Robert Zubrin:
In 1936, the great Czech antifascist writer Karel Capek published his book The War with the Newts, which brilliantly satirized the policies of the Allies in appeasing Hitler. Capek’s work has long been a favorite of mine, and in fact was the inspiration for my own 2003 science fiction satire, The Holy Land, dealing with the Middle East and the War on Terror.
But now, with the disgusting betrayal of Ukraine to the Putin regime by the Obama administration and the even more feckless western European allies, Capek’s work has become brutally relevant once again.
So here are a few choice bits.
The situation is this. The newts are human sized salamanders who want to expand their living space, which consists of shallow water and swamps. Following this imperative, they begin flooding human-inhabited coastal areas. This causes earthquakes in several locations, including Louisiana. The leader of the newts, Chief Salamander then takes to the airwaves to address the issue.
The book continues as follows:
“Hello, hello, hello! Chief Salamander speaking. . . .We regret the loss of human life. We have no wish to cause you unnecessary harm. We wish only that you evacuate those areas of coast which we will notify you of in advance. If you do as we say you will avoid anything regrettable. In future we will give you at least fourteen days notice of the places where we wish to extend our sea. Incidents so far have been no more than technical experiments. Your explosives have proved their worth. Thank you for them.
“Hello you people! Remain calm. We wish you no harm. We merely need more water, more coastline, more shallows in which to live. There are too many of us. Your coastlines are already too limited for our needs. For this reason we need to demolish your continents. We will convert them into bays and islands. In this way, the length of coastline can be increased five-fold. We will construct new shallows. We cannot live in deep ocean. We will need your continents as materials to fill in the deep waters. We wish you no harm, but there are too many of us. You will be free to migrate inland. You will not be prevented from fleeing to the hills. The hills will be the last to be demolished.
“We are here because you wanted us. You have distributed us over the entire world. Now you have us. We wish that you collaborate with us. You will provide us with steel for our picks and drills. You will provide us with explosives. You will provide us with torpedoes. You will work for us. Without you we will not be able to remove the old continents. Hello you people, Chief Salamander, in the name of all newts everywhere, offers collaboration with you. You will collaborate with us in the demolition of your world. Thank you.”
. . .
Some weeks later, the nations of the world met together in Vaduz.
The conference took place in Vaduz because in the height of the Alps there was no danger from the newts and because most of the world’s most powerful and socially important people had already fled there from coastal areas. It was generally agreed that . . . it was legally and practically impossible to declare war against the newts or put any other sort of international pressure on them; each state would have the right to take measures only against its own newts; it would be a purely internal matter. This meant that it was impossible to speak of any collective diplomatic or military campaign against the newts. Any state that came under attack from the salamanders could receive international aid only in the form of overseas loans for them to help defend themselves.
Too bad they didn’t read this book? Too bad they, apparently, never learned anything at all about World War II.