Retiring Hitler and “Appeasement” from the National Security Debate

Dados Bibliográficos

ID20139106
AutoresJeffrey Record (autor correspondente)
Ano2008
Volume38
Fascículo2
Data de publicação2008-05-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessNão
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoThe US Army War College Quarterly Parameters (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0031-1723 • E-ISSN: 0031-1723
EditoraUnited States Army War College Press (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.55540/0031-1723.2416
OpenAlexW302648708
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas2
Referências citadas12

Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. have an obligation to call this what it is--the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history. President George W. Bush (1) It is high time to retire Adolf Hitler and appeasement from national security debate. The repeated analogizing of current threats to menace of Hitler in 1930s, and comparing diplomatic efforts to Anglo-French placating of Nazi dictator, has spoiled true meaning of appeasement, distorted sound thinking regarding national security challenges and responses, and falsified history. For past six decades every President except Jimmy Carter has routinely invoked Munich analogy as a means of inflating national security threats and demonizing dictators. Presidents and their spokespersons have not only believed analogy but also used it to mobilize public opinion for (2) After all, if enemy really is another Hitler, then force becomes mandatory, and sooner it is used better. More recently, neoconservatives and their allies in government have branded as appeasers any and all proponents of using nonviolent conflict resolution to negotiate with hostile dictatorships. For neoconservatives, to appease is to be naive, cowardly, and soft on threat du jour, be it terrorism, a rogue state, or a rising great power. To appease is to be a Chamberlain rather than a Churchill, to comprise with evil rather than slay it. The Munich analogy informed every major threatened or actual US use of force during first two decades of Cold War as well as decisions to attack Iraq in 1991 and 2003. Munich conditioned thinking of almost every Cold War President from Harry S. Truman to George H.W. Bush. For Truman, analogy dictated intervention in Korea: Communism acting in Korea just as Hitler and Japanese had acted ten, fifteen, twenty years earlier. (3) A year after Korean War ended, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, citing domino effects of a Communist victory in French Indochina on rest of Southeast Asia, invoked Munich in an appeal for Anglo-American military action. We failed to halt Hirohito, Mussolini, and Hitler by not acting in unity and in time.... May it not be that [we] have learned something from that lesson? (4) President John F. Kennedy invoked Munich analogy during Cuban Missile Crisis, warning that taught us a clear lesson: Aggressive conduct, if allowed to go unchecked, ultimately leads to war. (5) Munich indisputably propelled United States into Vietnam. President Lyndon B. Johnson told his Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, that if United States pulled out of Vietnam, the dominoes would fall and a part of world would go Communist. (6) Johnson later told historian Doris Kearns that everything I knew about history told me that if I got out of Vietnam and let Ho Chi Minh run through streets of Saigon, then I'd be doing exactly what [Neville] Chamberlain did.... I'd be giving a fat reward to aggression. (7) President Ronald Reagan saw in Soviet Union a replay of challenges democracies faced in 1930s and invoked Munich analogy to justify a major US military buildup, intervention in Grenada, and possible intervention in Nicaragua. One of great tragedies of this century, he said in a 1983 speech, was that it only after balance of power allowed to erode and a ruthless adversary, Adolf Hitler, deliberately weighed risks and decided to strike that importance of a strong defense realized. (8) Similarly, George H.W. Bush saw Saddam Hussein as an Arab Hitler whose aggression against Kuwait, if unchecked, would lead to further aggression in Persian Gulf. In announcing dispatch of US forces to Saudi Arabia in response to Saddam Hussein's conquest of Kuwait, he declared, If history teaches us anything, it is that we must resist aggression or it will destroy our freedoms

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