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Thursday, March 28, 2024

A Replay Of World War Two?

By Steve Slavin. Originally published at ValueWalk.

DAX Ukraine New World Order

In the late 1930s and early 1940s, Nazi Germany and its fascist allies, Japan and Italy, were well on their way to conquering their neighbors in Europe and Asia. The United States – while protected by the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans – hoped to stay out of the gathering conflict.

But Democratic President Franklin Roosevelt was able to send vast amounts of military aid to the United Kingdom, and then, to the Soviet Union, in the hopes of halting the military advances of these fascist nations. He managed this over the vociferous protests of the America-Firsters, primarily very rightwing Congressional Republicans.


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In effect, then, we offered the vast industrial might of America in exchange for letting the Allies do our fighting for us. That strategy worked quite well until December 1941, when the Japanese pulled off a spectacularly successful sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, sinking most of our Pacific fleet.

Suddenly, we were involved in a full-scale war on two fronts – the Atlantic and the Pacific. But while we immediately became fully engaged fighting the Japanese, we fought against the Germans and the Italians just in North Africa.

For years, the Soviets pleaded with us to open a second front against the Germans, who occupied almost all of Europe, and had reached the gates of Moscow. While we did continue supplying them with vast amounts of armaments, we did not open a second full battlefront in Western Europe until D-Day, June 6, 1944.

By the time the war ended, some twenty million Soviet citizens had been killed, By comparison, we suffered just 292,000 combat deaths.

To sum up, as the “Arsenal of Democracy,” American industrial might was the key to winning the war. That, and of course, and the lives of twenty million Soviets.

Ukraine’s Independence

Today, on a much smaller scale, we are hoping that Ukraine can successfully resist Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of their country. Indeed, we and our NATO allies, along many other nations, have provided a few billion dollars in military aid – not nearly as much as Ukraine needs.

Ukraine’s independence is extremely important, since Putin’s obvious ambition is to reconstitute the Soviet Union. Ukraine would be, by far, the most important component in terms of population and land mass.  More than four of five Americans agree that Putin must be stopped.

But would we want to go to a war over preserving Ukraine’s independence? How about a nuclear war?

Was that a resounding “No!”?

Very few Americans would want to put their lives on the line to protect Ukraine’s independence. Both Putin and President Joe Biden have framed the issue in these terms. The two of them appear to have reached an implicit understanding: If the United States confines its aid to just very basic defensive weaponry, Russia will refrain from nuclear saber-rattling.

So, it would appear that in the coming months, we and our NATO allies may ramp up our military aid to the Ukrainians, but continue to take care not to risk a nuclear war. Almost as significant, we will continue to enable the Ukrainians to do our fighting for us. That strategy worked for a while during World War II. It appears to be working now.

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