Who is Chamberlain in the Ukrainian version of the 1938 Czech crisis?

Munich, the Netflix drama based on the thriller of the same name by Robert Harris, debuted last week just as a threatened Russian invasion of Ukraine forced its way to the very top of the international agenda. 

In September 1938, Neville Chamberlain, aged 70 and ailing, tried everything he could think of to avert war with Hitler’s Germany. The Munich peace conference was his finest hour, until it wasn’t. Yes, he bought time, particularly for the RAF, but he also wrote himself into the history books as Hitler’s dupe, forced to give way to the “warmonger” Churchill, whose life, we were later assured, had been but a preparation for this moment. 

This time, the patsy, if there is one, has yet to be revealed. The most obvious candidate is Sleepy Joe Biden, a determined peacenik, nine years older than Chamberlain and clearly past his best. Respite from foreign entanglements is what the US President desperately needs. We saw that with his chaotic withdrawal of American forces from Afghanistan. Without it, his ambitious domestic programme – already stuck in the Senate’s maw – could end up in the Congressional trashcan. But Biden might yet come through. It looks today as if he has finally woken up to the severity of the crisis in Ukraine and may just, with help from his Nato allies, lay claim to peace in our time.  

The other main candidate for what Britain’s robust defence secretary Ben Wallace might label with straw man status is Vladimir Putin, who, if he backs off without some obvious evidence of success for his cause, could also find himself in line for the Grand Old Duke of York award. 

Putin, according to legend, is made of stern stuff. He may enjoy the pre-war theatrics, which give him a chance to assess the resolve of his enemies, but he also excels at the follow-through, as witness his victories in Georgia, the Crimea and Syria. 

I would not entirely rule out the Russian leader withdrawing under pressure. He knows Russia’s strengths, but he also knows its weaknesses and its vulnerabilities.

But if he does relent, his tenure of office may prove to be a lot shorter than he had in mind, leaving him, if not the Chamberlain de nos jours, then a latter-day Mussolini, all mouth and no trousers. And I don’t see that happening unless someone in the Kremlin places a knife, real or metaphorical, between his shoulders. 

We will know soon enough.

As to the conflict that may be about to start, there are many scenarios, none of them benign. Moscow could blitz Kiev’s military and logistical headquarters with a barrage of missiles, causing its armed forces to fight blind. It could advance across a broad front, from Belarus as well as Russia itself and the Crimea, hoping to knock the stuffing out of Ukrainian resolve. Or it could move in like the Germans through France in 1940, pushing through on a narrow front behind tanks and aircraft, forcing the Ukrainian government to abandon Kiev for Lviv in the west. Or it could choose to seize and annex the eastern provinces, already held in large part by ethnic Russians, and join them by road to Crimea, effectively creating two Ukraines. Who knows? 

The word is that Ukraine’s armed forces are much better armed and trained than they were in 2014, when Crimea fell. Western intelligence will be on Kiev’s side, including sight of the battlefield from space, and there is an outside chance that American and European forces will join the fight at some stage, or at least force Russia to hold back its reserves in anticipation of a second front. Again, who knows? 

What seems certain is that Ukraine will fight – to the last man, we are told, and even if the battle is lost, the fight will continue as a blend of large-scale insurgency and lower-level resistance. Russia could find itself in a repeat of Afghanistan in the 1970s, never able to relax its guard, never able to claim the victory. At the same time, western sanctions would begin to eat the heart out of the Russian economy, starting with its banking system but also closing off its lucrative oil and gas pipelines. 

No one in western Europe would be sanguine about losing access to Russian energy supplies. Germany especially would wish the taps to be turned back on as quickly as possible. But the squeeze would be on, and all the while Ukrainian holds-outs, supplied with weapons and intelligence by the Pentagon, would continue to take a toll of Russian conscripts. 

I have indicated the possibility that western forces, including the French, could end up putting boots on the ground in Ukraine, crossing over from bases in the Baltic States, Romania and Poland. But how likely is it that Nato will be the deciding factor? Once again, we may have to wait and see. Positions once set in stone could easily become fluid. 

Britain’s position is, on paper, impeccable. We stand with Ukraine and will provide its government and armed forces with vital intelligence as well as weapons with which to take on Russian armour. But, as Dominic Raab, the justice secretary, revealed all too accurately on Sunday, though we stand “shoulder to shoulder” with our gallant ally, we won’t actually be there if and when the fighting starts.  

As we all line up to peer into the fog, one thing is clear: no one wants to see a regional quarrel erupt into World War III, not least Moscow. 

Thus, it could be that the Geneva talks, in last-gasp mode, could take on something of the appearance of Munich in 1938, with the difference that Putin is not (we think) Hitler and Biden is not (we hope) Chamberlain. The Russian dictator, having watched even Spain and Denmark (though not yet Britain) upping their force levels in eastern Europe and hearing from his people in Washington that the US is getting ready to move beyond words into some form of action, may choose discretion over valor and opt to keep his army and air force camped out on Ukraine’s borders without actually crossing the line. 

On that basis, both sides would have to remain on red alert for the duration, which is both costly and exhausting. It would be time for a diplomatic solution, in which neither side gains the upper hand, but neither loses face. Win-win, lose-lose: it’s all the same if nobody gets  killed.

Chamberlain (superbly played in Munich by Jeremy Irons) would probably have settled for such an outcome, as would France’s prime minister, Édouard Daladier, whose unedifying role in the Czech crisis has never been accorded the contempt it deserves. But both men were up against both a master bluffer and a ruthless pursuer of his own interests. We are about to find out if Putin is cast in a similar mould.