The Specter of Munich

Informed by the supposed grand lesson of Munich - namely, that capitulating to the demands of aggressive dictatorships invites further aggression and makes inevitable a larger war - American presidents from Harry Truman through George W. Bush have relied on the Munich analogy not only to interpret perceived security threats but also to mobilize public opinion for military action. Though today's global political, military, and economic environment differs considerably from that of the 1930s, the United States is making some of the same strategic mistakes in its war on terrorism that the British and French made in their attempts to protect themselves against Nazi Germany. In "The Specter of Munich", noted defense analyst Jeffrey Record takes an unconventional look at a disastrous chapter in Western diplomatic history.Though presidents can and have, knowingly and unwittingly, misused the Munich analogy to describe security threats and the consequences of failing to act against them, there is no gainsaying the power of that analogy to mobilize public opinion.
This is so because of the catastrophic failure of the security policies Britain and France pursued vis-a-vis Germany in the 1930s.In retrospect, Anglo-French appeasement, driven by perceived military weakness and fear of war, did nothing but whet Hitler's insatiable territorial appetite (and his contempt for British and French political leadership) while simultaneously undermining the democracies' security. The result was the most destructive war in history and an enduring pejorative image of appeasement, which casts Nazi ideology as a self-evident blueprint of Germany's territorial aims; Neville Chamberlain as a coward and fool bent on peace at any price; Britain and France as betrayers of brave little Czechoslovakia; and Hitler as the great winner at the Munich Conference of September 1938.This is the image of appeasement that presidents have employed to justify military action over inaction in response to perceived security threats. The great strategic lesson of the 1930s, however, was drawn against a rising security threat that arguably has had no analog since the destruction of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. Security threats truly Hitlerian in scope are rare.
What aggressor state since 1945 has possessed the combination of vast territorial ambitions, military power, and willingness to gamble strategically as did Nazi Germany in Europe in 1939? Certainly not North Vietnam or Saddam Hussein's Iraq, both targets of U.S. presidential invocation of the Munich analogy...The problem with the invocation of Munich is its suggestion that aggressor states are inherently insatiable and that failure to act against them automatically endangers U.S. security. In fact, most aggressor states have limited territorial objectives, and in some cases satisfaction of those objectives may be of little consequence to U.S. security. North Vietnam's objectives were confined to the former French Indochina, a place of little intrinsic strategic value to the United States. Yet the administration of Lyndon Johnson painted Ho Chi Minh as the spear point of a concerted Sino-Soviet imperialism and claimed that a Communist victory in South Vietnam would topple dominoes all over Southeast Asia.This book explores the reasons why Britain and France chose to appease Nazi Germany, assesses the causes of appeasement's failure, and identifies and explores strategic lessons of the 1930s relevant to the challenges U.
S. foreign and military policies confront today. Those lessons include the importance of: correctly gauging enemy intentions and capabilities, public support for risky military action, consistency between diplomatic objectives and military force posture, reasonable quantitative balance of strategic ends and means, proper balancing between offensive and defensive capabilities, and above all predictability in threatening and using force.The study then proceeds to offer conclusions and recommendations on the role that Anglo-French appeasement of Nazi Germany continues to play in the national security debate and on changes in U.S. force posture based on the lessons of the 1930s that remain relevant today.Before turning to the sources of Anglo-French appeasement during the 1930s, however, it is critical to understand the nature of both hindsight and appeasement. With respect to hindsight, it is indisputable that Anglo-French appeasement of Nazi Germany was a horrendous mistake. However, decision-makers in London and Paris during the 1930s did not know they were making "pre-World War II" decisions. On the contrary, they were struggling mightily to avoid war.
We must attempt to see the security choices they faced and the decisions they made as they saw them then, not as we see them today. With historical events, as with football games, it is far easier to be a Monday morning quarterback than an actual Sunday afternoon quarterback in the middle of a tough game. Nor does hindsight offer 20/20 vision; hindsight refracts past events through the lens of what followed.Thus we view Munich today through the prism of World War II and the Holocaust, a perspective not available in 1938. How differently would Munich now be seen had it not been followed by war and genocide? David Potter shrewdly observes that hindsight is "the historian's chief asset and his main liability." Or, as Robert J. Young notes in his examination of France and the origins of World War II, "the problem with hindsight is that it is illuminated more by the present than the past."