 years.”

The war going on today in Ukraine is red-hot, a direct consequence of the free world underestimating the threat of post-Soviet Russia and the socialist-oriented, environmentalism-obsessed EU allowing itself to become energy dependent on and vulnerable to an anti-democratic premier-for-life who nearly 17 years ago publicly made clear his view that “it is worth acknowledging that the demise of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.”

Four thousand miles east of Kyiv, another anti-democratic premier-for-life, China’s Xi Jinping, watches the tepid response to Putin’s aggression from a free West that allowed itself to become soft, unsure of its moral standing, and economically dependent on tyrants—Xi more than any other. He likely sees little to deter him from pouncing on free Taiwan, having already moved against Hong Kong.

The war going on today in Ukraine is red hot, a direct consequence of the free world underestimating the threat of postSoviet Russia and the socialist-oriented, environmentalismobsessed European Union allowing itself to become energy dependent.