Can We Avoid World War III? Forgetting History Will Destroy Us.
A response to President Trump's plan to end Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
If President Trump continues his recent 28-point plan to end Russia’s war against Ukraine, he really should hold the public events in Munich, not in Geneva. The Munich Pact was signed on Sept 30, 1938, by British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, French Prime Minister Édouard Daladier, and Adolf Hitler allowing Hitler to take the Sudetenland, a Germanic part of western Czechoslovakia. The Czechs and Slovaks were not represented at the meeting, and the new agreement broke previous mutual defense agreements among the UK, France, and Czechoslovakia. Hitler promised that if he were allowed to take this region without western military intervention, he would not make any more territorial demands.
Chamberlain flew to London and proudly declared, “We have peace for our time.” A week later Winston Churchill gave a famous speech in Parliament in which he said that Chamberlain’s appeasement of Hitler was for Britain “a total and unmitigated defeat.” Addressing Chamberlain directly he said, “You had the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor, and you will have war.”
The Munich Pact came six months after the Anschluss, the annexation of Austria on March 13, 1938. Another six months later, on March 15, 1939, the Nazis took control of all of Czechoslovakia, ignoring the Munich Pact. On Sept 1, 1939, eleven months after the Munich Pact, Germany invaded Poland, using the massive amounts of weapons, ammunition, and vehicles they captured In Czechoslovakia. Two days later Britain and France declared war on Germany. Chamberlain received dishonor, and some 80 million people died in the war, including 6 million Jews in the Holocaust.
Some will say we should not compare Putin with Hitler nor Ukraine in 2025 with Czechoslovakia in 1938. After all, Putin and Russia will make specific written promises safeguarding Ukraine’s future. My wife, Leslie P. Johnson responded, “Having lived in Belarus, close to Russia, and seeing the Russian culture of signing contracts but totally ignoring them, I don’t trust Putin as far as I could throw him. He WILL be like Hitler. Are we ready for it?”
Today I read again the 1994 Budapest Memorandum Regarding Security Assurances for Ukraine. At that time Russia, Britain, and the US reaffirmed, “their obligation to refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine, and that none of their weapons will ever be used against Ukraine except in self-defence or otherwise in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations.” France and China soon signed similar agreements.
Vladimir Putin egregiously shattered Russia’s signature on the 1994 deal by the 2014 invasion of Crimea and the 2022 invasion eastern Ukraine. He does not keep his country’s contracts. The West cannot gain peace by giving him what he wants. We are at a Munich moment. I hope that our President and our NATO leaders learn from Churchill, not from Chamberlain.
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Prof Sir Thomas K Johnson, Ph.D. Iowa, Fulbright Tübingen, is a philosopher of culture and religion who taught for two academic institutions started by anti-communist dissidents, The European Humanities University, Европейский гуманитарный университет in Russian, (Belarus) and The Institute of Fundamental Learning, Institut základů vzdělanosti in Czech (Charles University). He has taught at Protestant theological schools in eight countries and pastored three churches, two in the US and one in the former USSR. In 2003 he joined Martin Bucer Seminary and later became Vice President for Research. Johnson has received three knighthoods in recognition of his human rights efforts. His books include Natural Law Ethics; God’s General Revelation; Human Rights; Christian Ethics in Secular Cultures (2 volumes); Evangelical Christianity, Humanitarian Islam, and the Clash of Civilizations. He has edited 30 books including God Needs No Defense, with C. Holland Taylor. He serves the World Evangelical Alliance, which represents 600 million Christians in 143 countries, as Special Envoy to the Holy See and as Emissary for Humanitarian Islam.