The Hell of Uncertainty

War is a calamity that begets calamity. It is the ultimate expression of man’s fallen nature and sin’s awesome power. When we choose war, we forsake all compassion, all mercy, and all pretense of civilization. War is not civilized and it is not something anyone can control. For all the cliches and fiction on the perils of war, it truly is as close as we get to hell on earth. It is February 2022, and war is here again.

In 1938, Hitler led Nazi Germany in a ‘glorious’ retaking of the so-called Sudatenland, an area comprised of portions of Chezchoslovakia that was home to many German speakers. These Sudaten Germans purportedly welcomed the Nazis. But the Germans did not stop there, and would eventually take the rest of Czechoslovakia and eventually Austria, an event called the Anschluss. During all of this, many in the West may have assumed that Hitler would stop with Austria, but this was not to be. The Nazis attacked Poland, France, North Africa, and the Soviet Union, just to name a few. During all of this, America did not step in beyond support for the Allied powers. Operation Barbarossa was the German plan to take the Soviet Union, and it began on June 22nd 1941 and ended on December 5th of the same year, 2 days before Pearl Harbor marked America’s military entry into World War II. During operation Barbarossa, over a half a million Russians died, and these were only military casualties. To put a finer point on it, the US did not enter the war when hundreds of thousands of people died under the German war machine, we only entered when we were attacked.

Were we too late? Could lives, hundreds of thousands of lives, have been saved had we entered the war in force earlier? Historical “what ifs” are a perilous exercise in futility, but it is undoubtedly a question we’re all pondering now. Russia is not the power it was during the Cold War, but they are still dangerous and what’s worse, they are a nuclear power making reckless threats. That said, it seems obvious to all that Russia does not want the US involved in Ukraine in any way. The reasons may be complex, but one reason must certainly be that the US is the supreme military power of the world. If we fight with Russia, it will be a terrific bloodbath on a scale not seen since the 1940s. America is powerful and America has powerful friends, if we fight Russia, we will likely win, but at what cost? No one knows, but it will doubtless be immense in terms of lives lost, but more immediately, in terms of our lifestyles. The status quo will shatter and life at home will change drastically. If we fight, we stand to sacrifice the lives of our fathers, sons, and brothers along with our very way of life. If we don’t, it could cost millions of lives across the globe. What do we do?

The problem is this: there is weight and reason in both sides of this issue. Europe is not North America and Europe’s problems are not our problems. Plenty of Europeans do not like America, many of them to the point of hatred. To many Europeans, Americans are the bad guys. Why should we fight for them? Why should we sacrifice for them? We are in the middle of massive inflation, rising prices, and inner political turmoil that stands to threaten our stability as a country. The last thing we need is another foreign war. But people said the same thing in the 1930s, and it’s never so simple as “it’s not our problem”. We live in a more global society than we ever have, with information and commerce moving faster than we could have dreamed in 1939. Ukraine is under no formal treaty with the US, so they cannot assume direct intervention will come, but what if this is Putin’s Anschluss? Will Moldova, Romania, even Poland be next? When will it be our problem? And should it ever be? If any pundit claims these are simple questions, they are as wrong as they are ignorant. History does not care for simple answers, and the costs of simple decisions can often be measured in millions of lives.

It sounds ridiculous, but Imperial Japan saved us the trouble of such a decision in 1941. America, no matter who’s in the Oval Office, will not abide an unprovoked attack on our citizens. It surely must have felt like some sort of relief when the news hit the radio waves on December 7th; the question was answered and we were going to war. It is impossible to say where this conflict takes us, but it seems we are likely to walk the same path President Roosevelt took us down in 1939, that of pacifism until provocation. Will China be the next Imperial Japan? Will a Pacific power draw us into war again as they colonize sovereign states and threaten our territories? Will it take another Pearl Harbor to bring us into war? Questions. All we have are questions. And the worst part is, we will get our answers, one way or another.