Is Putin’s War More Like WWI or WWII?
Like the Delphic Oracle, history offers guidance, but leaves interpretations up to us. Yet some are more apt than others.
The right analogy?
Photographer: Jack Guez/AFP via Getty Images
Beware the “lessons of history” as drawn by charlatans, ignoramuses or tyrants, for they will be daft, wrong and possibly disastrous. The self-serving amateur historiography of Russian President Vladimir Putin is an example.
Last year, he invented a narrative “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians,” which was subsequently revealed as one of the hallucinations that made him attack Ukraine. The other day, he was at it again, comparing himself to Peter the Great, and hinting that “it seems it has fallen to us, too, to reclaim and strengthen.” That implied he might like to wage war against Sweden (as Peter did in the 18th century) and seize lands that are now part of Estonia, a member of NATO.