I am sure that if I were to comment on a mid-game chess move, the reaction of an expert on the game would nod and think I was a complete newbie.

A CHESS-LOVING newbie.

Professional politics is handled on a strictly two-year basis. “A year is forever in politics.”

But that applies to paycheck politics. It’s checkers at most.

But politics for power is chess, but chess with more variables. Comments are usually at the level of a chess watcher thinking about how a move was to get a bishop.

War is power politics. The history of war is exclusively dedicated to which side had the butchest men. But, to repeat, no war hero ever made the slightest difference in the outcome of any war.

The outcome of any real war has been determined before the first shot is fired.

One of the best examples of this is how the Soviet Union was saved from Stalin’s idiocy in 1939 when he joined with Hitler in dividing Poland.

Hitler had been trying to get a common border with Russia. That is why Danzig was so crucial. Danzig was a Free City. It had voted in Nazism, but France and Britain had a treaty which allowed them to declare war if Germany took it.

German forces could not reach East Prussia, and Russia, without crossing Danzig.

You will not see this mentioned anywhere else.

History talks a lot about Danzig, but not about this basic strategic point.

Both France and Britain had a heavy leftist presence in its politics. They were able to protect Russia.

Then Stalin produced every intelligent leftist’s nightmare. He joined with Hitler in invading Poland, so that Germany would have a huge border right up against the USSR.

If Britain and France had not declared war against Germany, and ONLY against Germany, the USSR would have been doomed instead of having one third of the human population of earth to rule over by 1950.

The left had influence, but not open domination, in the UK and in France. They were “out of power.”

Due to a complete ignorance of power politics, no one is going to point to one of history’s most ingenious balancing acts.