if not the best, historical analogies that I have seen so far.
In the Sudetenland, Hitler's media publicized atrocies alleged to have been committed against ethnic Germans, done expressly to give him an excuse to march in to "save" them. The Sudetenland had never been a part of Germany; it was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire prior to WWI.
Crimea was formerly part of the USSR and there is an existent treaty governing Russia's presence there. Events in Ukraine that threatened stability in Crimea - events caused by lots of interference and encouragement from the West, btw, and that have done little to change things for ordinary Ukrainians (merely exchanging one group of corrupt oligarchs for another) - gave Putin credible reason to move in to protect Russia's very real interests in Crimea.
Do I support Putin's actions? No. But I find them wholly understandable and much more geo-politically justified than a) the US invasion of Grenada (likely the closest geographical analogy to any US "interest" under "threat"
and certainly b) the US-led 2003 invasion of Iraq. Justifying the latter by saying that we sought UN approval is disingenuous at the very least, especially when that approval was based on Colin Powell's trading his honor for a mess of pottage and presenting lies as facts before the UN.
We have no moral high ground. None.
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