Once the dictator suppresses internal opposition, he turns to war.
What matters is that both of them create the same outcome, which is a war mongering dictator that becomes particularly dangerous to the world if he commands significant resources. After Ukraine it should become clear that the flavor does not matter. In reality this was a struggle between democracy and autocracy which can assume a red flavor (communism/state socialism) or brown flavor (fascism). When the dust settles (hopefully not the nuclear kind) it should be clear what caused this war: The Dictatorship Following WW2 the community of democratic nations was immersed in what appeared to be an existential struggle between communism and democracy. As historian Christopher Clark notes in his book about the origins of WWI, The Sleepwalkers, in 1914, “the future was still open – just.” Poor policy choices were a crucial cause of the catastrophe. A strong wind may extinguish the match, or a sudden rainstorm may have soaked the wood. But even then, a bonfire is not inevitable. Think of building a bonfire: piling up the logs is a deep cause adding kindling and paper is an intermediate cause and striking a match is a precipitating cause. To sort things out, it helps to distinguish between deep, intermediate, and immediate causes. Did it start because a Serbian terrorist assassinated an Austrian archduke in 1914, or did it have more to do with ascendant German power challenging Britain, or rising nationalism throughout Europe? The answer is “all of the above, plus more.” But war was not inevitable until it actually broke out in August 1914 and even then, it was not inevitable that four years of carnage had to follow. World War I occurred over a century ago, yet historians still write books debating what caused it.
How can we discern the origins of a war that may last for years? While many in the West see a war of choice by Russian President Vladimir Putin, he says that NATO’s 2008 decision in favor of eventual Ukrainian membership brought an existential threat to Russia’s borders, and still others trace the conflict back to the Cold War’s end and the failure of the West to support Russia adequately after the collapse of the Soviet Union. CAMBRIDGE – Russia’s war in Ukraine is the most disruptive conflict that Europe has seen since 1945.
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