When Will the Lesson Be Learned?

In our dining room there is a bust of Winston Churchill, a family heirloom. My father was an admirer of Churchill. My (French, maternal) grandmother was not. I'm not sure why, but my theory is that it was related to her feelings about Mers-el-Kébir.

My grandmother lived with us for several months each year. When she was there, she and Dad engaged in a silent war. He would find the Churchill bust turned to face the back of the breakfront. He would turn it around to face the front again, only to find the next day that it had been turned around again. This went on for years, I think.

Winston was a very controversial figure before he led Great Britain's survival in World War II, and remained controversial in many quarters afterward. There is much to admire in the man, and much not to. He was a man.

There is a danger in using the "lessons of history" to guide our current actions. Too often we learn the wrong lesson, or apply it poorly. For example, how many times did Neville Chamberlain and Munich get mentioned as justification for the war in Vietnam. [Okay, one or two readers might be too young to remember, so I'll tell you: they were mentioned a lot!] If you put the wrong grid on a problem, you're likely to come up with the wrong answer. We lost that war, yet today Americans who served in it take their families there on vacation trips. As Kurt Vonnegut would say, "So it goes."

By the way, the movie, Munich: The Edge of War, does a fine job of telling the story from Chamberlain's point of view; a point of view that was shared by the British public (dramatic pause here) until it wasn't. Munich: The Edge of War is available on Netflix.

So back to Churchill.

Last week I mentioned Darkest Hour, also available on Netflix, a movie about the critical month of May 1940, when Churchill became Prime Minister. The British mood had changed from Hitler avoidance to Hitler confrontation. Still, Chamberlain and Lord Halifax counseled negotiation.

 

Here's a climactic scene from the movie (2 minutes):

 

 

I remembered this scene when reading Fareed Zakaria's March 10 column in the Washington Post, which concluded:

The greatest strategic opportunity lies with Europe, which could use this challenge to stop being the passive international actor it has been for decades. We now see signs that the Europeans are ready to end the era of free security by raising defense spending and securing NATO’s eastern border. Germany’s remarkable turnaround is a start. If Europe becomes a strategic player on the world stage, that could be the biggest geopolitical shift to emerge from this war. A United States joined by a focused and unified Europe would be a super-alliance in support of liberal values.

But for the West to become newly united and powerful, there is one essential condition: It must succeed in Ukraine. That is why the urgent necessity of the moment is to do what it takes — bearing costs and risks — to ensure that Putin does not prevail.

The emphasis is mine.