TO APPEASE OR NOT TO APPEASE? THAT IS THE QUESTION…

TO APPEASE OR NOT TO APPEASE? THAT IS THE QUESTION…

By Professor Duncan R Shaw

Madrid, 29 June 2022

To appease Vladimir Putin or not to appease Vladimir Putin – that is the question facing the NATO alliance, at its summit this week here in Madrid.

Indeed, that was the big question at last week’s G7 summit, and at the EU summit two weeks ago.

Mmm, appeasement. Has there ever been a more emotive (and misused) word?

This Dreaded A Word conjures up sad images of Neville Chamberlain waving his infamous “piece of paper” at Northolt airport in 1938, claiming that Adolf Hitler had agreed not to invade any more countries after Chamberlain and French Premier Edouard Daladier had given Hitler the Sudentland part of Czechoslovakia – to the chagrin of President Czech Edvard Benes and his people.

Has any other specific word caused more problems in international relations than the Dreaded A Word? 

What exactly does Dreaded A Word mean? “Making political, material, or territorial concessions to an aggressive power in order to avoid conflict.”

Appeasement became a dirty word after the Munich Conference of 1938, in which the hapless Benes was not allowed to participate – even though the fate of the most industrialized part of his country was on the table, up for grabs.

It is a long-standing myth that Hitler was delighted to be given the Sudetenland without having to fire a shot in anger. However, as I point out to my students (with the necessary primary sources, of course), Hitler would actually have preferred to have taken the Sudetenland by force (Operation Green), so keen was he for a short and successful military operation that would convince both the German people and also international opinion of his military strength and genius.

The appeasement policy of Chamberlain and Daladier has to be seen in the context of the military weakness of Britain and France, and the overwhelming desire of the British and French people to avoid another war with Germany – at practically any price.

Let’s not forget that Chamberlain and Daladier were noisily cheered on their return from Munich, by crowds who wanted to believe there would be “peace in our time”.

The fact that Hitler invaded the rest of Czechoslovakia just five months later, and that World War II broke out 11 months later, made Chamberlain and Daladier look like naive fools – and turned appeasement into a dirty world.

Winston Churchill was one of the few Members of Parliament to vote against the Munich Agreement, and his denunciationof appeasement quickly became the accepted narrative: he described appeasement as “one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last”. 

Since 1938, the Dreaded A Word has caused endless problems in international relations by pushing leaders to be inflexible and resolute against any perceived aggression.

The oft-cited Lesson of Munich has been used by US presidents to justify the wars in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq – as well as countless military interventions in Latin America. To justify his aggressive actions against Cuba, Nicaragua and also Libya, President Reagan argued: “Europeans who remember their history understand better than most that there is no security, no safety, in the appeasement of evil.”

The Lesson of Munich also led Britain and France (along with Israel) to invade Egypt in 1956, after bizarrely dubbing Gamal Abdel Nasser “the Hitler of the Middle East”.

Of course, the Dreaded A Word is back in circulation at the moment: with President Biden, Boris Johnson and other western leaders insisting there should be “no appeasement of Putin”.

But are they really prepared to embark upon a long haul against Putin, when the sanctions they have placed against Russia are damaging their own economies just as much (or even more) than they are damaging Russia?

After all, Europe depends on Russia for around half of its oil and gas needs, having become blissfully addicted to cheap Russian imports instead of developing their own alternative green sources – and despite Putin’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 having clearly shown Europe the direction Putin was taking.

The bottom line here is that even though Europe has (slightly, timidly, reluctantly) reduced its Russian oil and gas imports, Russia is still raking in around a billion euros a day for its fossil fuel exports, the price of which is rising almost daily because of the sanctions.

Putin has said repeatedly that the sanctions will cause more even more damage to the western economies than to Russia.

There are more questions than answers, as Johnny Nash told us back in 1972.

So will the west really continue with the sanctions, with the gifting of weapons to Ukraine, and with an (extremely expensive) rearmament programme, for another five or ten years?

Is the west really prepared to engage upon a second long Cold War with Russia, despite all the negative ramifications (increased defence spending, price rises, shortages, social unrest, etc)?

Or will the temptation become irresistible for the west: to pressure Volodymyr Zelenskyy, eventually, to negotiate with Putin the de facto cessation of eastern Ukraine to Russia?

Is Zelenskyy destined to become (in 2023 or 1924) the new Benes?

Putin (cynical, calculating, Machiavellian) obviously thinks the west is too comfortable (and too addicted to Russian oil and gas) to accept another long confrontation with Russia; is he correct?

Will there eventually be another appeasement (albeit under a different name, of course), like in 1938?

Or like last year with the Taliban, in Afghanistan?