Are any of you noticing ever more historical parallels with the lead-up to World War II, as not only Putin, but now also Trump reveals ambitions to seize or colonize parts of Europe? He wants to take Greenland from Denmark, and to take control of practically all of Ukraine’s natural resources, ports and other infrastructure (see the most recent version of the “deal” that the Trump administration is pushing on Ukraine, in exchange for no security guarantees). The latter ambition, I can’t help but think, will clash with Putin’s ambitions in Ukraine, which he thinks belongs to Russia. That’s why Putin started this war, and certainly not to hand Ukraine over to the USA. So, the Trump-Putin bromance is bound to go horribly wrong sometime soon, as did the Hitler-Stalin alliance that erupted into WWII.

Before World War II, Stalin and Hitler secretly divided Eastern Europe into spheres of influence through the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, agreeing to partition Poland and allowing the Soviet Union to annex the Baltic states and parts of Romania. A week after signing the pact, on September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland. On September 17, Stalin, stating concern for Russian-speaking people in Poland, (sounds familiar), ordered the Soviet invasion of Poland. After a short war ending in military defeat for Poland, Germany and the Soviet Union drew up a new border between them on formerly Polish territory in the supplementary protocol of the German–Soviet Boundary and Friendship Treaty. The Hitler-Stalin friendship ended on 22 June 1941, when Germany launched Operation Barbarossa and invaded the Soviet Union, to Stalin’s great surprise.

Anyone who still believes the president who promised us he would end the war in a day, might take note, as two months into his term, his “peacemaking” efforts resemble the leadup to a world war…