In Defense of Appeasement

[Hawk1981]

Published just before the Second World War broke out in 1939, Edward H. Carr's book The Twenty Years' Crisis was a critical appraisal of international relations of the period from 1919 to 1939. Dividing the current international relations academics into either realists or utopians, Carr defended realists as those who grasped the fundamentals of international relationships of 'what works is right' and attacked the utopians 'peace through law' approach.

Carr argued that politics had primacy over ethics, and that there is no universal morality in the international arena because morality is defined as a function by the dominant nation or group of nations. The stronger power compels the weaker power to submit for fear of more disagreeable compulsion.

The Twenty Years' Crisis submits that the First World War was a breakdown in diplomacy to maintain the status quo for the Great Powers. The result of the war through the Versailles Treaty and creation of the League of Nations was to apply a utopian approach of lawful peace and the imposition of reparations on the defeated nations as a thinly veiled aim to continue the Great Powers' status quo.

Carr argues that the League of Nations was tasked with enforcing a 'harmony of interests' for law, order and peace that was based on a peace settlement that was fundamentally flawed. He concluded that the League was a hopeless utopian dream that could never hope to do anything practical.

Carr defended the policy of appeasement as the practical approach to redressing grievances from the Versailles Peace Treaty. He criticized the Czechoslovak President for clinging to a treaty with France when the most realistic option was to recognize that Czechoslovakia was destined to be in Germany's sphere of influence. With regards to Poland, Carr praised the Polish government's efforts to balance relations between France, Germany and the Soviet Union as a brilliant grasp of the realist position of the fundamentals of the European situation.

Citing the importance of economics in the political domain, Carr describes nations economically as 'Haves' and 'Have-nots', with the Haves wielding greater power and determining the place of 'morality' in international law. From the point of view of the Have-nots, the League of Nations was created as a utopian vision of the victor's morality to punish the defeated nations.

Critics noted that Carr was underestimating the political and economic intentions of Germany, Italy, Japan and the Soviet Union and providing aid and comfort to the totalitarian regimes. Carr was attacked for leaving readers in a 'moral vacuum' and a 'political dead point'. Though obviously sympathetic toward the realist point of view in international relations, Carr himself felt that realism lacked "a finite goal, an emotional appeal, a right of moral judgement, and a ground for action."

 

[Hawk1981]

Appeasement governed Anglo-French foreign policy during the 1930s in their relations with Germany and Italy. It became indelibly associated with British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. Although the roots of appeasement lay primarily in the weakness of post-World War I collective security arrangements, the policy was motivated by several other factors.

Neville Chamberlain on his return from completing the Munich Agreement

First, the legacy of the recently ended World War in France and Britain generated a strong public and political desire to achieve 'peace at any price'. Second, neither country was militarily ready for war. Widespread pacifism and war-weariness (not to mention the economic legacy of the Great Depression) were not conducive to rearmament. Third, many British politicians believed that Germany had genuine grievances resulting from Versailles. Finally, some British politicians admired Hitler and Mussolini, seeing them not as dangerous fascists but as strong, patriotic leaders. In the 1930s, Britain saw its principle threat as Communism rather that fascism, viewing authoritarian right-wing regimes as bulwarks against its spread.

 

[Hawk1981]

A reappraisal of appeasement has taken place recently that is designed to restore the strategy as a tool of statecraft. Since the 1960s-era declassification of British documents, appeasement has been understood by many historians quite differently. The new interpretation is that the policy was not the product of naïve idealists, but rather the consequences of poor intelligence, military weakness, multiple threats, and a fear of overtaxing the British economy through rapid wartime mobilization.

Ironically, Winston Churchill noted in an address to Parliament in 1950: “Appeasement in itself may be good or bad according to the circumstances. Appeasement from weakness and fear is alike futile and fatal. Appeasement from strength is magnanimous and noble and might be surest and perhaps the only path to world peace.”

Winston Churchill in 1950

 

[whitehall]

Hard to reconcile a concept of appeasement when the Truman administration refused to negotiate surrender terms with the Japanese when the Pacific war was clearly won. The Bushido holdouts were desperately trying to negotiate terms with Stalin when two of their cities evaporated in a cloud of nuclear dust.