‘Appeasement’ and the Current Crisis

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy loves to remind any Western leader who seems about to go wobbly that appeasing aggressors is not only dishonorable but strategically unwise and dangerous. When Henry Kissinger, for instance, suggested in May 2022 at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum at Davos that Ukraine may need to make territorial concessions to end the war, Zelenskyy said this: “It seems that Mr. Kissinger’s calendar is not 2022, but 1938, and he thought he was talking to an audience not in Davos, but in Munich of that time.” Indeed, Munich makes an appearance in every speech (and most off‑hand remarks) that the Ukrainian president makes, as if the conference happened in 2018 rather than 1938.

Zelenskyy knows his audience. The lessons of Munich and appeasement are deeply ingrained in the strategic consciousness of the United States and its allies. It is no exaggeration to suggest that the dangers posed by appeasing dictators is one of the central tenets of the Western foreign policy establishment. Those arguing for staunch opposition to Russian President Vladimir Putin employ the analogy as much as possible, accusing anyone who disagrees of being ignorant of the most basic of lessons that history supposedly teaches.

This essay provides a historical overview of appeasement, explains how the lessons of Munich have been mislearned by generations of Western policymakers, and then turns to the effect of misremembrance on U.S. foreign policy to this day.

The word “supposedly” is doing a lot of work in that sentence. This brief essay begins by providing a historical overview of appeasement and explains how the lessons of Munich have been mislearned by generations of Western policymakers. That infamous conference did not lead to the Second World War, which was coming no matter what British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain did at the negotiating table. The essay then turns to the effect of misremembrance on U.S. foreign policy to this day, including its influence on the debates regarding Russia’s barbarous invasion of Ukraine. It would be best for everyone involved if the true history of the Munich conference was widely known, or barring that (since it is probably too late), that it was forgotten altogether. This essay provides a historical overview of appeasement, explains how the lessons of Munich have been mislearned by generations of Western policymakers, and then turns to the effect of misremembrance on U.S. foreign policy to this day.

Appeasement in History

It is hard to imagine anyone reading these words would be unfamiliar with the Munich conference, which took place in late September 1938 at which a settlement was reached between Britain, France, Italy, and Germany that enabled the latter, led by Adolf Hitler since 1933, to annex the predominantly ethnic‑German Sudetenland, which had been incorporated into Czechoslovakia by the 1919 Treaty of Saint‑Germain that had dismembered the Hapsburg Empire. 

Just in case such a person exists, however, the common understanding of its events begins with the First World War, which had taught most Europeans a lesson about the pointlessness and savagery of modern warfare. The victors, in particular, recognized that battle had lost its romance, and that industrial‑age warfare was to be avoided at all costs. What leaders in Paris and London were slow to realize was that their counterparts in Berlin (and Rome) not only did not share their disgust, but were in fact—despite their endless protests to the contrary—eager to give it another go. The allies assumed for years that Hitler and his Italian fascist counterpart, Benito Mussolini, were reasonable men at heart, only to be proven tragically wrong. 

When Hitler demanded territory in Czechoslovakia in 1938, the British employed a tool that had often paid substantial dividends in their recent history: they appeased him, or sought mutually acceptable solutions to disagreements, even when those solutions involved concessions on their part. As a result of this vacillation and weakness—so the conventional wisdom goes—Hitler drew conclusions about their resolve and the Second World War became inevitable. The standard narrative concludes that British appeasement merely encouraged Hitler’s ambitions, and just over one year later German troops entered Poland to start the Second World War. The apparent lesson here is that aggression, especially by dictators, cannot be appeased without encouraging future aggression. Their appetite, it is often said, grows with the eating. 

The experience at Munich has shaped many decisions great and small, advising against cooperation and compromise, stiffening backbones, and encouraging war. It is also preposterously misunderstood.

Appeasement has since carried a deep emotional resonance in the West, warning leaders of the dangers that accompany weakness and vacillation. The experience at Munich has shaped many decisions great and small, advising against cooperation and compromise, stiffening backbones, and encouraging war. It is also preposterously misunderstood. The association of appeasement with Munich—and the former’s resulting delegitimization—has impoverished the execution of U.S. and, by extension, Western grand strategy ever since.

First of all, appeasement often worked. The “official mind” of the British Foreign Office was both proud of its tradition of compromise and considered flexibility an asset. Britain found it wiser to return many of the gains it had made in the wars against Napoleon, for instance, caving in to French and Dutch demands, rather than fight over them. As historian Paul Kennedy argued in a 1983 book, London did not worry about emboldening its rivals, who were often appeased by the Foreign Office at the height of Pax Britannica, especially over colonial matters, since doing so acknowledged that not all interests are equal, and that healthy international relationships often were the greatest interest of all. The British found that rarely would the costs of concession outweigh the risks of confrontation. The most obvious and consequential example—one whose long‑term benefits far outweighed the cost of Chamberlain’s supposed blunder—was the systematic appeasement of the rising power across the Atlantic. Britain chose to cultivate its relationship with the United States through sagacious compromise and conciliation. And Britain succeeded brilliantly.

Over and over, generations of British leaders proved willing to sacrifice minor imperial interests, and in the process lose prestige, in order to establish and nourish an understanding between Anglo‑Saxon states that would come to lay the foundation for the future world order. Appeasement began once the U.S. Civil War ended, as London sought to restore relations with the winning side, even though it had been rooting for the South. In 1871, the British agreed to pay for supporting U.S. Confederate commerce raiders during the war and capitulated regarding fishing regulations sought by Washington. As Norman Rich showed in a 1992 book, London backed down in a 1895 dispute over the border between Venezuela and British Guyana in which the United States took an interest for some reason; the British encouraged Washington to increase its presence in the Pacific, including over Hawaii; they remained aloof during the Spanish‑American War, agreeing to recognize American possession of the Philippines; and they declined to pursue any claims to the Panama Canal. 

Often (more often, in fact) the national interest is better served by accommodation and compromise. Appeasement often achieved central goals at minimal cost. It was a useful strategic tool. 

By prioritizing its partnership with the United States over other interests, the UK alleviated the hostility and suspicion that had persisted in many American circles since their successful revolution against the British, which famously began on 4 July 1776. In other words, the ensuing “special relationship” did not form by accident. It was the result of deliberate policy: an end pursued through appeasement—the outcome of the British belief that not every rival had to be defeated or humiliated. Often (more often, in fact) the national interest is better served by accommodation and compromise. Appeasement often achieved central goals at minimal cost. It was a useful strategic tool. 

Appeasement from a position of strength is often a wise choice. It is the opposite of domino‑theory thinking, and when used wisely can offer the kind of flexibility unavailable to those under the spell of the credibility imperative. 

In appeasing the United States, British leaders demonstrated that they understood how international relationships are affected disproportionately by the stronger power. As I argued at length in Psychology of a Superpower (2017), misperception is common in all interaction, particularly so when power asymmetry is present. Cooperative measures by strong countries are likely to be well received by the weak. Such measures are less risky for the strong, who have less to lose in interaction with others. “The British could afford to concede quite a lot,” wrote Paul Kennedy in 1983. They “had lots of buffer zones, lots of less‑than‑vital areas of interest, lots of room for compromise.” Appeasement from a position of strength is often a wise choice. It is the opposite of domino‑theory thinking, and when used wisely can offer the kind of flexibility unavailable to those under the spell of the credibility imperative. Had the Spanish Habsburgs been willing to appease on occasion, for example, they would have been far better off.

Appeasement is not always the correct move, of course. No tool is appropriate for every situation, and states that predictably, routinely appease quickly become victims. But the near‑universal approbation that Chamberlain has received in the intervening decades is unwarranted. Hitler was simply unappeaseable and insatiable—and, fortunately, unique. Perhaps German generals would have risen up to remove Hitler had Chamberlain shown more backbone at Munich, but that is one of history’s unknowable ‘what‑ifs.’ A common criticism of Chamberlain—that the allies would have been better off fighting in 1938 than 1939—is simultaneously unfair and unfounded. As unready as the Germans were for war, the allies were more so. Anyone who would assume that the French military would have performed better a year earlier carries the burden of proof. Appeasement probably also disappointed Hitler, who may well have hoped for a limited war in 1938 that might have kept the British on the sidelines. Thus, the criticism that Chamberlain has received from generations of historians is mostly unfair. The Second World War was coming, and there was little that anyone in London could have done to stop it. Appeasement was worth a try; it was cheap, at least, and did no actual harm.

The lesson that generations of policymakers took away from that 1938 conference is based on a misunderstanding of history—often a willful one—and it has all but removed an important tool from the kit of the superpowers to come.

Appeasement in U.S. Foreign Policy

Appeasing Hitler was a British policy, but that has not stopped many critics from blaming the United States for the outcome. Americans were too isolationist, apparently, and though eight years into a crippling depression the United States should have intervened to stiffen French and British backbones, somehow. This is, in fact, the central premise of Robert Kagan’s new book, The Ghost at the Feast (2023). Never mind the obvious fact that, had the Roosevelt Administration demanded a seat at that conference and refused to cede Czechoslovakia to Hitler, it would not have ended the German leader’s desire for power and revenge against Britain and France, in particular. Precisely how the United States could have prevented the rise of Hitler, or tempered his unappeasable and undeterrable ambitions, is not as important as that America did not even try. At least to the revisionists.

Munich obsessives in the United States and elsewhere are apparently unfamiliar with the well‑known (to scholars, at least) dangers of reasoning by analogy. Unfortunately for today’s decisionmakers, the past does not contain some sort of bottomless pit of wisdom for the present. Philosopher George Satayana, as it turns out, was wrong: history never repeats itself, no matter how urgently we sometimes wish it would (Satayana said, famously, that “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” but the point he was trying to make was actually far more complex and nuanced, as I have explained elsewhere). No two situations are the same, much less two states or two peoples. The variations of humanity and history guarantee that actions taken in one scenario will not produce identical outcomes in another. As a result—as historian Ernest May first pointed out in his groundbreaking ‘Lessons’ from the Past (1973)—when leaders use history to inform and prescribe action, they often do so poorly.

If decisionmakers were armed with a healthy skepticism toward historical analogy, they would, at the very least, question every allusion that is made toward Munich.

The mere fact that historical analogy offers at best an incomplete guide to the present does not stop policymakers from applying lessons from the past, however. In a world that is complex and confusing, guidance must come from somewhere. A central part of leadership is to make decisions—often impossibly difficult decisions. It is no wonder, then, that they look for help wherever they can. In his memoirs, Harry Truman wrote: “I had trained myself to look back in history for precedents.” Other presidents seem to operate the same way. Indeed, a number of psychologists have suggested that it may be impossible for people to reason or make decisions without some reference to experience. The human mind may be essentially incapable of performing without lending some structure to reality, even if by doing so it tends to oversimplify and distort that reality—a point made by Alexander L. George in Presidential Decisionmaking in Foreign Policy (1980). Since it seems likely that history will always provide decisionmakers with assumptions about the future and with guesses regarding how their choices may play out, the Munich analogy, therefore, might never go away—logic and appropriateness notwithstanding. If decisionmakers were armed with a healthy skepticism toward historical analogy, they would, at the very least, question every allusion that is made toward Munich. 

For more than a decade at Harvard University, historian May and political scientist Richard Neustadt co‑taught a class on using history to inform policymaking and tried to identify ways that its application could be improved. Perhaps the most crucial exercise to minimize the odds that history would be misused was to write down likenesses and differences between the past and the current situation, to help determine closeness of fit. Often the simple act of writing can help bring clarity to an issue, since muddled thinking is harder to hide on paper than it is in our heads. Were today’s Munich obsessives forced to write down the likenesses and differences between the current situation and the crisis that Europe faced in 1938, they would see that the comparison does not hold up well.

There are some parallels between 1938 and 2022, of course. Both Hitler and Putin claimed to be interested in uniting fellow nationals just across their borders who were suffering discrimination. They both also met generally pacific European leaders who could not bring themselves to believe that their opponents would really contemplate war to achieve their aims. And they both were ready for war.

It is there that the similarities end, however. Hitler’s goals did not stop with the Sudetenland, but there is no reason to believe that Putin has aspirations beyond Ukraine. Russian appetites are unlikely to grow with this eating, especially given how the war has unfolded so far. Much more importantly, even if Putin is hiding some grand design to re‑establish the Soviet Union, Russia of 2024 is not Germany of 1938. Germany was a great power, the leading military state of Europe, and a country able to impose its will on its neighbors. Whereas the Panzers were to sweep through both Poland and France in little over a month, Russia has not proven capable of lopping off any significant chunks of Ukraine in a year. For all his bluster and bravado, Putin is much weaker than Hitler was. There is no danger of emboldening him to greater aggression through appeasement.

The influence of the 1938 Munich conference, and the weaknesses of the historical analogies based on it, have been pointed out by many different scholars over the years. Their work has had no effect whatsoever on Western policymakers, who remain as convinced as ever of the dangers of appeasement.

The influence of the 1938 Munich conference, and the weaknesses of the historical analogies based on it, have been pointed out by many different scholars over the years, including the likes of J.L. Richardson, Stephen R. Rock, Yuen Foong Khong, Jeffrey Record, and Paul Kennedy. Their work has had no effect whatsoever on Western policymakers, who remain as convinced as ever of the dangers of appeasement.  The influence of the 1938 Munich conference, and the weaknesses of the historical analogies based on it, have been pointed out by many different scholars over the years. Their work has had no effect whatsoever on Western policymakers, who remain as convinced as ever of the dangers of appeasement. If the overwhelming evidence that has already emerged has been insufficient to expunge the belief in the value of Munich’s “lessons,” one more lengthy discussion would certainly be in vain. Perhaps it is enough to suggest that, in this instance, the common historical interpretation is wrong, and the mythic analogy is misapplied: Allied vacillation at Munich did not inspire Hitler to become more aggressive, since attacking eastward was always part of his plans. Even if it had, Hitler’s Germany was a unique combination of great power combined with relentless expansionism. Comparing any leader that has come after to Hitler, or any country to Germany, is profoundly mistaken. This is a form of association fallacy known as reductio ad Hitlerum—a term coined in the early 1950s by philosopher Leo Strauss. 

Despite the fact that Munich is remembered wrongly and too often, no single event has had a more deleterious impact on international politics, or has created such incorrect impressions about how states behave. Munich has become the enemy of compromise, the emotional ammunition that foreign policy hawks in America and Europe trudge out every time their countries consider dishonorable accommodation rather than steadfast confrontation of various international evils. 

That it is incorrectly remembered matters little; today appeasement is a powerful, loaded term, one that warns against weakness and negotiation. The notion that Britain and France emboldened Hitler through concession and brought the Second World War on themselves is a great example of the most dangerous kind of belief that persists among the faithful—one that is immune to influence from the material world. It is so deeply held that it no longer is subject to examination, having long passed from historical event to myth. “The rest of the world,” in proud defiance of logic and evidence, “plays by Munich rules,” warned prominent American neoconservatives (neocons) Lawrence F. Kaplan and William Kristol during the lead‑up to the second Iraq war in 2003. The analogy will probably always be employed as part of issue advocacy for generations to come in the West, since it resonates like no other; but it should never be allowed to affect analysis. 

The appeasement analogy holds particular hypnotic power over America’s various foreign policy hawks, for whom everything one needs to know about diplomacy was taught at Munich in 1938.

The lessons from that unique conference are widely accepted, entirely misunderstood, and uniformly poisonous. The formula always takes the same, depressingly familiar form. If American (or, more broadly, Western) credibility wanes due to excessive cooperation (read: appeasement), the enemy du jour will be encouraged to undertake further challenges. Its appetite will once again grow with the eating, and decisionmakers in Beijing (or Tehran, or Moscow) will grow more belligerent. On the other hand, if the United States (and its allies) maintains its commitments and demonstrates a willingness to fight, enemy behavior will moderate. The choice is always between confrontation and appeasement, or between deterrence and war. Conflict can be avoided only when rivals relent—when they realize that the United States and its allies is determined to fight, at all times, even over the smallest of issues. The appeasement analogy holds particular hypnotic power over America’s various foreign policy hawks, for whom everything one needs to know about diplomacy was taught at Munich in 1938.  Indeed, it is hard to find any major work from the neoconservative school of thought that fails to make mention of Munich in some form. 

Munich does not so much teach as provide rhetorical ammunition to those who would be in favor of fighting aggressors and acting tough in all circumstances.

Appeasement and the Contemporary Debate

Historical analogies are often employed to defend established, entrenched positions, and the Munich analogy is no different. Accusations of appeasement and underappreciation of history are used to support hawkish policies that would have existed no matter how Hitler was treated eighty‑five years ago. In other words, Munich does not so much teach as provide rhetorical ammunition to those who would be in favor of fighting aggressors and acting tough in all circumstances. 

As the Trump era should have demonstrated to any skeptics, the need to be perceived as tough and macho is at the heart of many conceptions of foreign policy. Munich provides apparent historical support to justify that need. The analogy has become central to conceptions of masculinity in U.S. foreign policy—or at least to a certain conception of what some members of the foreign policy community would like to believe is masculine. Norman Podhoretz, an uber‑hawk who is one of the patriarchs and leaders of the neoconservative movement, once explained that the British waivered at Munich because they were undermined by a culture that had been weakened by insufficient testicular fortitude. In the October 1977 edition of Harper’s (the title of the article is “A Culture of Appeasement”), he wrote that “homosexual feeling […] accounted for a good deal of the pacifism that rose out of the trenches and into the upper reaches of the culture after [the First World War] was over.” A generation affected by poets and pacifists could not be expected to act honorably at the negotiating table or on the battlefield. British manhood was fatally undermined by “dandies and aesthetes,” Podhoretz warned, and unless the United States is careful, it can happen here too, since “homosexual apologetics” are alive and well in America. Appeasement is not merely dangerous but unmasculine, effete, and gay—quite the opposite of everything certain analysts need their country to be.

Honor, hyper‑masculinity, and Munich are linked in many ways. Indeed, the desire to respond to provocation is surely related to the psychological need on the part of many males to assert an insecure masculinity, to demonstrate that they are the kind of macho man that others can admire. U.S. President Teddy Roosevelt, a hero for so many of today’s neocons, talked constantly of manliness and virility and feared above all that his nation was becoming effete (historian Richard Hofstadter attributes this in part to Roosevelt having to overcome the stigma of being sickly in his youth and upper‑class, college‑educated, and bespectacled as an adult.). “Psychologically, I think it is easier to get people emotionally involved in things that are expressive of macho,” observed Paul Nitze, one of America’s most important Cold War‑era decisionmakers, during one of the periodic missile defense debates. “As far as macho is concerned, it is the offense that is most attractive; the defense suggests somebody that is sly, deceptive, dishonest,” he concluded. In past ages, real men conquered and colonized; today, at the very least, they must be prepared to fight, and determined never to appease.

In the context of countering Russia, resolution and resolve may indeed be the right policy now, and appeasement is not the best option for every situation—no foreign policy tool is. But no good can come out of comparing Putin to Hitler, or 2023 to 1938. Munich has taught the wrong lessons, and it is long past time Western decisionmakers forget them. 

America’s national determination to avoid appeasement makes war more likely, not less. It complicates diplomacy in the context of Crimea and across the Taiwan Strait; it makes war seem reasonable, or even wise, when no national interests are at stake; and, although it might make us feel tough, it impoverishes all of our security debates.  The analogy resonates with the current generation of American and other Western leaders too much to go away any time soon, but if we can convince the next generation of its pointless and pathological nature, perhaps over the years, one funeral at time, the U.S. national obsession with Munich could finally be put to