Is this How it Starts?

Neville Chamberlain shakes hands with Mussolini at the signing of the Munich Agreement in 1938, which officially recognized the German annexation of the Sudetenland. Standing behind Mussolini is Hermann Gohring, the founder of the Nazi Gestapo.

Russia has annexed the Crimean Peninsula and blockaded its harbors. The Ukrainian Army is not mounting any defense and it looks as if the annexation will hold. Will this be an event that leads Europe on a path that ends in a Third World War, as I have warned? The answer is maybe, and it all depends on how The West responds to Moscow's actions.

Notably absent from the mainstream news coverage of the conflict, and from the comments of Western leaders, is any perspective on how the Crimean Peninsula came to be part of Ukraine. No where in the commentary is how the Crimean Peninsula was part of Russia between 1783 and 1954, almost two hundred years, or that about 60% of its occupants are ethnically and linguistically Russian.

In 1954, Krushkchev transferred the Crimean Peninsula to the Ukraine, where he had served as governor during Stalin's "purges", although at that time only about 22% of the inhabitants identified themselves as Ukranian. This "gift" by the Russians was designed as an act of good faith, to show "unity" between the Russians and the ethnically diverse Soviet satellite states, and undoubtedly was influenced by Krushchev's experiences in the Ukraine, the fact that he was born in a Russian village not far from the border with the Ukraine, and the fact that the acting Secretary of the Communist Party of the Ukraine at that time was ethnically Ukranian. This was commorated in a Soviet propaganda poster showing a Russian and a Ukranian standing behind the same shield and gazing in the same direction.

"Eternally Together"

At the time, the majority of Russians bemoaned the transfer of land to Ukrainians. However, the USSR acted as one entity, and so this "gift" had little impact on Russian, or Soviet, activities. For example, Soviet ships still made use of the warm water Black Sea port of Sevastapol (which the Russians recently blockaded by towing large hulls and sinking them in the mouth of the port). However, when the USSR disintegrated it did so along the lines of Soviet maps, not along ethnic lines, leaving the Crimean Peninsula in the hands of the Ukranians. This was viewed by the majority of Russians, especially Vladimir Putin, as a great injustice, and has been a sore point for them ever since. When the Ukrainian pro-Russian puppet leader was toppled, Putin felt compelled to act or (in his mind, anyway) lose any chance of recovering the Crimean Peninsula.

The interim Ukrainian goverment issued a decree that the Ukrainian Army would not resist the imminent Russian annexation of the Crimean Peninsula for good reason: it has only been part of Ukraine since 1954 and the majority of the inhabitants there don't even speak Ukrainian. When the USSR disintegrated and current-day Ukraine was formed in 1991, the Crimean Peninsula probably should have stayed with Russia.

My advice to the West is to let the Crimean Peninsula go, and focus on the rest of the Ukrainian land mass. If Russians indicate that they want to annex any more land, or further destabilize the Ukraine, we should be prepared to provide military support to the Ukrainians as a deterrent.

We should NOT use this conflict as an opportunity to resort to a Cold War mentality, which is what many in the Military Industrial Complex are hoping for. If we do that, then the likelihood of a Third World War as envisioned will be much closer to a reality.