A few recent posts prompted pro-Stalin Putin comments from a number of commenters who have never commented here before. I’m assuming that they are just busily trolling the web, searching for mentions of Russia in order to swoop in and white knight poor, put-upon Vladimir. Meh, whatever.
One notion that was raised that the US should support – or at least not oppose – Putin gobbling up his neighbors because, hey, he’s fighting Islamists, and Islamists are our enemy. And… we should support Putins expansionist aims because there are neo-Nazis in Ukraine, and Nazis are bad, m’kay?
This all smacks of the old bit of wisdom “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”
But there’s a problem. The enemy of my enemy? All that can be honestly said is that the enemy of my enemy is the enemy of my enemy. Maybe friend. Maybe another enemy.
The enemy of Hitler was Stalin. Did that make Stalin our friend? No, it did not. Yes, we provided aid to Stalin, but that was because those at the top incorrectly perceived Hitler to be a worse threat to us than Stalin was. From a post-war geopolitical standpoint, a better approach would have been to provide *less* support to Stalin; this would have lessened the Soviet military machines effectiveness, and thus when the Nazis were finally defeated, the East/West dividing line would have been much further east. Imagine if, instead of West Germany and East Germany, it had been West Poland and East Poland. Or, better still, West Russia and East Russia. With no divided Koreas and Viet Nams, and China as a Republic.
Today, our enemy is Islamism. The enemies of Islamism include Putin and China. Does this make them our friend? No it does not. The fact that China is an enemy of Muslim fanatics does not mean we should stand by and do and say nothing if they try to gobble up the Philippines.