Unraveling A Patchwork Of Improvised Disaster

THE ART OF APPEASEMENT (Part-1)

By David Young
July 31, 2009
Courtesy Of Asia Times Online

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In the early stages of the Cuban missile crisis in the early 1960s, Adlai Stevenson, United States president John F Kennedy's notoriously dovish United Nations ambassador, suggested that Washington offer Moscow a non-confrontational trade to stave off a nuclear exchange: we withdraw our missiles from Turkey, and the Soviets withdraw their missile components from Cuba.

On hearing his advice, Kennedy and every member of his secretive ExComm group (assembled to troubleshoot the crisis) scolded Stevenson for recklessly forgetting the obvious lessons of Munich, when Britain and France in the late 1930s appeased German leader Adolf Hitler prior to World War II. Only a fool, they said, would reward the aggression of tyrants like Hitler and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev with diplomacy. But then, lo and behold, under cover of absolute secrecy, Kennedy went ahead and made nearly the exact same "appeasing" trade that Stevenson had recommended.

It would seem, then, that if Kennedy handled the situation well - and there is a virtual consensus that he did - then appeasement is appropriate as long as no one knows about it. Ironically, the only party with whom the US ever felt a need to be secretive was the Soviet Union, and they were the only ones privy to the deal.

The subterfuge, then, was apparently for the sole benefit of the American people, who would have likely seen this trade as a sign of capitulation and weakness, even if it came (as it eventually did) on the heels of a forceful blockade of Cuba. Kennedy knew that Americans were just as likely as anyone to mistake the feeling of humiliation for the presence of weakness, and proceed to throw him under the bus. But why?

With enemies ranging from empires to nation-states to terrorist organizations, the policy of appeasement has been scorned for the past 70 years to rouse the rabble out of its comfortable apathy and confront unadulterated evil.

Unsurprisingly, however, the disdain in the West for any scent of appeasement has led to a widespread and knee-jerk tendency to identify and dismiss any policy of restraint or conservation, frequently at the expense of grounded foreign policy. Not only, then, is appeasement wildly over-diagnosed, but even when accurately identified, the policy is quickly discarded as a tool of the weak.

And with the Barack Obama administration making numerous overtures of re-engagement with Syria, Iran and other controversial parties, a close examination of both the legitimate and delusional perils of appeasement is pertinent. Anti-appeasement rhetoric and survival instincts run amok have clouded our judgment, and it is time to right the ship.

In September 1938, after Adolf Hitler annexed and occupied part of Czechoslovakia for the ostensible purpose of taming ethnic conflict, British prime minister Neville Chamberlain and French premier Edouard Daladier signed the Munich Agreement that allowed Hitler to keep the territory, despite a previous French security guarantee protecting Czechoslovakia's sovereignty. In return for this concession, Hitler promised not to seize any more territory, but he soon invaded the rest of Czechoslovakia and Poland, forcing Britain and France to declare war.

By the close of the war, the appeasement lesson had been drawn quickly and fiercely, leaving behind a legacy with a seemingly eternal shelf life. Barely beneath the surface of every subsequent history textbook, the parable of Munich is loud and clear: the longer we wait to stand up to a bully, the more the bully will take by force - and the weaker we will be when war inevitably ensues.

Perhaps the greatest obstacle to exploring the nuances of appeasement is that the approach of the British and French toward Nazi Germany in the 1930s is widely regarded as perhaps the most catastrophic example of appeasement on record. As a result, it would have been impossible for us not to forge a nearly unbreakable association between raw appeasement and cataclysmic disaster. Nor has anyone really resisted this impulse.
Before Munich, however, the policy of appeasement was almost institutional in its prevalence and application, both in Britain and elsewhere. Yet while historians in recent decades have been reconsidering just how abnormal or scandalous British and French decisions were, the popular package of appeasement today is still painted thick with cavalier weakness, much in accordance with the policy's notable detractors.

"It is precisely when the vital interests are bartered in return for minor concessions, or none at all, that appeasement has taken place," says author Frederick Hartmann.

Chamberlain's mistake, then, was his assumption that Hitler would keep his promise not to demand more territory when nothing had been asked of Hitler to begin with. "Appeasement is a corrupted policy of compromise, made erroneous by mistaking a policy of imperialism for a policy of the status quo," according to German Hans Morgenthau (1904-1980), the father of realpolitik. Chamberlain and Daladier thought Hitler would settle for the status quo, when really it turned out that he would settle for nothing less than world domination. In other words, Morgenthau argues, the appeaser's error is the failure to see that "successive demands are but links of a chain at the end of which stands the overthrow of the status quo".

In the case of World War II, Britain and France hoped to avoid war by appeasing Germany on several occasions, but both eventually recognized that war was unavoidable, given the unlimited nature of Germany's demands. Britain and France, the thinking goes, should have known in Munich - if not earlier - that neither Hitler's character nor his ambitions could be trusted, and that appeasement would only whet his appetite. Accordingly, Hitler should have been confronted as soon as possible to prove Europe's resolve, to mitigate the costs of war, and to ensure victory.

Much of this surely sounds like common sense. When confronted with such a threat, the most common response is to close ranks and project as strong an image as possible. After all, weakness is not just bad for a nation's ego. "The lesson of Munich," writes political scientist Steve Chan, "is that appeasement discredits the defenders' willingness to fight, and encourages the aggressor to escalate his demands." But appeasement does so much more than that.

Given the tight fit between appeasement, World War II and the Holocaust, it is critical to note that any defense of appeasement need not defend all appeasement - no more than defending one war requires a defense of all wars. To date, our very powerful psychological association between appeasement and Hitler's behavior has prevented us from considering alternatives to our understandable gut feeling that appeasement will always lead to a Holocaust. Such a fallacious assumption is based not on sound public policy, but rather on the sensation that "doing something" - or anything, for that matter - is always better than "doing nothing", which leaves us feeling impotent.

Rhetorical Baggage

The most difficult hurdle inevitably facing any advocates of negotiated settlement is the thin line between compromise and appeasement, but their vague differences do not merely point to word games.

Technically speaking, Munich was a compromise; it assured Germany that it could keep its annexed territory, and it assured the British and French that they could avoid a war. Hitler had to make a concession, as did the British and French. Granted, it quickly became clear that Hitler's promise not to claim any more territory was completely insincere, but it was still promised in a compromise. Believing Hitler's pledge may have been a disastrous mistake, as most people believe, but the way this mistake and others like it are framed actually points to an important distinction.

At the time, before Hitler had violated the agreement, Winston Churchill - then only an outspoken figure in the British opposition - denounced Munich as appeasement. "It is not Czechoslovakia alone which is menaced," Churchill noted in September 1938, nine days before Munich, "but also the freedom and security of all nations. The belief that security can be obtained by throwing a small state to the wolves is a fatal delusion." Hitler was known for breaking promises, so in Churchill's eyes, the futility and danger of appeasing Berlin with part of Czechoslovakia should have been patently obvious.

Yet if appeasement is simply what happens when we are fooled into trusting a liar, then Churchill (and anyone else) could only determine if Munich was appeasement after Hitler violated the agreement's terms. Appeasement, in other words, is an entirely retrospective phenomenon, and if decried during a negotiation process, the label is simply a moral judgment and a prediction. From a historical perspective, however, to be fairly labeled "appeasement", an agreement - implicit or explicit - has to backfire; one party has to violate the agreement's terms and make a fool out of the other party. Otherwise, we would still view the agreement as a "compromise" rather than "appeasement".

Even still, because the doom of Munich has been seared into virtually every political decision-making process in the West, we have come to assume that foolish appeasement can be easily diagnosed and discredited before the allegedly unreliable party even violates the agreement. Still, given Hitler's propensity for breaking promises, we cannot imagine how anyone could fall for his tricks. But this fallacious notion demonstrates that hindsight is not only 20/20, but blindingly so. Put differently, why do we never hear about successful appeasement? Is it because
appeasement never works, or because we merely call it something else entirely?

Appeasement 2.0

In 1978, US president Jimmy Carter brokered a landmark peace treaty at Camp David between Egypt (led by president Anwar Sadat) and Israel (led by prime minister Menachem Begin). In what was called a "Land for Peace" treaty, Israel returned the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt - which had controlled the land before Israel captured it during the Six Day War of 1967 - and in exchange, the peninsula would be completely and verifiably demilitarized to give Israel the reassurance of a strategic buffer and retain its vital early warning defense system.

At the time, Egypt was Israel's most powerful and dangerous enemy - one that had (in the eyes of Israel and its Western supporters) mounted four strategic assaults on the Jewish nation in the previous 30 years. To put it mildly, then, the Israelis did not trust the Egyptians. Cairo had broken numerous previous agreements with Israel, including several acts of war. Between the two most recent wars, Cairo had warned Jerusalem that Egypt was preparing for war to regain the Sinai, but Israel only began listening to these warnings in the wake of the 1973 war, which naturally gave Israel reason to believe that the Egyptian military could still inflict enough pain to warrant plenty of attention, even if Cairo no longer posed a threat to Israel's existence itself.

Although many of the details (and obviously the outcome) of this treaty are quite different from those of Munich, the principal arguments remain just as potent. Both Berlin and Cairo were allowed to hold onto territory to which each claimed a strong national connection. The fact that Berlin succeeded (while Cairo failed) to secure that land by force is nearly irrelevant because the messages coming from Cairo and Berlin were the same: if you concede this territory, we will stop fighting you. Israeli, British and French leaders all traded land for the promise of peace. We merely insist that Camp David was smart (and not appeasement) because Egypt has held up its end of the bargain, while Hitler did not - despite comparable evidence at the time that made each likely to violate their respective agreements.

In fact, while there is a near consensus in theory that it is unwise to reward aggressors by negotiating with (or appeasing) them, every White House and virtually every contemporary foreign policy analyst hails the Camp David Accords as a monumental success. Even former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert recently said that he was wrong to have questioned and undermined Begin's efforts at the time and wrong to vote against the ratification of the accords in the Israeli parliament. Olmert even went so far as to say that Begin was "smarter than I was" for having made such a wise decision.

Nevertheless, the Israel-Egypt treaty that followed the Camp David Accords had the same public policy implications and sent the same messages to tyrants that Munich did: first, if you are aggressive enough, rest assured that powerful countries like Israel will be forced to listen and make concessions (though probably not surrender); second, if you are able to get those concessions through a compromise, then that compromise will likely give you a tactical advantage, enabling you to easily take the modest reward for your aggression (as Egypt did), or go double-or-nothing for the jugular, as Hitler did. Aggression, according to Camp David's lessons, will give you options, credibility and power.

Some could argue that Egypt's power paled in comparison to Germany's, so appeasing Egypt was not as risky as appeasing Hitler; but thousands of dead Israelis and their families certainly felt otherwise in 1978. And besides, it would be a fantasy to think that Jerusalem ever negotiates with powerless parties; Israelis only negotiate when they have to, and frequently not even then.

Nor did the US push this peace summit because Israel would be just as safe without the buffer territory. Israel's strategic interest in keeping the Sinai was just as "vital" as Chamberlain's interest in stopping the spread of fascism, and far more vital than his interest in the actual Czech territory ceded at Munich.

Likewise, trading such a vital interest for what was essentially a mere promise of peace had no bearing on Cairo's decision to stick to the deal. For whatever reasons, Cairo did not exploit the concession and go for Israel's jugular. Therefore, while many accused the Israeli government in the late 1970s of trading vital interests in exchange for "minor concessions, or none at all", that paradigm has proven to be completely unfounded. In fact, Israelis have now recognized and come to value Egypt's promise in 1978 and its legacy of peace - albeit a cold one. And in retrospect, few would call Egypt's promise of peace a "minor concession" - one that led to Egypt's expulsion from the Arab League and widespread celebrations in the Arab world when Sadat was assassinated in 1981 - though Sadat's promise was little more than what Hitler offered.

Remarkably, then, even by the loose standards of the most vehement anti-appeasers, Camp David should have backfired, just as Munich backfired. Every simplistic red flag that we have been taught to look for as a result of Munich should have prevented Camp David from ever taking place. But we somehow ignored those red flags. We let it slip through, and ironically, the Camp David Accords is likely the only blessing the Middle East has seen in the past half century.

Strangely, despite discrepancies like this one - where the behavior of leaders should be consistent but is not - we still seem to insist that it is easy to identify and reflexively dismiss the policy of appeasement; the Holocaust's legacy is simply too powerful to deny. Yet these inconsistencies hardly mean that appeasement is always wise or always foolish; they simply show the fallacious assumptions we make about what it takes to prevent or end wars.
Simply put, there are no rules to this game. After all, if people we deem equally trustworthy or untrustworthy at the time of negotiations frequently surprise us by pursuing entirely different agendas, then isn't there something wrong with our barometer? And if only history can prove our judgments right or wrong (and those judgments frequently turn out to be very wrong indeed), then why the moral self-righteousness?

Without a doubt, some of our enemies have unlimited demands that we simply cannot and should not indulge, but sometimes - contrary to what they publicly say to us and even to their own communities - our enemies will actually settle for concession that we could tolerate losing. In the meantime, however, the fact that we have little predictive power to differentiate pathological bullies like Hitler from the hideously opportunistic and practical ones like Kim Jong-il in North Korea, Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe and Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad has left our foreign policy a tattered patchwork of improvised disaster.

NEXT: Understanding The Enemy

David H Young is a Washington-based analyst who blogs at www.justwars.org.

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