Germany after World War I rearmed as an enemy of the West. Germany after World War II (the Western part anyway) rearmed as an ally of the West.
Yet Westerners in this era can excuse Russia's aggressive behavior by saying we were too hard on Russia after the Cold War the way the West was too hard on Germany after World War I?
That's back assward, as the expression goes:
Russia isn't a part of the West because Russia's leaders lately have been a bunch of a-holes. Right now I'm glad we've pushed NATO east as fast as possible. Russia has a lot further to go if it ever rebuilds its military and that alone will deter the Russians. I seriously get an eerie inter-war feel for the whole situation.
You know, the common wisdom is that the Treaty of Versailles was too harsh on Imperial Germany after World War I, which led to the rise of Hitler. When you compare the occupation, dismemberment, and de-Nazification of Germany after 1945 which created a prosperous and democratic allied Germany, you have to conclude that the Allies weren't nearly harsh enough in 1918.
And since 1991, we've treated the Russians with kid gloves, and now they too think they've been betrayed and deny they were really defeated in the Cold War. Now the Russians pretend they were being reasonable and just voluntarily gave up their empire. Of course, occupying Russia and de-Commiefying Moscow was never going to happen. We didn't have much choice at the time since Russia still had lots of working nukes. But the result has been a Russia that increasingly acts like they want to be our enemy.
I wrote that about a week before Russia invaded Georgia.
And Russia continues to say they were "stabbed in the back" by the West.
Sadly, Russian nukes prevented us from using the post-1945 approach on Russia in 1992.
Which is why all the historical analogies in play today are from the 1930s.
