In his memoirs in 1925, Edward Grey, 1st Viscount Grey of Fallodon, recalled telling a friend in 1914 that, "The lamps are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime." Several years ago, according the the British weekly The Economist, Chancellor Angela Merkel encouraged her Ministers to read Christopher Clark's, "The Sleepwalkers: How Europe went to War in 1914." (August 30th, 2018)

There is always an honorable way out. But Mr. Putin knew no way of honor. According to George Kennan, who fully understood the Soviet mentality for decades, wrote in July, 1947, "the main element of any United States policy toward the Soviet Union must be a long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies … Soviet pressure against the free institutions of the Western world is something that can be contained by the adroit and vigilant application of counterforce at a series of constantly shifting geographical and political points, corresponding to the shifts and manoeuvers of Soviet policy, but which cannot be charmed or talked out of existence."

Although the Soviet Union may no longer exist, it's goals are still carried out by men like Putin who have been foot soldiers for Communist goals well over several decades. At the same time, the Ukraine crisis must never end as a general European war. Hopefully all participants will realize this before events spiral out of control.