Opinion

Sending Western troops to Ukraine in unlikely in the near future. It also may end up being Europe’s most realistic option for aiding Ukraine.

It’s common knowledge that the possibility of a second term for former U.S. President Donald Trump is sending shivers up the spines of Washington’s NATO allies. But the prospect of a second Trump presidency is also heightening anxieties among U.S. allies in Asia, which have also relied on U.S. security assurances for decades.

A recent spate of commentary has drawn the analogy between today’s regional conflicts and those of the 1930s that led to World War II, often as a cautionary tale for how to deal with contemporary international security dynamics. These analogies, however, misread the past, with potentially dangerous implications for the present.