Those who don't remember the past...
History becomes fable.
We don't remember the past. We create it for ourselves to suit our needs.
Baby Boomers know what "Munich" means. It means Britain's Neville Chamberlain thinking we had "appeased" Hitler by letting him annex an area of Czechoslovakia. We learned a lesson, and have applied it for eight decades: "Appeasement" doesn't work to stop an aggressor. History is more complicated, but never mind. It is fable, heuristic.
August 1914 has faded from memory. Diplomats, foreign policy experts, and "intelligence service" professionals know the history, but the punditry and public has rejected that group and whatever they knew. The left thinks foreign policy experts are discredited by decades of error as regards Vietnam and Iraq. The political right considers them Deep State enemies of Trump.
Boomers barely remember "the Bay of Pigs." It is an uncomfortable memory because for a majority of Americans, JFK was a hero. People on the left remember the CIA planned an operation to overthrow the government of a neighboring country. We carried it out led by partisans in the U.S. The takeaway lesson for the left is CIA deceit and malevolence. The political right remembers it differently. We bailed out midway on theoCuban anti-communist crusaders. An indecisive Democrat let Cuba stay communist.
It serves no one to liken the Bay of Pigs operation to Russia in Ukraine. There is a lesson of big-power entitlement and the use of proxies to be acknowledged, but that is an uncomfortable fable because it positions us as the big-power aggressor. That idea conflicts with another American heuristic: Anyone we disagree with we call Hitler, especially if they exercise power in an unwelcome way.
We name-call Hitler. Obama is Hitler. Trump is Hitler. Putin is Hitler. By process of logic, since Putin is Hitler and since JFK (either a hero or weak) cannot be Hitler. Whatever happened in the Bay of Pigs might be wrong, but it is not what Putin has done in Ukraine using partisans to overthrow a nearby government.
"Afghanistan" ended so badly that it became instant fable. America was nation building. Afghans have their own politics, culture, and religion. We learned they liked being Afghans. We were fooled by a Potemkin Village of support for us. We got played.
Potemkin Village is a fable so clear it needs no explanation.
Vietnam has not become a fable yet. Boomers and our elders remember Vietnam in too many different ways. Some remember it as patriotic service. Others remember it as a fruitless waste. The geopolitical lesson was "Vietnam syndrome." That means reluctance to use the American military lest we discover ourselves stuck in a costly, immoral quagmire. It also means its opposite. "Vietnam syndrome" was criticism, meaning the U.S. was too reluctant to face up to its duties as a peacekeeper. When Boomers die off, Vietnam may become like "Munich," an event with a single big clarifying meaning.
Yesterday in this blog I suggested Ukraine might be understood as a border skirmish between two countries, Ukraine and Russia. It is Ukraine now, but each have some claim to the affiliations of people of the Donbas. Neville Chamberlain justified Hitler's seizing the Sudetenland because of the principle of "self-determination." Chamberlain's decision did not age well. It was a ruse by Hitler. He didn't care about self determination. His plan was European domination. That might be Putin's too.
Why would anyone, now Putin, invite the death of so many people, including his own soldiers? Why attempt to dominate Europe when one could sell it natural gas and enjoy neighbors in peace and prosperity?
There is another lesson of history: We honor conquerors. The man who greatly expanded the territory and prestige of Russia is remembered as Peter the Great. Napoleon communicated a vision of the greatness of France. His Grand Armée departed for Russia with 400,000 soldiers and returned with 35,000 survivors. He is remembered and celebrated in France.