"Munich" has been a synonym for capitulation since 1939.

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The increasingly nagging thought that Europe seems to be witnessing a double deja vue becomes irresistible as heads of state gather in Germany for the 50th Annual Munich Security Conference, an event that is no less significant at this point for being privately organized.

This year Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and American Secretary of State John Kerry, are duking it out over Ukraine, possibly the most ironic crisis in recent history.   As pundits here and there evoke the hundredth anniversary of the First World War, how not to focus as well on the Russian Revolution of 1917 that provoked Western Intervention on the side of the Czar - as well as the Cold War that shaped the second part of the twentieth century?

Considering President Reagan's policy of forcing the Soviet Union to maintain a costly arms race, to the detriment of consumer satisfactions, are we now witnessing an attempt to diminish a rising Russia by detaching Ukraine - then Belo Rus and Georgia - from the largest country on the planet that harbors all sorts of natural resources including oil and natural gas?

Will Europe once again give itself over to fascism, bolstering its Neo-Nazi movements with Stormtrooper- inspired Western Ukraine?  One thing is certain: no conference venue could be more ironically appropriate for that attempt than the lovely Bavarian city whose name has been a synonym for capitulation.  Ironically, today's highly militarized Ukrainian opposition is driven by the same ideology that 'Munich' allowed to pass in 1939.

Authors Website: http://www.otherjonesii.blogspot.com

Authors Bio:

Born in Phila, I spent most of my adolescent and adult years in
Europe, resulting over time in several unique books, my latest being Russia's Americans.

CUBA: Diary of a
Revolution, Inside the Cuban Revolution with Fidel, Raul, Che, and Celia
Sanchez

Lunch with Fellini,
Dinner with Fidel: An Illustrated Personal Journey from the Cold War to the
Arab Spring

America Revealed to a
Honey-Colored World

A Taoist Politics: The
Case For Sacredness

I began my journalistic career at the French News Agency in Rome,
spent two years in Cuba finding out whether the Barbados were Communists before
they made the revolution ('Cuba 1964: When the Revolution was Young'). After
spending half a decade in Eastern Europe, and a decade in the U.S., studying
Global Survival and writing speeches in the Carter State Department, I wrote
the only book that foresaw the fall of the Berlin Wall AND the dissolution of
the Soviet Union ("Une autre Europe, un autre Monde'). My memoir, 'Lunch
with Fellini, Dinner with Fidel', tells it all. 'A Taoist Politics: The Case
for Sacredness', which examines the similarities between ancient wisdom and
modern science and what this implies for political activism; and 'America Revealed
to a Honey-Colored World" is a pamphlet about how the U.S. came down from
the City on a Hill'.