President Putin may have fallen into the trap of thinking that the United States is weak and led by men who are either too old or too stupid to understand what is going on and, like Hitler before he marched into the Sudentenland in 1939, he has stationed his armies on the borders of Ukraine and after a façade of negotiations and hesitations to see how others react, is ready to use military force to take over the country. Hitler used the same technique in 1939 claiming that he was liberating the people, many of whom were ethnic Germans. France and Britain turned a blind eye. The US was indifferent. After that came German invasions of Czechoslovakia, Austria, Poland, then France. That's how autocrats with no checks or balances but a powerful army work. In the East, Japan thought America a weak, divided country with an argumentative political system and ineffective leadership. After all, nobody argued with the Emperor. In their eyes, once America's Pacific Fleet had been destroyed at Pearl Harbor, Japan could rule the waves like the British had done. In any case the Japanese believed Americans made lousy soldiers.

History didn't turn out like that as we know. The Japanese attack galvanized the United States. Likewise In 1939, after the British army had been crushed by German tanks it somehow managed to escape to lick its wounds and Churchill rallied the people from Parliament. He promised they would never surrender and the country quietly set about organizing itself to fight. Democracy works slowly but the freedoms afforded by democracy are too precious to ignore. Ukraine, with its fledgling democracy, is standing steady. Tyrants believe that power comes out of the barrel of a gun but real power is vested in ideas and the shared participation of all citizens in the government of their country. Over 500,000 American soldiers died for that idea in WW2 and it has brought us 75 years of relative peace and progress. Now Putin, a tyrant, having secured Crimea and Eastern Ukraine by military force, threatens that peace. Meanwhile, China is waiting in the wings, testing its muscle, watching to see what Putin can get away with. We must stand firm and Putin must understand that the Western powers mean business.

The lessons from history should be that you cannot walk into a democratically controlled country with your army and take it over with superior military forces. Presidents Putin and Xi believe democracy is weak and they are happy negotiating by using the threat the of killing large numbers of their own people. After all, they are autocrats not beholden to their people and use the excuse of Nationalism to justify their actions while keeping a tight control over their populations for fear of opposition. But has Putin considered how many Russian mothers want their sons to die in Ukraine? Xi solves any problems of opposition by making restive populations disappear. The bottom line is that Communism doesn't care about people. Putin hankers after a Russia that is no longer there. Will his choice to be to embroil Europe in another war? Surely, he knows that once he invades he has no idea how it will end. Afghanistan collapsed like a house of cards but Ukraine is different. The means of warfare have changed dramatically and drones will be a new decisive tool on the battlefield. The deaths and injuries will be horrific because the weapons used to kill have improved dramatically. NATO, the EU and the free world must sit tight and help Ukraine in the same way France helped us in the early days of The Republic. America is a powerhouse of ideas and talent because people are free to imagine, to put ideas into practice. Democracy may be slow to act but Putin and Xi would be foolish to underestimate it as a political force incapable of defending itself.