Unfortunately, there are parallels with the intial nazi expansions.

The good news is that comparison breaks down when you look at certain details...

The nazi's leveraged German military tradition, technical ingenuity, industrial base, and societal unrest to produce what was the finest military force in the west, and probably in the world.

Putin and russia can't afford to do that economically...and russian culture doesn't make it easy either.

The western powers were weak in the 1930's, and had mostly WW-I leftover hardware. The NATO powers may have smaller forces, and may be preoccupied in the middle-east, but we have VERY modern, state-of-the-art combat systems...and we are very good at employing them.

We have twice demonstrated our ability to rapidly and catastrophically overwhelm battle-hardened mechanized and armored forces which use soviet hardware, soviet training, and soviet doctrine...the eastern powers DEFINATELY took note of that in 1991 and 2003. The current chinese military build-up is believed to have been the direct result of the rapid collapse of Iraqi forces in the first gulf war. The chinese use the same equipment and doctrine and they were totally shocked when Iraq was rolled up in 100 hours...they would not have believed that possible before the war.

This time the blitzkrieg is OUR capability.

I agree with most of what you say however you are underestimating the new wealth Russia has found in the form of oil and gas. In fact, Russia is on its way to become a society without a national debt and all the branches of their military are feverishly placing orders on new and very sophisticated weapons.

Medvedev recently said that the Russian Rouble should become one of the world's hard currencies on par with the US dollar and the Japanese Yen. Frankly if we don't manage to lower oil and gas prices significantly there's no telling what Russia will do with their new and enormous wealth, they've already surpassed Saudi Arabia in oil production and have been the largest natural gas producer in the world for quite some time. From previous experiences it won't go toward building up their society but rather to build up their enormous military complex.

As far as the Russian culture, I’m not sure what you meant by that…

It is interesting you brought up Neville Chamberlain, not many people even know who he was.... A lot of people openly protest the war in Iraq, however the question of what if we had not gone in and something would have happened... Bush would have been blamed by the same people for not going in.

Getting back to Russia...Russia is waiting for the power shift as America dives into more debt as a nation and becomes more willed against war. China will over-inflate itself and fall into a depression (just like the US did in the '30s) followed by a war. During the cold war Russia had the most troops on the Chinese border, not the NATO border... Russia is nervous about China's development and will seek any oil control to gain leverage economically. Russia will be in the economic spotlight just as soon as China's economy over-inflates as they will strategically control oil interests.
The only problem facing Russian development is their own corruption.

The world needs to find an alternate power source.

$ from oil is feeding too many countries with probably hostile intentions.

I wouldnt call a powerfull Russia under Putin a stable country to have around.

Yeah, I also agree. Then, when that happens, look out!

With regard to Chamberlain- there is some truth to the fact that Chamberlain knew that the Great Britain could not stand up to the german juggernaut. His "peace in our time" was a political smokescreen to buy time to allow Great Britain to build up its' military in light of what they saw coming.

I see your point however many historians and military experts disagree with that thesis nowadays. In fact they think Germany overestimated their own capabilities while the Western powers underestimated their strength at the time of the Munich agreement giving Germany plenty of time to win the arms race a few years later.

Here’s an excerpt from wikipedia – yes I know you can’t always trust what you find there but this is heaven for history geeks.

“ …None of the powers in western Europe wanted war. They severely overestimated the military ability of the German dictator Adolf Hitler at the time, and while the forces of Britain and France were superior to the German Wehrmacht, they felt they had fallen behind, and were undergoing massive military rearmament to catch up. Hitler, on the other hand, was in just the opposite position. He greatly exaggerated German military power at the time and was hoping for a war with the west which he thought he could easily win. He was persuaded into holding the conference, however, by the Italian leader Benito Mussolini, who was unprepared for a Europe-wide conflict, and was also concerned about the growth of German power. German military leadership also knew the state of their armed forces and did all they could to avoid war…”

Munich Agreement

And I can see your point- but it doesn't matter if both militarys' situations we're clear or unclear, whether it was the perception or the reality; Chamberlain would likely have acted the same way. I guess, if you don't know for sure, the feeling of a threat is as good as a threat. Hence, "peace through airpower" during the Cold War.

I suspect the truth is somewhere in the middle. The truly interesting thing (which I'm afraid I'm NOT well read on) is the role WW1 and its' cost and repercussions played on how WW2 was approached and then developed both politically and militarily by all invloved.

I agree, the truth is somewhere in the middle.