Why Putin won’t take Hitler’s way out

The last time Europe fought a major war, there was no shortage of planning. We knew what peace meant. Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt issued their Atlantic Charter in August 1941, before the Allied victory was anywhere close. This was followed by more meetings and conferences, including in Tehran in 1943 and later at Yalta, in Crimea, in 1945. The fighting never stopped, but there was a lot of thinking about the future of Germany, Europe and the new world order. 

This sort of thinking is less evident today with Ukraine. Maybe it’s because Russia’s war in Ukraine, as bad as it is, isn’t yet a world war. It is happening some place out there, in ruined towns that few have ever heard of, and fewer still really care about. People are dying, but they are not us. The West keeps increasing its military aid to Ukraine, and we rightly cheer at its every victory, but there is a disconnect between this effort and our broader thinking about the post-war world.