“Those gooks were fierce and fearless. That’s the price you pay when you invade.”
- Rocker Lou Reed, from “Christmas in February”
Vladimir Putin won’t own Ukraine. Neither will Donald Trump.
The Ukrainians will own their own country for as long as they want to, regardless of the outcome of Putin’s ongoing war of invasion.
Modern history shows that occupations following wars of invasion against sovereign nations typically fail for three reasons: 1) Invaders are hated by citizens of the nations they occupy, 2) After the invasion, hateful citizen guerillas keep on fighting to the death for their native soil, and 3) Over time, occupying nations lose more boys than they can stomach, and leave.
That’s why the United States left Vietnam. That’s why Britain surrendered its American colonies. And that’s why Russia and the United States both gave up their respective occupations of Afghanistan.
Of course, it helped that the Afghanis used U.S. weapons against Russia and that George Washington was gifted generals, ships and gunpowder by France and that Ho Chi Minh had the backing of Chairman Mao.
But that happens more times than not. In geopolitics, nations continually jockey for friends and favors. Some nation wanting Ukraine’s blondes or sunflower seeds or Olympic wrestlers will join with Ukraine’s patriots against Putin, eventually wearing down Russia until it can no longer stomach the flood of blood.
That also explains Poland. For a thousand years, the Germans or the Russians or the Prussians were invading and occupying Poland. But none of them stuck and there’s a Poland today because Polish people were willing to die to have their own nation.
Don’t take my word for it but consider the American South. At the end of the U.S. Civil War, General Sherman blazed through the Confederacy, leveling cities, burning farms, destroying railroads.
That invasion happened more than 150 years ago and many Southerners are still angry about it. They call it “The War of Northern Aggression” and they wave the flag of their defeated wannabe nation. They never really had their own country, but they’re still pissed. So are the Palestinians who will die and die and die for their homeland, Palestine.
That’s the terrible cost of invasion.
In business terms, it’s a bad investment because no one wants to live where they’re hated. Everyone understands this, everyone except for mad, power-hungry tyrants who don’t know their history.
Interestingly in the case of Ukraine, Putin should know it. The Russians defeated Hitler with little more than hatred, willpower and love of homeland. Why Putin doesn’t understand the Ukrainians look at him the same way Russians viewed Hitler is a masterwork of delusion and self-deception.