Today’s global geopolitical crisis can be systemically contrasted with the “twenty years crisis” before World War II.

Parallels to the interwar period are best shown in the fact that Soviet implosion and Warsaw Pact disaggregation, plus the dismemberment of former Yugoslavia, have created an Eastern European shatterbelt region of potentially conflicting states and irredentist socio-political movements.

This shatterbelt region and the conflicts that followed its formation can be contrasted with the geopolitical rivalries before WWI over the Eastern European shatterbelt region that resulted from the combined collapse of Imperial Germany, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and Tsarist Russia—as well as the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.

Key differences lie in the fact that unlike the interwar period, when both Britain after World War I and the rising US were largely isolationist and reluctant to engage in European diplomacy and security accords, the US still sustains global military predominance and political-economic hegemony in the post-Cold War era, more like late 19th-century Britain before World War I than the more isolationist Britain before World War II. Nevertheless, as it has been increasingly challenged by Beijing, Washington has begun to oscillate between neo-conservative military interventionism (as was the case for pre-World War I “jingoist” Britain) and plutocratic isolationism (as was the case for interwar Britain).

In the contemporary geopolitical alliance constellation, the US now plays a role somewhat similar to interwar Britain as the predominant global insular power—even if the US has appeared more willing to engage in military intervention than did Britain after World War I. The EU, in flanking Russia to the west, plays the role of interwar France that had flanked Weimar/Nazi Germany to the west. Contemporary China, in flanking Russia to the east, plays the pivotal role of Soviet Russia that had flanked Weimar/Nazi Germany to the east.

While contemporary Japan does not at all play a role similar to interwar imperial Japan, the rise of Japanese military power capabilities, backed by the US, nevertheless raises fears of both contemporary Russia and China. Moscow and Beijing have accordingly tightened relations, step by step, forging a “no limits” strategic partnership in the period June 1989 to February 2022 against US neo-containment policies. By backing Beijing’s claims to Taiwan, Moscow hopes to prevent the US from playing the “China Card” once again as it did in the 1970s and 1980s.

Moreover, US alliances with an expanding NATO and EU, as well as with Japan, Australia, South Korea, Israel, Taiwan, and Ukraine, have worked to press Russia, China, Belarus, North Korea, and Iran into closer strategic partnerships and military alliances, in the case of Russia (and China) with North Korea and between Russia and Belarus.

In essence, the largely landlocked post-Cold War Russian Federation (as a collapsed former empire) plays the role of a cross between Weimar Germany and the former Tsarist Russia (as two collapsed empires) and between Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia (as two revanchist powers). Caught between NATO/German and Russian pincers, contemporary Ukraine has begun to play a role closest to that of interwar Poland—as the key pivotal state in Europe that can shift sides, opt for neutrality, or else be forced into a partition.

An additional parallel is that Soviet implosion has created a "Baltic corridor" to the Kaliningrad exclave that divides Russia, somewhat similar to the interwar “Polish corridor” to the free city of Danzig/Gdansk that divided Germany. It is the latter parallel that now risks major power war in Europe.

Opting for war

In this perspective, the 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea, followed by the 2022 Russian military intervention in Ukraine, appears to repeat actions somewhat similar to those of the Bolsheviks versus Polish imperialism during the 1919-21 Polish-Soviet war that took place in the midst of the “secret” US, British, and French military intervention in Russia from 1918 to 1925 that was intended to check German and Japanese expansion while attempting to overthrow the Bolsheviks.

In the Russian view, the uncoordinated NATO and EU enlargements into the Central and Eastern European shatterbelt represent a contemporary fulfillment of Polish leader Józef Piłsudski’s interwar project for an Eastern European federation, or "Intermarium," based on the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, but now led by the US and NATO.

In the Intermarium, interwar Poland was to lead a European federation that would include Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Ukraine, and Yugoslavia as an Eastern European defense barrier between Germany and the Soviet Union. The Intermarium was also intended to disaggregate the Soviet Union by backing Ukraine under Pilsudski’s complementary project, Prometheism.

Yet neither project was successful. After Warsaw first fought against the Ukrainian People’s Republic (UPR) for control over eastern Galicia and Lviv in April–May 1920, Warsaw and Kyiv then aligned against the Soviets once Pilsudski helped install a pro-Polish government in Kyiv. That Polish-Ukrainian alliance was, however, opposed by Ukrainian nationalists.

While the so-called Polish “Miracle on the Vistula” victory in the August 1920 Battle of Warsaw did permit Poland to absorb large chunks of western Belarus and Ukraine, Warsaw nevertheless lost control over Kyiv and all the territories gained by Warsaw and Poland’s Ukrainian allies after they were defeated by the Bolshevik Red Offensive—thereby ending Pilsudski’s dream of Intermarium and Prometheism.

Warsaw did not possess many friends after it had seized Vilnius in 1920 from Lithuania and sustained territorial disputes over Silesia with Czechoslovakia, which Warsaw regarded as pro-Soviet. France, however, backed Warsaw in its war with the Soviets and then forged a military alliance with Poland in February 1921 as a check on both Moscow and Berlin.

At that time, in July 1920, Berlin declared neutrality with respect to the Polish–Soviet War even though Warsaw had acquired most of the province of Posen (Poznań) and parts of West Prussia in the Versailles Treaty. This created the “Polish Corridor," providing Warsaw access to the Baltic Sea and dividing Germany. Settled by the Treaty of Riga (March 18, 1921), Poland's new frontiers as an independent state were internationally recognized in 1923.

From Weimar to Nazi Germany

The step-by-step rise of Weimar Germany provoked general fears of German revanche—as Berlin moved step by step toward a policy of revanche in what was called the “politics of the diagonal.”

In order to prevent an Anglo-French-Soviet alliance from “encircling” Germany, Berlin sought a rapprochement with the Soviet Union in the April 1922 Rapallo Pact that resulted in secret German-Soviet military cooperation in opposition to the punitive Versailles Treaty. Moscow and Berlin then signed the Treaty of Berlin (German–Soviet Neutrality and Nonaggression Pact) on 24 April 1926.

Concurrently, Marshall Piłsudski seized power in Warsaw in his May 1926 coup. Piłsudski opposed the Locarno Treaties signed by the Weimar Republic and France in 1925, as they did not guarantee Germany’s borders with Poland. He also opposed the Treaty of Berlin, which Piłsudski saw as a Soviet-German threat to Poland. Remaining in power until his death in 1935, Piłsudski hoped to “balance” relations between Moscow and Berlin—but his policies were nevertheless seen as pro-German and anti-Soviet.

In his rise to power in 1933, Hitler publicly expressed interest in a Polish-German alliance, as he initially saw Poland as a strategic counterweight to the Soviet Union. In 1934, Nazi Germany and Poland signed the “German–Polish declaration of non-aggression”—even as Hitler began his persecution of Poles, Jews, and other so-called non-Aryans.

A last chance to prevent World War II

As Hitler raised his ugly head, a last chance to prevent World War II failed miserably. In 1934, French Foreign Minister Jean Louis Barthou belatedly attempted to forge a new system of collective security for Europe.

The Barthou plan was called an “Eastern Pact of Mutual Guarantee” or “Eastern Locarno," as it was designed to address border issues not dealt with by the Locarno Pact of 1924-25. The latter had hoped to guarantee Weimar German borders with France, Belgium, Poland, and Czechoslovakia; it likewise demilitarized the Rhineland. But Germany refused to guarantee its eastern borders with Poland and Czechoslovakia.

Backed by France and the Soviet Union, the belated Eastern Locarno was accordingly intended to deal with disputes among Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, and the Baltic states, in addition to providing stronger security provisions for Poland and the Little Entente powers of Czechoslovakia, Romania, and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (Yugoslavia). France was to conclude mutual assistance pacts with both Moscow and Berlin and then to bring the Soviet Union and possibly Nazi Germany into the League of Nations.

Even Winston Churchill had believed that World War II could have been easily prevented in the period 1933-35—as he stated in his famous “Sinews of Peace” speech in Fulton, Missouri in 1946. In 1934, in opposition to the anti-communist members of his British Conservative Party—and against the views of Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald—Churchill strongly supported Barthou’s “Eastern Pact for the Guarantee of Mutual Security” that would bring France, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union together in an effort to deter Adolf Hitler. Churchill realized Hitler’s air and land power represented a greater immediate threat than did the Soviet Union.

The Barthou Plan needed strong British, French, Soviet, and Polish support for overlapping mutual security guarantees—if it was to prevent war. Yet Polish leaders, Marshal Józef Piłsudski and Foreign Minister Józef Beck, were highly suspicious of Soviet intentions and, in January 1934, signed a ten-year non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany—in the hope that Poland could sustain an equal distance from Berlin and Moscow. Berlin predictably denounced the Barthou plan as a form of Einkreisung (encirclement) and rejected the pact on September 11, 1934.

As Warsaw opposed the possibility that Soviet forces could cross Polish territory in the name of collective security against Nazi Germany, it then refused to participate in the Barthou Plan on September 27, 1934, and thereby accepted no security obligations with respect to its neighbors. In addition, Warsaw feared the possibility that the French were using the Barthou Plan to back out of the 1921 Polish-French alliance by shifting the burden of defending Eastern Europe onto Moscow.

Poland's rejection effectively killed the implementation of a new system of Eastern European collective security. And Barthou’s accidental killing when the Croatian Ustaše assassinated King Alexander of Yugoslavia on October 9, 1934, weakened the Little Entente and the prospects for collective security.

Given the rise of a revanchist Nazi Germany, France and the Soviet Union aligned in the 1935 Franco-Soviet Treaty of Mutual Assistance—seeking to bypass Poland entirely. With the lack of strong British, American, Italian, and Polish commitment to the defense of Eastern Europe as providers of security for the Barthou Plan, as urged by Churchill, the plan was doomed. The fact that the US had refused to commit itself to the League of Nations or to an alliance with Britain and France in 1919 in the first place meant that Britain refused to fully back the French Barthou Plan or engage itself emphatically in continental diplomacy—until it was too late to prevent war.

Refusal to engage in cooperative-collective security today

While the “2 plus 4” agreement over German unification that permitted NATO to expand its nuclear umbrella to eastern Germany has its parallel in the 1925 Locarno Pact, the US did not pursue a contemporary parallel to the interwar “Eastern Locarno” and thus seek to guarantee Russian borders and spheres of influence and security with the expanding NATO and European Union.

Instead of implementing an enhanced Partnership for Peace for Eastern European states, as urged by the then US Secretary of Defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the NATO Supreme Commander, and instead of seeking to formalize Ukraine’s status as a non-nuclear neutral state while implementing special security arrangements for the three Baltic states, in working with Moscow and Western European countries, the Clinton administration opted for the “open enlargement” of NATO membership in late 1994. The major US arms industries, such as Lockheed Martin, and Eastern European states, including Poland, opposed the Partnership for Peace and backed NATO enlargement—at the risk of alienating Moscow and overextending NATO as well.

Clinton made the decision to expand NATO just as Kyiv accepted a non-nuclear status with the signing of the OSCE Budapest Memorandum in December 1994, but Kyiv still sought either NATO membership or stronger US security guarantees. By 2008, the US and NATO promised Ukraine NATO membership, knowing it was dubious Kyiv would enter NATO. In this geohistorical perspective, NATO’s open expansion appeared to be backing an alliance that included many of the same states as did Pilsudski’s Intermarium—but backed by NATO and the EU.

And somewhat similar to the early interwar period, in which Soviet Russia moved forward into Ukraine to counter Polish imperialism in the Polish-Soviet War in 1920, the 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea (in part to preserve control over Russia’s Black Sea Fleet at Sevastopol), followed by the February 2022 military intervention in eastern Ukraine, represented an act of preclusive imperialism to check NATO and EU efforts to manipulate Kyiv against Moscow.

These Russian military interventions appear to be comparable to Lenin’s actions during the Polish-Soviet War in terms of geostrategic intent. Likewise, the US “coup” in Kyiv that brought the Euromaidan to power in 2014 resembles Pilsudski’s (failed) efforts to bring Kyiv to the Polish side in 1920 against the Soviet Union. By contrast with Pilsudski, the US, NATO, and EU have more successfully forged a contemporary NATO-EU “Intermarium.”

Much as Polish territorial gains during the Polish-Soviet war provoked Stalinist revanche after the signing of the Hitler-Stalin Pact, the largely uncoordinated dual expansion of NATO and the EU toward Ukraine and the Baltic states has provoked a dangerous Russian revanchist backlash. Moreover, as the Russia-Ukraine war since 2014 has escalated, President Putin has sought to intimidate Ukraine and its US and European arms suppliers with nuclear threats—in the effort to force Kyiv to come to terms and accept neutrality, if not partition.

The contemporary Suwałki Gap and interwar Polish corridor

Rather than bringing the Soviet Union into a Treaty of Mutual Assistance, as proposed by Barthou, London excluded Moscow from the Munich Accord that “appeased” Hitler in September 1938 against Churchill’s advice. To protect the Soviet Union from Nazi Germany, potentially backed by London, Stalin then sought a rapprochement with Hitler and signed the August 1939 Treaty of Non-Aggression (the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact). Berlin and Moscow secretly agreed to a joint Nazi-Soviet partition of Eastern Europe—in what would become a repeat of historical partitions of Poland since the late 18th century. This time, the partition of Poland would provoke World War II.

Kaliningrad-like Danzig/Gdansk: flashpoint for war?

If the interwar analogy is truly relevant, the contemporary Kaliningrad region and the Suwałki Corridor could play the geostrategic role of Danzig/Gdansk and the Polish Corridor that divided Germany from East Prussia. Before World War II, the Polish Corridor, established by the Versailles Treaty, gave Poland limited access to the Baltic Sea and separated East Prussia from the rest of Germany. While Warsaw sought control over the free city of Danzig/Gdańsk, so did Hitler.

The Polish Corridor soon became a flashpoint for war when Hitler demanded the return of the free city of Danzig/Gdańsk with a German-majority population and reclaimed territory lost under the Treaty of Versailles—so as to tie Germany together and initiate Lebensraum expansion into Poland and the Ukrainian “bread basket”—with American western expansionism as one of Hitler’s geopolitical models.

Much like the Polish Corridor, the contemporary Suwałki corridor somewhat similarly represents a potential flash point for major power war. Moscow fears that it could lose military access to Kaliningrad as NATO boosts its military forces around the Russian exclave—now that Poland, the three Baltic states, Finland, and Sweden have all joined NATO. In case of war, Moscow could seek to cut this corridor and isolate Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—as it is the only land route connecting the Baltic states to the rest of NATO.

In many ways, Russian strategy toward Ukraine, Kaliningrad, and NATO and the EU now appears to parallel Nazi German strategy toward the UK, France, and Poland: Putin appears to be either preparing the Russian population for a general mobilization and long-term war or else he is seeking a way out of the Russia-Ukraine conflict by engaging in threats that are intended to forcibly impel the US, NATO, the Europeans, and Ukraine to come to terms.

In his October 1, 2026, Valdai address, Russian President Putin warned that "if it comes to direct attack against the Russian Federation, in this case on Kaliningrad and possibly some other territories, of course the issue of using all weapons in our country’s arsenal will inevitably and unavoidably emerge on the agenda. This is unavoidable.”

NATO, of course, claims that it has no intent to attack Kaliningrad as accused by Moscow, much as Hitler had accused Poland of seeking to seize the free city of Danzig/Gdansk. Nevertheless, US, NATO, and European military pressures and economic sanctions—including threats to check transit to Kaliningrad—could destabilize Russian relations with the exclave. Given Russia’s own political-economic instability, combined with the high costs of subsidizing and defending the exclave, Moscow, from a position of relative weakness, fears it might lose access to Kaliningrad through the Suwałki corridor. This raises the risks that Moscow, somewhat like Berlin, might act preemptively.

Much as was the case for the interwar “twenty years crisis,” the contemporary global crisis—in which the uncoordinated NATO and EU expansion toward perceived Russian spheres of influence and security provoked a revanchist Russian military backlash—as clearly forewarned by Gorbachev, Yeltsin, and Putin—will prove very difficult to wind down so as to establish a sustainable peace.

Given the hybrid analogy to both interwar Germany and the interwar Soviet Union, the key questions with respect to Moscow’s geopolitical response remain: Will Putin seek regional revanche by the use of force against Ukraine since 2014/22 more like Lenin as he battled for control over Belarus and Ukraine versus interwar Poland in the Polish-Soviet War? Or will Putin—in fear of Russian isolation and disaggregation—seek even greater regional expansion like Stalin? Or will he risk global revanche more like Hitler?

Or could Putin accept a lasting peace accord if given the right mix of US-European and Chinese pressures and incentives—much as Churchill believed was possible with respect to Hitler?

Without engaged US diplomacy—that brings US, European, and Chinese diplomacy closer together, along with the diplomacy of other states, in an effort to wind down the Ukraine-Russia conflict and to deconflict geostrategic tensions related to Kaliningrad and the Baltic region—it will not be long before Homo Geopoliticus enters into yet another major power conflict.

The time for diplomacy is now!

References

Pelle Taylor, “Interview with Hall Gardner," Capitals Uncovered (October 5, 2026). WW2 could have been prevented but for Poland | Ep. 178.
On Churchill and the Eastern Locarno.
Hall Gardner, IR Theory, Historical Analogy, and Major Power War (New York: Palgrave/Macmillan, 2019).
Hall Gardner, Dangerous Crossroads (Bloomsbury, 1997).
Hall Gardner, “Beyond the Interwar Analogy” in NATO Looks East, ed. by Piotr Dutkiewicz and Robert J. Jackson (Praeger, 1998).
Hall Gardner, “From the Origins of World War I to Global Conflict Today: World War I, World War II, to World War III???” Florida Political Chronicle, ed. Marco Rimanelli, v.25, n.1 (2016-2017): pp. 12-33.
This video discussion, « Not a New Cold War, » was held in December 2021 (contrary to the date on the video when it was put on the web) before the Russian attack on Ukraine in February 2022.