The Politics And Economics Of Appeasement PDF Download

Neville Chamberlain is usually remembered today as a weak man feebly clutching an umbrella, trying to satisfy Hitler's voracious appetite so England will be let alone. World War II made appeasement, and its crowning diplomatic event, the 1938 Munich conference, synonyms for sacrificing the interests of others in futile attempts to placate dictators. This view of appeasement and of Munich influenced several generations of American Cold War diplomats and strategists, and is still frequently employed today to flay policies deemed weak in the face of bullying dictators. While Vietnam goes far to offset Munich as a foreign policy metaphor in the minds of today's statesmen, the image of appeasement has persisted strongly enough for the U.S. Institute of Peace to conduct a conference on Munich's modern relevance in 1988, even as the Cold War was beginning to come to an end. But contrary to the harsh Cold War image of Neville Chamberlain as a political naif and weakling, in reality he was a remarkably strong political personality, who consciously pursued a long-term settlement of post-Great War issues through a calculated strategy that had Britain's economic security at its heart. For him, appeasement was "not the diplomacy of capitulation, but a dramatically positive effort to achieve a settlement of the issues that had plagued European politics since 1919"--Akin to gentlemanly agreements in the Victorian era to redraw the political map of Europe. Far from being a portrait of foreign policy weakness, the study of Neville Chamberlain suggests that resolution and clearly related ends and means are dangerous substitutes for foreign affairs knowledge and judgment. And it may serve as a reminder also that an economics-oriented national security policy depreciates the importance of political and military power at its peril, perhaps even in the post-Cold War era.