Over at his Substack blog, The Peacemonger, Ian Proud has dropped a recent contribution in which he nicely contrasts the West’s confrontational stance against Russia in Ukraine with the situation in Europe in the 1930s.
“One of at the regular attack lines of western politicians and journalists,” he says, “is that by any concession to Russia in concluding the war in Ukraine would be akin to the appeasement of Nazi Germany before World War II.”
The word “appeasement” is a thick one. In foreign policy, it refers to a strategy of making political concessions to an aggressive power to avoid conflict. In everyday life, a parent may sometimes appease a petulant child, but appeasing a bully is never the right thing to do.
Neville Chamberlain, 1938, showing the Anglo-German Declaration. Public domain.
In the context of the Russo-Ukraine War, “appeasement” comes with an additional layer of meaning: the speaker wants the audience to know that he has learned the lessons of the 1930s and is prudently applying them to Ukraine. To do so, of course, requires us to think of Russian President Vladimir Putin as a latter-day Adolf Hitler, hatching plans of conquest.
In this vein, it is not difficult to find op-eds and policy statements comparing the Ukraine war to the situation in Europe in the 1930s. “Trump’s Russia Policy Is Appeasement,” is an example. “Like Chamberlain in the 1930s, he sees Ukraine as a faraway quarrel to avoid. This won’t bring peace or stop Putin.”
Finally, as Proud points out, “appeasement” is also an attack word. It conveys a sense of superiority in dismissing those who are opposed to the Ukraine war. After all, who wants to be called an appeaser?
The great British historian A.J.P. Taylor knew a few things about the origins of the Second World War. Let us look at three of his points on the policy of appeasement to see how well they fit the context of the Ukraine war.
When we do that, we will find that our understanding of “appeasement” means opposite things between today and the 1930s.
One. In the 1930s, appeasement was the default position of British foreign policy elites, whereas today, appeasement is understood as the position of foreign policy outsiders, the fringe critics of the Ukraine war.
The appeasers were not a small group of policymakers holding out against a chorus of domestic opposition that was demanding increased arms spending to counter Germany. Rather, the appeasers were at the top of the power pyramid. They were elites charting a policy course and had the support of other elites around them. In their time, the anti-appeasement position was the minority view.
Today, that situation is reversed: the majority view is anti-appeasement of Russia, while appeasement is a semi-derogatory term relegated to policy critics on the margins.
Two. In the 1930s, appeasement was the anti-Russia position, whereas today it is understood as a pro-Russia stance. A British industrialist taking afternoon tea at the Ritz in 1938 would be interested in striking a deal with Germany. For many in his circles, a strong Germany would be a bulwark against Bolshevism from spilling into the factories of Western Europe. An anti-Russia disposition was entailed within a policy of appeasing Germany.
Three. In the 1930s, appeasement rested on an ethical principle, whereas today the word connotes the amoral indifference of those deemed to be Putin apologists. Originally, appeasement’s ethical foundation was the principle of “self-determination,” an ideal that American President Woodrow Wilson advocated during and after the First World War. In the post-Versailles period, if some European nationalities were to be accorded self-determination, then that same aspiration could not be simultaneously denied to the Germans (with regard to the Sudeten question), at least not with logical consistency.
It seems that on these three counts, making an analogy between the Ukraine war and the situation in Europe in the 1930s breaks down. The two episodes’ contexts are very different.
The reason for that is the difference between reading history backwards and reading it forward. When we read history backwards, we already know how the story ends. The curtain comes down on the war in Europe in May 1945. Upon closure of the event, we can gaze backward in time to understand how the catastrophe came, how mistakes were made, and how to avoid them in the future.
When we read history forward, we empathize with those who were living at a certain period of time and try to see their predicament as they themselves saw it. In September 1938, no one could know what would happen in September 1939. Prescience is not given to humans. The perspective is different from those who already know how the story ends.
This is what Taylor did when he looked at the 1930s. What he saw was that appeasement was the consensus view of foreign policy elites; it was implicitly anti-Russia; and it was connected to an ethical principle that has disappeared from our sight with the passage of time.
When today’s foreign policy elites use the word “appeasement” in arguing against those who oppose the Russo-Ukraine War, their meaning is clear to everyone. They are either making an analogy to the situation in the 1930s or they are using the word in its attack mode, attempting to unfoot their opponents with the charge that they are appeasing evil.
What is missing from their worldview is the intellectual humility that comes from trying to read history forward, from those who make decisions amid great uncertainty, with the future approaching but still obscure. If they would unpack the word “appeasement,” they would find that it contains some surprising contents.
JAMES SORIANO is a retired Foreign Service Officer. He has previously written on the Ukraine war on The American Thinker.
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