There is a hard truth many leaders in the West do not want to face:
If this cautious, incremental, risk-averse mindset had guided the democracies of the 1930s and 1940s, we would be living in a very different world today. We would not be talking about defending democracy in Ukraine. We would be talking about how democracy died a lifetime ago.
Hesitation always extracts a price. Caution, when elevated into a governing principle without forward motion, becomes paralysis. Moral clarity, delayed long enough, stops being clarity at all. It curdles into complicity. Caution is defensible only when it leads to action. When it does not, it becomes an accomplice.
A World Afraid to Act
What has defined the last three years of Western policy toward Russia is not strategy. It is fear.
Fear of escalation.
Fear of economic disruption.
Fear of political backlash at home.
Fear of provoking a cornered dictator.
Fear of the unknown if Russia actually loses.
This is not the mindset of a global coalition committed to defending freedom. It is the mindset of leaders who want stability more than justice, comfort more than courage.
Imagine this posture during World War II.
If 2025 Mentality Had Guided 1941
Picture a United States and Britain debating whether to send outdated tanks to the Soviet Union because better ones might “provoke Hitler.”
Picture leaders arguing that striking German industrial sites would be “escalatory.”
Picture endless meetings about whether bombing rail lines carrying Jews to death camps might “worsen the situation.”
This is the world we would get under today’s doctrine of careful steps, incremental supply, and never doing anything that might upset a dictator.
Hitler counted on that.
Putin counts on it now.
Comfort Over Courage
In today’s Europe and America, political leaders often frame caution as wisdom.
They talk about “avoiding World War III.”
They talk about “managing escalation.”
They talk about “strategic patience.”
But patience for whom?
Patience for what?
Because what Ukraine experiences every day is not patience. It is destruction.
What Russia experiences is not fear. It is opportunity.
Western caution is not slowing Russia. It is giving Russia room to adapt, reorganize, recruit, and push forward. It is giving Russia time to turn a temporary invasion into a permanent occupation.
In the 1930s we had a word for this. It was called appeasement.
History Does Not Reward Cowardice
The truth is simple.
When democracies fear doing the right thing more than they fear the triumph of authoritarianism, the authoritarians win.
This is not about starting a war with Russia.
It is about preventing Russia from rewriting the map of Europe by force.
It is about preventing the collapse of the basic principle that borders cannot be erased by tanks.
It is about preventing a world where democracies tiptoe around dictators while dictators do whatever they want.
If that principle dies, we do not just lose Ukraine.
We lose the 20th century.
The Hard Lesson From WWII
The democracies eventually won World War II.
But not because they were cautious.
Not because they managed risk.
Not because they calibrated support in small increments and waited to see if Hitler got upset.
They won because they finally decided that survival of free society required courage.
The willingness to act.
The willingness to take risks.
The willingness to accept sacrifice.
Today the West has convinced itself that courage is reckless, that decisive support is too dangerous, that standing firm against a nuclear-armed dictator is irresponsible.
But the alternative is not peace.
The alternative is the slow death of the international order that has preserved peace for eighty years.
We Are At a Historical Fork
When future generations ask what happened in this era, they will ask one question above all others:
Did the democracies stand up when it mattered, or did they hide behind excuses while another autocracy trampled its neighbor?
Because history is clear.
Freedom survives when free nations choose courage.
Authoritarianism spreads when they choose fear.
Right now, too many Western leaders are choosing fear.
And that choice, if allowed to continue, will not just cost Ukraine. It will cost us all.
The West keeps telling itself that caution is strength.
But caution in the face of aggression is not strength. It is surrender in slow motion.
If this is the posture we adopt when a nuclear-armed dictator redraws borders by force, then what exactly is the red line? What principle are we still willing to defend? How many democracies must fall before we remember that deterrence is not built on fear. It is built on the credibility that free nations will act when it matters.
Ukraine is not asking us to fight their war.
They are asking us not to be cowards in ours.
History will not judge us by how carefully we tiptoed around Vladimir Putin.
It will judge us by whether we chose courage while we still had the chance.
Because if we wait until the cost of defending democracy becomes unbearable, the lesson of WWII will repeat itself in the worst possible way:
We will find ourselves fighting a much bigger war, against a much stronger tyranny, at a far higher price, all because we failed to stop it when it was still possible.
Courage is cheaper than regret.
We need to start acting like it.
We NEED to end this, and NOT in Russia's, in Putin's, favor. What do we not get about NOT rewarding this kind of behaviors?
While this is not World War II, it is our moment in history, and we cannot allow Putin to repeat the mistakes the world once paid for in blood. IF we do, it's just pushing down the road, a repeat, more death, when only one is really called for.
Cheers! Sláinte! Na zdravie!
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