Is Ukraine Going the Way of China? Where Will Communism Go Next?

I, like so many, feel utterly helpless sitting here at home while a maniacal monster scourges the landscape of Ukraine. I wish I could reach back in time and change the course of history and the insidious spread of communism into China in 1949.

I learned about China’s civil war as I researched my book William E. Dimorier: Servant Leader, which describes how China turned communist in 1949 with the help of Russia. Just think. If we would have helped China, it might be our biggest ally today and Russia might know its place, which should not be a quest for world domination.

In 1949, a civil war was raging in China, and its leaders asked for help from the west to fight communism. The west didn’t help, but you know who did? That’s right. Russia. And then there was Korea. Who helped? Russia. On to Vietnam. You guessed it. Russia had its dirty little hands there, too. The awful tentacles of Russia have reached like a cancer tumor into the Middle East, as well. And we also stood by while it annexed Crimea in 2014.

Mind you, I’m a pacifist, but I believe it’s necessary to stop a bully when it’s hurting others. Ukraine is not a member of NATO. I get that. But NATO needs to understand that by not helping countries that Russia has invaded or currently influences, the threat to every other nation, indeed the world, grows larger and larger.

What Ukraine needed when the Russian troops lined up at its border under the farce of aiding separatists in the east (as 40,000 did in 2014), was manpower and machines. Not sanctions. No, I don’t want to see any Americans killed. No, I don’t want World War III. But guess what? As we keep turning our backs, Russia will soon be in our backyard. World War III is coming, if we don’t do something now. 

Here, far from Ukraine, we do what we can. We contribute money. We give to food drives. We put blue and yellow ribbons on our houses. We add the Ukraine flag to our Facebook profile photo. That’s all great, but what’s really needed is for good people to stand up to the bully, which is Putin and Russia. 

Here’s an excerpt from William E. Dimorier: Servant Leader:

During World War II, William had donated his Reader’s Digest subscription to members of the United States Armed Forces. He must have resumed receiving the magazine himself after the war, because a November 1949 article prompted him to write a letter to its author, a student of his more than forty years prior at Cook Academy in Montour Falls, New York, where William taught before he came to Erie in 1906. The student was V. K. Wellington Koo, who was serving as the Chinese ambassador in Washington, DC. 

Koo replied, thanking William for his reaction to the article, “China is Worth Saving,” about his country’s struggle with communism. Koo’s letter, dated December 6, 1949, recalled his time as a student at the upstate-New York college prep school more than four decades before. 

“It is always a pleasant thing to me to recall the year I spent at Cook Academy,” Koo wrote. “Indeed, I feel I owe much to my teachers like your good self whose kindly personal interest in my work and progress while I was a student there has had an uplifting influence on me.” 

Koo then reflected on the China situation, “I have always believed that the American people are fundamentally in sympathy and agreement with China’s cause—to preserve her independence and freedom. And I hope and believe that China’s struggle against Communist domination will yet triumph.” 

From the twenty-first century perspective, we know that the ambassador’s wish did not come true. A couple of months prior to Koo’s article, US Secretary of State Dean Acheson issued a statement regarding America’s position on aid to China that hinted the situation was a lost cause due to the lack of confidence of the Chinese people in their own government. So, with massive financial and military help from the Soviet Union, and pressure from the United States for the communists and nationalists to form a coalition, the Chinese Communist Party waged a successful Civil War against the Chinese government, birthing the People’s Republic of China in October of 1949, a month prior to Koo’s article appearing in Reader’s Digest. 

Am I wrong in being so disturbed and disgusted about the way we are allowing Ukraine to be smashed to smithereens? For its culture and history to be reduced to rubble? If I’m wrong, please tell me in the comments below. Perhaps it will ease the utter feeling of helplessness that plagues me when I see the latest devastation and atrocities on the news.