We have seen all of this before

To the editor:

Lavrenti Beria, Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler are alive and well. Beria, Putin’s mentor at what is now the KGB, thrives in what a spokesman for French president Emmanuel Macron aptly described as Putin’s “paranoia” bordering on madness.

Joseph Stalin, like Putin, had visions of totalitarian empire. Hitler’s blitzkrieg against innocent citizens of Poland, Belgium, France and others provided Putin his battleplan for the Ukraine. The blood that stained their hands is equally on Putin’s hands today, as well as those of his “advisors” and ministers, all as civilian casualties mount.

Sanctions are a partial response, but they were factored in by Putin before the invasion, and either discounted or accepted. They clearly will not deter further aggression by someone who has cast aside the facade of a supposedly shrewd manipulator and revealed the true nature of the cruel and ambitious spy that is his DNA.

What then is the answer? Putin must be convinced — or those in Russia who have retained a sense of reality and sanity — that the stakes are too high for further aggression. Putin simply does not believe the threats, or is convinced that, even if implemented, sanctions and like measures are tolerable for at least a relatively short time during which he can bargain for still more Neville Chamberlain–like appeasement.

After all, in his “splendid isolation” — which all who have been allowed to see him have noticed — “peace in our times” pronouncements and like empty rhetoric simply encourages, as was painfully learned by those of us who some 80 years ago experienced the prior version of this playbook and which the refusal or inability of others to learn simply inflicts it upon us again.

The president must draw a clear line — one that China, a far wiser and calculated state and leadership, will believe and enforce, for the sanctions effectively make Russia a vassal economic state of China.

Putin must be told that if there are any signs of repetition of the Ukrainian aggression, a package including the following in escalating form will also be implemented: proceedings against Putin and his minions before the International Criminal Court for genocide — which his actions clearly are. The severing of diplomatic relations with an aggressor nation. And expulsion of all Russian and Belarus passport holders.

And, if all else fails, the willingness to station U.S. troops and nuclear weapons — maintained in their military control — in any neighboring nation that requests it as a defensive measure. That last, dreadful nuclear step will clearly draw the line. It should be presented now to the Congress as an option for its review and immediate consideration.

None of these steps are simple, or to be lightly taken. But neither is mass murder by a madman misleading a once-sovereign nation to which he now dictates.

Charles Moerdler

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