THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume X, Issue # 243, September 25, 2008
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
APPEASE IRAN? APPEASE AN IDEOLOGICAL ENEMY?
By Dr. Daniel Pipes
U.S. FOREIGN POLICY TOWARDS THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF IRAN: APPEASEMENT OF AN IDEOLOGICALLY DRIVEN
ENEMY OF THE U.S.A. & THE WEST -- THE FLAWED PRESUMPTION THAT THE ISLAMIST-MAHDIST LEADERS OF IRAN ARE
REASONABLE & PEACEFUL, WILLING TO NEGOTIATE IN GOOD FAITH, & OPEN TO MUTUALLY ACCEPTABLE COMPROMISE --
THE NEED TO RESIST & REJECT THE MISTAKEN IDEA THAT WE CAN & SHOULD PURSUE A POLICY OF APPEASEMENT &
ACCOMODATION OF IDEOLOGICAL ENEMIES
FULL STORY:
After Adolf Hitler, the policy of appeasing dictators – ridiculed by Winston Churchill as feeding a crocodile, hoping it will
eat one last – appeared to be permanently discredited. Yet, the policy has enjoyed some successes and remains a live
temptation today in dealing with the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Academics have long challenged the facile vilification of appeasement. Already in 1961, A.J.P. Taylor of Oxford University,
United Kingdom, justified Neville Chamberlain's efforts in 1938, while Christopher Layne of Texas A&M University currently
argues that Chamberlain "did the best that he could with the cards he was dealt." Daniel Treisman, a political scientist at
the University of California in Los Angeles, finds the common presumption against appeasement to be "far too strong,"
while his University of Florida colleague Ralph B.A. Dimuccio calls it "simplistic."
In, perhaps, the most convincing treatment of the pro-appeasement thesis, Paul M. Kennedy, a British historian teaching at
Yale University, established that appeasement has a long and credible history. In his 1976 article, "The Tradition of
Appeasement in British Foreign Policy, 1865-1939," Kennedy defined appeasement as a method of settling quarrels "by
admitting and satisfying grievances through rational negotiation and compromise," thereby avoiding the horrors of warfare.
It is, he noted, an optimistic approach, presuming humans to be reasonable and peaceful.
From the Prime Ministry of William Gladstone until its discrediting in the late 1930s, appeasement was, in Kennedy's
description, a "perfectly respectable" term and even "a particularly British form of diplomacy," well suited to the country's
character and circumstances. Kennedy found the policy had four quasi-permanent bases, all of which apply especially well
to the United States of America today:
Moral: After the Evangelical movement swept England
in the early Nineteenth Century, British foreign policy contained
a strong urge to settle disputes fairly and non-violently.
Economic: As the world's leading trader, the United
Kingdom had a vital national interest in avoiding disruptions to
commerce, from which it would disproportionately suffer.
Strategic: Britain's global empire meant it was
over-extended (making it, in Joseph Chamberlain's term, a "weary
titan"); accordingly, it had to choose its battles sparingly, making
compromise an accepted and routine way of dealing with problems.
Domestic: The extension of the franchise made public
opinion a growing factor in decisionmaking, and the public did not
care for wars, especially expensive ones.
As a result, for over seven decades, London pursued, with rare exceptions, a foreign policy that was "pragmatic,
conciliatory, and reasonable." Again and again, the authorities found that "the peaceful settlement of disputes was much
more to Britain's advantage than recourse to war." In particular, appeasement steadily influenced British policy vis-à-vis
the United States (in relation to, for example, the Panama Canal, Alaska's borders, Latin America as a U.S. sphere of
influence) and Wilhelmine Germany (the "naval holiday" proposal, colonial concessions, restraint in relations with France).
Kennedy judges the policy positively, as serviceably guiding the foreign relations of the world's most powerful state for
decades and "encapsulating many of the finer aspects of the British political tradition." If not a brilliant success,
appeasement permitted London to accommodate the expanding influence of its non-ideological rivals such as the United
States and Imperial Germany, which generally could be counted on to accept concessions without becoming inflamed. It
thus slowed the UK's gentle decline.
Post-1917 and the Bolshevik Revolution, however, concessions failed to mollify the new kind of ideologically-driven enemy
– Hitler in the 1930s, Brezhnev in the 1970s, Arafat and Kim Jong-Il in the 1990s, and now, Khamene'i and Ahmadinejad.
These ideologues exploit concessions and deceitfully offer a quid pro quo that they do not intend to fulfill. Harboring
aspirations to global hegemony, they cannot be appeased. Concessions to them truly amount to feeding the crocodile.
However dysfunctional these days, appeasement abidingly appeals to the modern Western psyche, ineluctably arising
when constitutional democratic states face aggressive ideological enemies. With reference to Iran, for example, George W.
Bush may bravely have denounced "the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history,"
but Middle East Quarterly Editor Michael Rubin rightly discerns, in the realities of U.S. policy, that "now Bush is
appeasing Iran."
Summing up, the policy of appeasement goes back a century and a half, enjoyed some success, and ever remains alive. But,
with ideological enemies, it must consciously be resisted, lest the tragic lessons of the 1930s, 1970s, and 1990s be ignored.
And repeated.
© Daniel Pipes 2008
Originally Published in the Jerusalem Post, September 23, 2008
Republished with the Permission of Daniel Pipes
Reprinted from the Daniel Pipes Mailing List, September 25, 2008
Article URL: http://www.danielpipes.org/article/5912
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
The Middle East & the Problem of Iran
American Foreign Policy -- The Middle East
Islamism & Jihadism -- The Threat of Radical Islam
Page Three
Page Two
Page One
International Politics & World Disorder:
War, Peace, & Geopolitics in the Real World:
Foreign Affairs & U.S. National Security
Page Two
Page One
Islamist Terrorist Attacks on the U.S.A.
Osama bin Laden & the Islamist Declaration of War
Against the U.S.A. & Western Civilization
Islamist International Terrorism &
U.S. Intelligence Agencies
U.S. National Security Strategy
Dr. Daniel Pipes, a Ph.D. in Islamic History (Harvard University, 1978), is the Founder and Director of the Middle East Forum,
the Founder of Campus Watch, a signatory of the Project for the New American Century, a former board member of the U.S.
Institute of Peace, a former adjunct scholar at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a Golden Circle supporter of the
U.S. Committee for a Free Lebanon, a former member of the U.S. Department of Defense Special Task Force on Terrorism and
Technology, and a former lecturer at the U.S. Naval War College, Harvard University, the University of Chicago, and the
University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Pipes was the Director of the Foreign Policy Research Institute from 1986 to 1993.
Author or co-author of eighteen books, Dr. Pipes is a regular columnist for Front Page Magazine, the New York
Sun, and the Jerusalem Post. His analyses of world trends and of forces and developments in the Middle East
have appeared in numerous North American newspapers, including the Washington Post, the New York Times,
and the Wall Street Journal. He frequently appears on American network television, as well as at universities and
think tanks, to discuss the Middle East, Islam, and the Islamist threat to the U.S.A. and the West. He also has appeared on
BBC and Al Jazeera, and has lectured in approximately twenty-five countries.
Dr. Pipes is a Polish-American Jew whose parents fled Poland in 1939, immigrated to the U.S.A., and assimilated well into
American society and culture. His father is Richard Pipes, an American historian specializing in Russian and Soviet history
and serving as Professor of History at Harvard University from 1950 until his retirement in 1996. During the Cold War, the
worldview of Richard Pipes was strongly anti-Soviet and anti-Communist.
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THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
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Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
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