Growing up, perhaps because of my family’s experience in Revolutionary Cuba, my mother often said that “we know how things start but not how they are going to end.” That is generally true with revolutions and wars as well. We don’t know how they are going to end. That said, knowledge about previous wars offers opportunities to foresee potential scenarios and outcomes,

OF WORLD WARS

Take for example, the two world wars. Originally called the Great War, what we now call World War I came to be known as the World War once the United States entered the conflagration in 1917. Politicians, journalists and historians began to refer to it as WWI only after the breakout of World War II, but a few months after the 1918 Armistice the Manchester Guardian used the term WWII in hypothetical terms. Likewise with “World War III,” coined by Time magazine one month before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. It has remained hypothetical since then.

Shortly after the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, we began to hear journalists and TV pundits use the ominous phrase “World War III,” sometimes with the “nuclear” adjective attached. Known for her thoughtfulness and deep understanding of Russian and European affairs, in a March 1 interview, former National Security Council member Fiona Hill said of WWIII, “We’re already in it.” “We have been for some time,” she added.

WWI was triggered by a Serbian assassin’s bullet (actually two) that killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria — no one remembers that his wife, Sophie, was also killed that day. Preexisting international tensions exploded in the next few weeks leading to a global conflagration with a toll of 9 million soldiers and 5 million civilians dead. That first world war began when German forces crossed Belgium with plans to take Paris. Only two days later, France, Great Britain and Russia declared war on expansionist Germany.

Twenty-one years after the 1918 Armistice that ended WWI — a conflagration heralded as the war to end all wars — a second world war erupted in response to Germany’s aerial bombing and invasion of Poland in September 1939. German fighter planes bombarded and Panzer divisions encircled the capital city of Warsaw in a fashion similar to what Russian troops are now doing in Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities. A few days later, Stalin’s Soviet Union invaded Poland from the other flank. Within a month, Warsaw surrendered, and Germany, Russia and Lithuania split the bounty as if it were a fresh-baked wuzetka cake — this was the third partition of Poland, the first two happening in 1773 and 1793. Thus began history’s bloodiest war (1939-1945); all told, between 50 and 80 million deaths.

WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO UKRAINE AND RUSSIA?

Every day from Feb. 21 — the Beijing Olympics ended on the 20th — through the 24th, immediately upon waking up, I turned on the TV to find out whether the anticipated Russian invasion of Ukraine had begun. It finally happened during Prime Time (U.S. Eastern time) on Thursday the 24th, minutes after Putin announced a “special military operation” against Ukraine. The war has now entered its third week and likewise I turn on the TV with the hope of seeing Kyiv still in Ukrainian hands and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy still alive.

The lessons of past wars, especially World War II, may not give contemporary actors and observers the tools to prognosticate specific and immediate developments — if and when Russia will capture Kyiv, for example — but allow informed speculation based on potential scenarios, which I plan to lay out in next week’s column.

Readers can reach him at LMF_Column@yahoo.com.