A protester in London holding a sign portraying Keir Starmer, Donald Trump and Neville Chamberlain. Credit: Getty
Any pressure on Kiev to make a deal with Moscow is tantamount to “appeasement,” according to Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who tweeted as much on Sunday. The “appeasement” stick is only one of the World War II-era historical analogies used by partisans to beat up their opponents. Yet 80 years after the end of World War II, and 111 years after the beginning of World War I, it is time to forget the world wars.
I don’t mean the world wars should be forgotten as historical events. The three-decade conflict of 1914 to 1945, best thought of as a single conflict in two phases, was the greatest catastrophe in human history to date, causing 100 million deaths, all told. The war ended with cities and factories in Europe and Asia in ruins, millions of displaced people, the rapid decolonization of the bankrupt European empires, the emergence of the United States as the preeminent power amid the wreckage, and the half-century Soviet-American Cold War. As long as civilization exists, that three-decade cataclysm will never be forgotten.
But when it comes to thinking about and making foreign policy, the world wars provide few if any “lessons of history” that are of value in today’s world. On the contrary, parallels with the events of 1914-1945 — whether drawn by historians, pundits, or policymakers — are likely to be harmful, by trying to impose anachronistic patterns on the realities of our time.
The peddling of these false parallels — by media outlets in search of audiences, politicians striking heroic poses, and academics who want to be celebrities — has made the public think that today’s world is far more dangerous and unstable than it actually is. According to a recent YouGov poll, 22% of Americans think it is very likely that there will be another world war in the next 10 years, and another 39% think it is somewhat likely.
Many of the alleged parallels that are cited are so abstract that they are also parallels between our age and many other periods in history as well — say, the Crimean War, or the age of the French Revolution, or the wars of the Reformation in Europe.
For example, Lord David Alton of Liverpool published an essay in February arguing that conflicts in the Middle East; tensions over Taiwan; the race to secure rare-earth minerals; and the growing alliance between China, Iran, and Russia — all suggest “parallels between the world wars and today’s circumstances.” Last year in Foreign Affairs, Hal Brands of Johns Hopkins published an essay headlined: “The Next Global War: How Today’s Regional Conflicts Resemble the Ones That Produced World War II.” He followed it up with an essay in Bloomberg headlined: “It’s Looking a Lot Like World War II Out There.”
[su_unherd_related fttitle=”More from this author” author=”Michael Lind”]https://unherd-wpml-test.go-vip.net/2025/04/left-and-right-get-equality-wrong/[/su_unherd_related]
“Our world resembles the 1930s more than we might think,” Brands wrote, “Now, as then, the balance of power is shifting ominously. Violent autocracies are seeking expansive empires. Ties between authoritarian states are growing stronger; regional conflicts are becoming interwoven.” Then he added: “To be sure, the parallels are inexact.”
Indeed, they are so inexact as to be virtually nonexistent.
In the 1930s, outside of the Americas, most of the world was dominated by the British empire and other European colonial empires, with Germany, Italy, and Japan seeking to conquer other countries in order to establish their own regional empires. Where are the “violent autocracies” that “are seeking expansive empires” today?
Putin’s Russia might fit the bill. It has invaded Ukraine to annex Crimea and eastern Ukraine. Post-Soviet Russia, which to date has not won its proxy war with the United States and Europe in Ukraine, can threaten other weak neighbors like the Baltic States. But it lacks the capacity to conquer much of Eastern and Western Europe as both Imperial Germany and Nazi Germany did.
Nor is China a suitable candidate. Chinese troops have engaged in limited border conflicts with India and harassed other maritime nations in the South China Sea. But those limited acts of aggression cannot be compared to Japan’s invasion and occupation of much of East and Southeast Asia before and during World War II.
Compare this to 1914, when a German secret program envisioned not only an authoritarian German-ruled Central European economic bloc, but also the annexation by force of chunks of France, Belgium, and Luxembourg. Much of this was brought to fruition in 1918, when the treaty of Brest-Litovsk ceded Ukraine, Poland, Belarus, and the Baltic States to Imperial Germany. The treaty’s other signatory was the new Communist regime of Vladimir Lenin, who had been transported to Tsarist Russia with the help of the German government.
Hitler’s territorial program was even more radical, involving the use of mass murder and deliberate starvation to depopulate Eastern Europe and Russia and make room for German colonists. No great power today, not even Putin’s revanchist Russia, has anything remotely resembling the grandiose plans of Imperial and Nazi Germany or Japan’s design for an autarkic Asian empire.
In the early 21st century, the equivalents of empires are competitive trade blocs that are established by diplomacy, not military conquest. In today’s multipolar world order, contemporary great powers use trade blocs to magnify their home markets. The goal is to promote national champions in large-scale industrial sectors, those characterized by increasing returns to scale — there’s a reason we don’t have mom-and-pop tire factories — or network effects — it’s better to have two rail lines linking 200 towns than 100 individual lines. The United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, the successor to NAFTA, has created a market of more than 500 million people, augmenting America’s home market of 340 million inhabitants. The European Union has more than 450 million people.
[su_pullquote]“The age of mass conscription of citizens as cannon fodder in colossal wars is a thing of the past.”[/su_pullquote]
For its part, China, in addition to seeking bilateral economic agreements with countries around the world, has persuaded 14 other Asia-Pacific nations to join its Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership — without invading and occupying a single one of them. With its global Belt and Road Initiative, combining its overland “Silk Road Economic Belt” with its “Twenty-First Century Maritime Silk Road,” China has sent bankers, development specialists, and infrastructure experts to countries, not soldiers. Beijing’s only acknowledged overseas military base is one in Djibouti, established in 2016.
Russia, with a mere 143 million people, has collaborated with Belarus, Armenia, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan to form the Eurasian Economic Union, boasting more than 180 million people. The estimated 3 million inhabitants of the Ukrainian territories conquered by Russia add little to the population and home market of Russia’s Eurasian bloc, whatever the strategic value of the conquered territories might be to the Putin regime.
When it comes to military technologies and strategies, the differences between our time and the age of the world wars are also profound. Sudden cyberattacks on enemy infrastructure and telecommunications might be possible, but surprise attacks like Japan’s assault on Pearl Harbor or Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union will not be repeated in our age of global satellite surveillance.
The age of mass conscription of citizens as cannon fodder in colossal wars is a thing of the past, too. As wars come to be fought by conventional missiles and drones and autonomous forces, along with technicians and special forces, mass armies with millions of conscripts are as obsolete as the cavalry.
Moreover, as Edward Luttwak has pointed out, the individualistic citizens of one-child or two-child families, in “post-heroic” autocracies like China and Russia as well as in democracies, would be reluctant to serve in campaigns outside of their nation’s borders. In World War II, 40% percent of Americans who served were volunteers; 4 out of 10 American soldiers were volunteers in World War I, as well.
But according to YouGov, 60% of Americans who were recently polled say that in the event of a new world war, they would be unable to serve because of age or disability; 13% say they would refuse to serve if drafted; 9% say they would serve if drafted but would not volunteer; only 6% say they would volunteer for service.
[su_unherd_related fttitle=”More from this author” author=”Michael Lind”]https://unherd-wpml-test.go-vip.net/2025/03/the-roots-of-trumps-realpolitik/[/su_unherd_related]
Another source of confusion arises from describing all great-power rivalries, even indirect and limited ones, as “world wars.” In April, Fiona Hill, a former Trump national-security official, told Britain’s Channel Four, “We’re already in a situation where you could describe this as World War II structurally. We’ve got a hot war in Europe at the moment that’s had around a million casualties in terms of people either killed or severely wounded, millions of refugees, and all kinds of knock-on effects. That’s very similar to what happened in World War I and World War II.”
It is more accurate to describe today’s geopolitical pattern as Cold War II, not World War III. In Cold War II, as in Cold War I between 1946 and 1990, there are two blocs — Washington and its European and East Asian allies and its Arab and Israeli allies in the Middle East against a loose coalition of China, Russia, and Iran. The grinding attrition of the war in Ukraine may bring to mind the trenches in World War I, but the war itself is similar to the proxy wars among America, the Soviet Union, and China that were fought in Korea, Indochina, and Afghanistan in the first cold war. In Cold War II, as in Cold War I, the leaders of each bloc engage not only in limited proxy warfare, but also in arms races, space races, competition to win the favor of nonaligned nations, and various forms of subversion and sabotage, without bombing or invading each other’s homelands. And at some point, Cold War II is likely to end in a détente or what Boris Yeltsin called “a cold peace,” not in anything like the devastation, occupation, and reconstruction of defeated Germany and Japan eighty years ago.
In addition to the example of the first Cold War, a historical comparison that might be useful is provided by the mercantilist rivalries of the 17th century through the 19th, when European powers like Britain, the Netherlands, France, Spain, and Portugal fought limited wars outside of Europe with the goal of promoting their own commercial and industrial interests. The citizens of European countries often were little affected by these low-level skirmishes to control sea lanes or sugar islands or foreign markets outside of Europe.
But even these historical parallels, though more plausible than analogies with the world wars, should be handled with care. Unlike today’s Hollywood movies, today’s global conflicts are not an endless series of remakes of earlier stories. Rummaging through historical archives for specious precedents is a distraction from the necessary effort to understand what is genuinely new — and newly dangerous — in our own time.
I’ve come to the conclusion that the sloppy world war parallels themselves will themselves result in ww3, because if any negotiation is appeasement, then diplomacy is futile, and war the only recourse.
Nobody accused Nixon of appeasement when he pulled off the opening to China. Nobody (important) in the West was mad enough to advocate a war with the USSR. Its sphere was tolerated becuase the alternative was worse.
Half the people screaming about the existential nature of Ukraine could not have found it on the map before 2022 or maybe still can’t. I just find it amazing that we’re being drawn into ww3 by an elite which cannot feel safe unless the whole world is painted in their image.
Bring the past into the present with these World War ‘parallels’ and it will be recreated. At least as a justification for authority and as a claim to possess its moral superiority by whomsoever can make them. Bless us, O ye dead of the World Wars with your glory.
As for the author’s assertion that the World Wars will always be remembered, the evidence is against it. Over 60% of respondents in a recent survey could not make the link between the term The Battle of Britain and the RAF’s defence of the UK in 1940. As for being able to give the official dates of the Battle, forget it. If Air Chief Marshal Dowding didn’t appear on I’m a Celebrity, few among the Gen Zs would have any interest in him.
How many people celebrate Waterloo Day? Perhaps it is remembered in some annual regimental dinner, taken out once a year from the cupboard of the yesterdays, and then returned. And into this the World Wars will soon be consigned.
Among the Gen Xs and Gen Zs I know, Margaret Thatcher is ancient history. The miners strike and the battle of Orgreave as distant and as obscure as Quatre Bras.
The author writes of international conflict. But what of the home fronts in the World Wars, with their deserters and corruption, their censorship and internment? In the new conflict of the 21st century that the author describes, what does its home front look like?
“in a recent survey could not make the link between the term The Battle of Britain and the RAF’s defence of the UK in 1940.”
I wonder if that’s always been the case, in such that 80% of people have zero idea about the world, and what’s going on.
Now they had better excuse’s, no formal education, illteracy , no source of all the knowledge of humanity at your fingertips
i’ve always hated the excuse “we did’nt learn that in school” no and that’s not the point of schooling, here this is all the information you will ever need, once you leave, that’s it , no more learning required
If there is a failure in education it’s to open people’s mind to “finding it out yourself”
I have spoke to people that prior to them being born, they have no knowledge , interest in that world
I was born in the 70’s, imagine saying nope don’t care what occured before, it’s weird i grew up with these things called book’s, if you wanted to know something, you asked someone, or read about it or even back then the TV might inform you
Spot on about people blaming school for their ignorance. Probably the biggest sin of school was embedding the idea that formal education was the only legitimate form of learning.
There innumerable books about WWI, WWII, and the rest of it. There’s no excuse for ignorance about those events.
Not to mention innumerable Youtube channels for those who are more “visual learners.
“
That’s right. Not even ten minutes ago I received an email promoting a new textbook for American cultural studies, and here’s one of the selling points:
“Comprehensively revised to take account of developments in American culture during the past decade.”
Because people in university classrooms only care about what’s going on right now.
I wish too that we could get rid of the word “fascist” – it has become an insult, rather than a useful description.
A point George Orwell made back in 1946 and yet we’re not rid of it.
Maybe with a bit more appeasement we would have avoided WW1 and II. Would that have been so bad?
i am not one to totally dismiss Chamberlein, there was an argument to delay the war which everyone knew was coming to rearm, on the flip side, Germany was weaker in 38 than 39, of course Germany was weak all the way through, but it made sense to preempt them, take them at their weakest which was earlier than later
Agreed. Chamberlain’s approach wasn’t stupid, especially with the limited information he had to go on at the time. In retrospect, it would probably have been better to oppose Hitler earlier and harder, but the French being so supine in the support of Chekoslovakia hardly helped.
The French were fairly supine in the defence of France, so that is hardly surprising.
Yes, indeed. And both instances were founded on their deep divisions as a society between far-left and far-right and their especially traumatic experience in WWI. So it was understandable, but hardly helpful. I believe British statesmen were deeply in error in hitching our fate so closely to that of France.
We would have been much better off opposing the Germans on our own (as we ended up doing anyway) from the very start. And I think we should have adopted that approach immediately after Munich when it became painfully apparent that the French had no stomach for a fight. It was probably politically impossible though, as the British public (and much of our military top brass) still thought the French a major power.
Indeed, they had a large, well equipped and well trained army. Just one that didn’t want to fight for France.
Are you suggesting that Britain was supportive of Czechoslovakia?
Not at all. When the French caved, so did we. It was the French, after all that were Czechoslovakia’s allies, not us. We just followed their lead.
If we had conducted our foreign policy independently from France, we could have dared Hitler to invade. But I don’t think Chamberlain would have. Rightly or wrongly he was more concerned with British weakness than German vulnerability, and wanted to delay any showdown.
I do think ww2 appeasement was foolish, because UK, France and Czechoslovakia could’ve deterred aggression in 1938. But therein lies the point, if you’re strong militarily, you can negotiate in good faith knowing that your sword is always there should negotiations fail. But to dismiss negotiations while being militarily weak is a peculiar maladie of today’s diplomacy.
The Czechs gave up almost overnight when the Soviets failed to assist. They could have fought and inflicted damage to Hitler’s ambitions. It would not have been worse than what they were to suffer.
Still like any knowledge the issue in applying it to your problem is on you not the knowledge.
You’re letting the war mongers off the hook is you forget the history of the world wars.
You just have to pull the appropriate lessons from them.
“Nobody accused Nixon of appeasement when he pulled off the opening to China“. That was only because he was so rabidly anti-Communist that no allegation that he was “soft on Commies” could stick, hence the saying “Only Nixon could go to China”.
Good piece which challenges the lazy and shallow parallels which compare the thirties to today’s world. Incidentally good to be reminded of the true nature of Imperial Germany, a powerful militaristic and expansionist state even if nowhere near as frightening and formidable as the Third Reich.
no this won’t do, we have to pretend Russia, a dilapidated country, with the most egreious demographic decline in Europe, that in 3 years has done the same the British army did in 1 day against the far more capable German Army in WW2 is the largest threat to the West
Look at this, not at that. Our problems are within , even China is not a real threat, dependant on Western Markets, Resources and no proven track record in large scale operations and has the same weakness any authortarian goverment/military would have
Putin might not be a nice bloke, but a threat to the world nope
Putin disliked , you think he got more important things that giving dislikes on unheard 🙂
Just the power of propaganda at work. Putin = boogey man. The current situation has nothing to do with what NATO and the West did after the Soviet Union finally collapsed. Or that’s what we’re led to believe.
“Putin = boogey man“. He did invade a neighboring nation without any provocation whatsoever.
“without any provocation whatsoever”??? Even if you don’t agree with the Nato expansion eastwards argument, nothing happens in real life without any provocation whatsoever. There are always causes, it’s just whether you agree with them or not.
Don’t underestimate Russia. They haven’t really flexed their true military muscle in Ukraine, for the reason that they are fighting on land where allegedly Russian-speaking compatriots live, and want to annex. Damage limitation is therefore necessary. I wouldn’t poke the bear too hard..
Yes, and that is why it is correct for Russia to call it a Special Military Operation. Russia has not declared war on Ukraine, for the reason you note. But if the US keeps poking, as with the Minuteman missiles, Russia will declare war and a lot will change rapidly.
That is basically the message that Trump received (via Lavrov to Rubio) and is the reason he backed off on the Minuteman proposal.
I think you mean Tomahawks
Correct. The Minuteman is a nuclear ICBM.
Don’t over estimate Russia either. Sure they have some nukes but we’re pretty much seeing all they have to offer on the conventional side. We are also seeing that a relatively small war on their own borders is taking almost their whole attention.
The days of mass conscription are over: really? Look at the struggle Ukraine is having fully to mobilise her population. It’s the only answer for Zelensky who faces a much larger enemy who is also conscripting.
And if mass conscription is a thing of the past, why is UK talking about its introduction?
the reality the west has always overestimated Russia, which forget any morality, are they are a Premier League team when it comes to War, simply no, they never have been
We in the West have this impression of Russia, oh they real men, they fight bears naked, yet Russian Military history is a history of bad training, bad tactics, humiliating loses
We say those French are big girlies, but they are far more successful at War than Russia has ever been
We accept Russian bluster, but as i’ve noted many times, every single metric of them compared to the west, be it economic, manpower, technology, manufacturing capbility , they come 2nd to us
““The age of mass conscription of citizens as cannon fodder in colossal wars is a thing of the past.”
isn’t that demonstrated by the fact that western governments see the role of the army as performative, you don’t need actual soldiers, drone’s, AI will do that.
So who cares if you place totally unsuitable people in the roles, Transwomen, Women, Obese men, they not expected to fight, maybe they will go on parade in London or help with a village fete
See the problem is the UK made the exact same error in the 50’s,60’s
The RAF, Government position was you don’t need manned aircraft, missiles will be all you need, that was obviously premature, but set back the UK aviation industry decades
So while many roles will be filled by drones, AI, you still need Men , mean men, who can kick ass while chewing bubble gum
1 day we will have commercial airlines that require no pilot, we have had the tech since the 40’s, but there are human factors we need to consider
The casualty figures quoted in this piece further your argument. Notwithstanding AI and drones etc., infantry remain “the Queen of Battle”.
Just so. On one level, the drones need targets, targets that oppose their operators’ goals, if they are not to be irrelevant.
On another, only infantry seems to be able to hold and take ground. Until drones can do that effectively, they can only form part of the military toolkit.
War with Ukraine is a real war not a cold war. It is also not a war fought as a proxy war. Putin simply does not accept Ukraine as an independent state for his own reading of history. And also in line with his view that the collapse of USSR/Russian Empire was a catastrophe.The aggressor is Putin. Giving in to him on Ukraine therefore will create the risk of further wars to restore that empire. Hence the term appeasement, if that happens, is appropriate. And the analogy for the 1939 event of France and UK giving in to Hitler on the occupation of the Sudetenland broadly correct. With the difference that Hitler wished to build an empire from skratch (see “Mein Kampf”) while Putin wants to restore it.
Exactly, and the analogy is even stronger. Putin’s revanchism is born from the West continuing to treat no-longer Soviet Russia as a definitional enemy, just as the victors in WWI treated no-longer Imperial Germany as a definitional enemy. NATO’s decision to treat Russia’s coreligionists and traditional allies, the Serbs, as the sole villains in war that combined all the nastiness of a civil war with all the nastiness of a war of religion, and in which there were attrocities on all side, and to launch a non-defensive war against them, combined with NATO expansion and CIA-fomented “color revolutions” overthrowing pro-Russian governments, had the same historical function as the demilitarization of the Rhineland, carving out of the Polish Corridor, and reparations demands in the treaty of Versailles. If not Hitler, someone from the also antisemitic Black Reichswehr would have started a revanchist war. If not Putin some other Russian would have.
Unfortunately even if the victors of the previous conflict bear some responsibility for the situation, the 2020 is a not a time for appeasement any more than the 1930’s were. Opposing Putin forcefully gives a chance of the better outcome (no general European war) than appeasing Hitler did.
Specific details between then and now aside, cliches such as “the past is prologue to the future” and, “those who ignore history are destined to repeat it” are relevant for a reason.
While I welcome the push to retire the nonsensical “appeasement” analogies, Lind’s article itself perpetuates myths which obfuscate the issues.
If you’re looking for a parallel, look at Athens’ Sicilian Expedition 415-413 BC. That is what NATO’s war in Ukraine is like – only it is not NATO’s first Sicilian Expedition, but the third, after the similarly disastrous wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Like NATO’s previous Sicilian Expeditions, Ukraine too is ending in disaster.
The Sicilian Expedition fatally weakened Athens, though it still took several years and Persian (!) intervention to allow Sparta to win the Peloponnesian War.
Strange analogy; there is no ‘expedition’ by NATO – the invasion/expedition is by Russia – NATO is defending itself.
You have given the perfect explanation why the war will continue
To minds that cannot encompass whatever is not being fed to it and whatever is not black and white, sarcasm is the only response.
“Where are the “violent autocracies” that “are seeking expansive empires” today?”
Stopped reading there. China, Russia, Iran. Duh. Wake up dude.
The US has stirred more muck than anyone since WW2, in their attempt at global domination. China has not been at war with anyone in a major way since the Korean War, other than short term border conflict with Vietnam and India. The US has been involved in major wars in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and throughout central America, supporting proxy wars in Africa and elsewhere. Russia tried in Afghanistan and failed, Putin is trying in Ukraine but has failed against a non power with very limited resources, economy and population. Iran is a very weak country as shown by recent events. The US is the only country trying to maintain imperial reach and interfering in other countries. Venezuela next?
Somehow you have only noticed which power was directly involved in the proxy wars that constituted the hot part of the Cold War, not whose proxies the other side was.
There will not be ww3. Just europeans another war!…no one will come to rescue us. so let us not play naive!
That depends on whether Russia and China (and North Korea and Iran) coordinate attacks on targets in what they see as their spheres of influence. Maybe no one will come to save Europe because it is WWIII (or WWIV, by your leave, the Cold War already was WWIII, but fought in slow motion without the principals engaging directly, save a few dogfights over Korea, thanks to nuclear deterrence), and the US has to commit too much of its forces to Asia to save Europe.
I too see the next unplesantness will be different. Electric grids taken down will bring everything to a screeching halt. Very few will live through the loss of electricity. Water reservoirs will not have to be poisoned because there will be no electricity to run the pumps. etc
“No great power today, not even Putin’s revanchist Russia, has anything remotely resembling the grandiose plans of Imperial and Nazi Germany or Japan’s design for an autarkic Asian empire“. Putin has the plan, but unlike the other two nations (at the relevant time), his military is simply not up to the job.