There’s no negotiating with Putin. NATO must mobilize military might, be ready to fight

During the “wilderness years,” Churchill warned of Adolf Hitler’s ambitions, presciently shouting to a deaf world the dangers ahead. The Rhineland. Sudetenland. Czechoslovakia gobbled up while appeasers twiddled. England and France could have sent Hitler packing. Instead, they gave him three more years to arm. It was too late. Fifty million died.

Stalin, double-crossed by his former Polanddividing German friend, decided too late that he had to fight. Millions of Soviet soldiers and civilians died because of his dithering. FDR had to contend with America First-ers and could have entered the war sooner; he had third-term political considerations in 1940; but he knew he had to fight, too. Eventually.

I have studied world history all my life, and am clear that we relive the mistakes of history at our peril. Vladimir Putin invades a sovereign country. Germans, the Frenchmen, the British, NATO, the United States haven’t stopped him. Ukrainian children are starving, freezing and losing their lives to a bloodthirsty pyromaniac.

Using time as his weapon, Putin, like Hitler, is conscripting, propagandizing and incrementally marshaling massive manpower — constructing his war machine, gaslighting his people, building support, slowly, cunningly, odiously. Russians believe his lies about Ukraine as a Nazi haven. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s Churchillian appearance before the U.S. Congress shows we must move swiftly, because time is on Putin’s side. A war of attrition is not on Ukraine’s side, even with U.S./European tanks, rockets, drones and artillery. Western fears and time are Putin’s allies.

Wars start slowly, but inevitably spiral out of control; aid the West provides the Ukrainians resembles aid that the United States gave to England in 1940, followed by an exponential increase in materiel from our “arsenal of democracy.” It was not enough in 1940, and it’ not enough in 2023 as this war drags on. The Russians have too much manpower and too much time.

Victory requires a credible threat of NATO mobilization — an army ready to do battle.

NATO faces the eventual inevitability of mobilizing an army to eject Putin from Ukraine and Crimea. The alternative is too grim to contemplate: trench warfare; stalemate; Ukrainians under siege; massive Russian armies; world economic disruption; continued war crimes; a war of attrition.

I hope I am wrong. Billions of dollars for weapons in a proxy war with Ukrainians fighting Russians is impactful, but fatiguing. Americans can watch Netflix war movies while Ukrainians bleed. They can watch Tom Hanks storm the beach at Normandy. Let’s just ship some more rockets to Ukraine instead. “Yellowstone” is on.

Military planners in the Pentagon and in Western European capitals should be preparing for a wider war. It would be wholly irresponsible for them not to. NATO must tell Putin to get out of Ukraine or face an allied army evicting him. Putin needs an ultimatum to get out. He understands only naked power.

Lenin said, “Push forward the bayonet. If you find soft flesh, push. If you find steel, retreat.” Putin learned Lenin in school; Lenin is in his DNA. He learned it in the KGB. He learned it in Mother Russia.

Russians never had democratic traditions. Ask Nicholas II and his family, brutally executed by Bolsheviks. Ask the millions starved by Stalin in Ukraine during his agriculture plans. Ask the people sent to the gulag, or the Hungarians who dared to revolt against the Soviets. Ask the subjugated people of Poland, carved up by Stalin and Hitler. Ask all of the terrorized people who suffered behind the Iron Curtain. Ask opposition leader Alexi Navalny, poisoned and now jailed.

Putin seeks to raise the Soviet corpse by terrorizing a sovereign nation — which had its own history before Lenin and his disciples created a dark Bolshevik empire.

Western ambitions about ending this war through negotiation are delusional. If Putin sees that we are serious about the sovereignty of nations, he must face a serious military threat. Only then will he likely back down.

Until then, brave Ukrainians will bleed, freeze and die bearing the brunt of our fears.