A Tale Relevant to the Future, and Past

Can we trust any agreement Trump and Putin make over Ukraine?

It’s largely forgotten now, but on this date in 1939, those two mortal enemies, Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin, stunned the world by announcing a non-aggression pact, and suddenly acting as if they were the best of friends.

What the world didn’t know was that there was a secret part of the treaty that allowed Hitler to invade Poland, and then for the Soviet Union to grab its share a few weeks later. The USSR later also gobbled up the Baltic States, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, parts of Finland, and supplied Germany with all sorts of stuff …

Till June 22, 1941, when Hitler betrayed Stalin, invaded the Soviet Union, and killed millions and occupied vast territories before the Russian winters and superior allied manpower eventually did him in.

Donald Trump almost certainly doesn’t know any of this history, and is a geopolitical moron. And the thought of him negotiating Ukraine’s future with Vladimir Putin, a cold-hearted killer every bit as ruthless as Stalin, ought to scare us a lot more than it seems to be doing.

Karl Marx said history repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce. Stephen King said the past doesn’t exactly repeat, but “harmonizes.” I know this is one melody we really don’t want to hear, every again.