With the United States and its NATO allies seeking further negotiations to prevent Russia from invading Ukraine, many have been quick to invoke the 1938 appeasement of Hitler. But if the right lessons are taken from that episode, another violent conflict need not be inevitable.
The Cold War ended 30 years ago. But since the 2007-08
financial crisis, it has not only returned but mutated into a hybrid
lukewarm war. And with the United States and its European allies now
struggling to manage the threat of a Russian attack on Ukraine, the
specter of a hot war is looming. The 1938 appeasement
of Nazi Germany has become an attractive historical analogy, since that
was the moment when the post-World War I cold war mutated decisively,
supposedly making a hot conflict inevitable.
Munich will forever be associated with that
moment, because that is where Britain, France, and Italy ceded to
Germany substantial territory in Czechoslovakia without consulting
either the Czechs or the Soviet Union. This episode has been revisited
repeatedly, most recently in Christian Schwochow’s brilliant new film
Munich: The Edge of War, based on the novelist Robert Harris’s interesting
attempt to rehabilitate British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s reputation.
Now that the Biden administration has offered
to hold another summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, following
weeks of abortive negotiations, are we witnessing a replay of
Chamberlain’s efforts in Munich? A facile dictum emerged from Munich:
Never appease dictators. After 1945, this often led to disastrous
consequences. In 1956, for example, British Prime Minister Anthony Eden
(who had resigned as foreign secretary in 1938, just a few months before
Munich) was wrong to treat Egyptian President Gamal Nasser as a new
Hitler.
Decades later, US Presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush
were wrong to apply the same label to Saddam Hussein. The analogy
justified a catastrophic mistake that has profoundly altered the shape
of world politics. There is little doubt that Putin is a disturber of
the peace who has already accomplished many of his goals. He has
destabilized Ukraine and thereby prevented it from serving as a model
for opponents of his authoritarian rule. He has split Europe from the
US, shone a harsh and unflattering spotlight on America’s incapacity to
respond to Russian initiatives, and highlighted internal divisions
within Europe. In the past, the obvious response to Putin’s threats
against Ukraine would be massive economic and financial sanctions
imposed by the US and its NATO allies, targeting not only Putin and his
cronies but also the entire Russian economy. For example, Russian banks
could be barred from SWIFT, the international payments-clearing system...
more at Project Syndicate
© Project Syndicate
Key
Hover over the blue highlighted
text to view the acronym meaning
Hover
over these icons for more information
Comments:
No Comments for this Article