Is it only the beginning...?

A global crisis like the one we are seeing today, needs strong global leadership. Perhaps the real crisis is the lack of global leaders that can stand up to this bully and this mess. Have we not learned from history?

In the 1930s Hitler through the doctrine of "Lebensraum" annexed the German speaking areas of Czechoslovakia (Sudentenland) followed by the Anschluss of Austria in 1938. The anti war sentiment in Europe was strong, as it had just begun its recovery after WWI and the need to invest in social welfare and infrastructure/reconstruction was high. So the League of Nations signed the Munich Agreement.

Appeasement was the policy adopted by prime Minister Chamberlain (UK), in the hopes that allowing Hitler to annex these areas would enable peace in Europe and in that way avoid another war. But appeasement has been long recognized as a doctrine of weakness, as Hitler’s ambitions were miscalculated.  Hitler realized he could go unchecked and violated the Munich agreement, laughing at the League of Nations failure to react, as he continued his military expansion.

The stakes today are high. Atomic and nuclear weapons skew the strategic analysis. Is he bluffing or will he continue after Ukraine? With Ukraine, Putin’s plan did not go as quickly or as effectively as he expected. His pride and his public image have suffered. He has now nothing to lose and this is in my mind, the worst situation: to corner a wild animal means he will stop at nothing but destruction of his prey out of spite. NATO is an observer right now.. can we remember why NATO was created in the first place? Where is the leadership standing up face to face to the bully? Someone has stop Putin and NATO is not doing that. Because whether we like it or not, this war has only just started.