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The Appeasement Train, Revisited

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I discussed this in comments below, but because the fallacies are so common, it deserves a post of its own. The “Appeasement” argument generally relies on false parallels, indefensible declarations, and an ignorance of historical fact. First, the false parallel:

I’d argue that there is a fraction of dictators that acquire a taste for blood, and look for excuses to kill as many people as they can get away with. I believe Hitler, Stalin, and Saddam all fall into that category.

At least one of these isn’t like the others. In arguing that it’s wrong to appease nasty dictators, Jon argues (and he is hardly the only one) that Saddam Hussein should be lumped in with Hitler and Stalin. Whether the parallel to Hitler is fair or not I’ll leave to others (although I have serious doubts), but the parallel with Stalin is obviously absurd. Although Stalin was undoubtedly a blood thirsty tyrant, he was also known for pursuing modest, achievable foreign policy goals. Indeed, the West essentially pursued a policy of appeasement vis-a-vis the Soviet Union from 1944 onward, granting that the Soviets would have de facto (and eventually de jure) control over the territory that the Red Army conquered. Soviet-sponsored coups in Czechoslovakia and Poland were met with mild complaints and no meaningful action. It turned out, of course, that this was the correct policy; Stalin may have wanted to control West Germany, Italy, France, New Jersey, etc., but he was satisfied with control of what he had, and felt no need to initiate a war with the West. The upshot is that domestic nastiness does not have any necessary foreign policy corrollary, such that sentences starting with “bloodthirsty tyrants like” almost invariably end in nonsense.

From the false parallel to the indefensible declaration:

Saddam almost certainly would have succeeded in developing nuclear weapons, and we’ve seen that he considered himself at war with us, and was less than rational about WMDs.

Several commenters have noted that both parts of this are ridiculous. It’s impossible to argue that Saddam Hussein never would have developed nukes, but the state of his nuclear program in 2003 was so primitive that it’s far from clear that he “almost certainly” would have developed such weapons. The second part is patently ridiculous, as Iraqi WMD policy was the very picture of rationality. Hussein used WMD against enemies that could not retaliate in kind (Iran, Kurdistan), and did not use them against enemies who could (Israel, the United States). In spite of giving up his WMDs, he made an effort to deceive Iran into thinking that he did. There’s a word we have for this kind of policy: rational.

And finally, general historical ignorance:

The points over Czechoslovakia were rather, first that an agreement was ignored, and secondly that the West sacrificed strategic position. Czechoslavakia had a good, big, and especially well-placed army. Hitler’s tank and other construction programs were much less far along, and didn’t get far until 1940. The Allies might’ve been able to attack before that instead of being kept off by the Siegfried Line, which is what happened in real life. Even if his construction had finished, taking over France would’ve been alot harder because he would’ve had two land fronts from the start. And Russia was inclined to get in early against Hitler until Munich.

The first point, regarding Czechoslovakia’s military capacity, is simply untrue. Jon is probably thinking of the defensive emplacements in the Sudetenland, and forgetting (as many do) that Germany’s annexation of Austria in early 1938 rendered those defensive works irrelevant. Gerhard Weinberg, for one, has argued that the Wehrmacht would have defeated Czechoslovakia in a few days at most, and I tend to agree. British military assessments at the time vary, but accord in general with that position, and were not at all optimistic about the future of Czech resistance. The question of the military balance in 1938 is a complicated one, but it has very little to do with tanks in production or on the construction of the Siegfried Line. Put simply, there was no chance that France or the United Kingdom would have engaged in an offensive against Germany in 1938; both maintained defensive doctrines, and did not consider an offensive against Germany a plausible option. Russia is a wild card, but neither Poland nor Czechoslovakia was eager to allow the Red Army to cross their territory, and the combat capacity of the Red Army was bottoming out following the purges of 1937. The military capacity of the Wehrmacht depended much more on doctrine, training, and organization than it did on tanks, and it was almost undoubtedly the most formidable fighting force in Europe in 1938. This is what I call “History Channel Scholarship”, and regarding the Wehrmacht it tends to be particularly bad, replacing actual German military tactics and operational stance with a visions of a blond general riding at the head of a column of tanks as French and Poles toss aside their weapons and flee.

Elsewhere, note Glenn Greenwald’s catalogue of “appeasement” whines on the part of warhawks, including some particular juicy examples of the genre from the 1980s. Bill Petti coins the term “henny-penny” to describe appeasement rhetoric, and correctly connects warhawk discussions of appeasement to equally inept arguments about reputation and will. Yglesias points out that warhawk appreciation of the “lessons” of Munich is quite selective.

The point, again, is that warhawk invocations of appeasement and 1938 are simply garbage. They have no content whatsover, and are invoked whenever anyone opposes any war at any time. These arguments do not deserve to be taken seriously.

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