Much of current rhetoric in the West is dominated by 19th and 20th century analogies. We are told that Putin is behaving like Hitler did in the Sudetenland in 1938 when he used the supposed plight of ethnic Germans as a pretext to dismember Czechoslovakia and gobble up the rest of the country shortly after. We are told that Putin is like the Russian tsars of old, bent on conquest or at the very least fixated on ensuring unimpeded access to the Black Sea. We are told that Putin is like the communists, suspicious of the West and deeply paranoid about being encircled by hostile powers, so he is rehashing their strategy, creating a protective belt of pro-Russian states (or, failing that, enclaves) as a buffer. We are told, by the former special assistant to the President and ambassador to Russia, that "similar to the last century, the ideological struggle between autocracy and democracy has returned to Europe."