Humiliating, not appeasing, Putin is the only way to restore peace and stability in Europe.
One of the big lessons of World War II is that a policy of appeasement toward dictators hellbent on conquest and subjugation is morally repugnant and strategically wrong. Appeasement only wets a dictator’s appetite for domination. Dictators must be confronted and defeated, not appeased.
The French in the 1930s were big appeasers of Hitler’s Germany; and all of Europe, especially European Jews, paid a horrific price as a result.
Had Hitler been confronted and defeated before amassing a fearsome military and before he annexed the Sudetenland and invaded Poland, World War II would have been averted.
One would think the French had learned this history and internalized its lessons. France, after all, was occupied by Nazi Germany and liberated only by the force of American and British arms.
French Appeasement. Yet, fresh from his visit last week with President Biden in Washington, French President Emanuel Macron renewed his longstanding call for appeasing Putin and giving the Russian dictator “security guarantees.”
According to The Telegraph, “this means,” said Macron,
that one of the essential points we must address, as President Putin has always said, is the fear that Nato comes right up to its doors and the deployment of weapons that could threaten Russia.
That topic will be part of the topics for peace, so we need to prepare what we are ready to do, how we protect our allies and member states, and how to give guarantees to Russia the day it returns to the negotiating table.
In July, Macron, likewise warned: “We must not humiliate Russia so that the day the fighting stops, we can build a way out through diplomatic channels.”
NATO Again. Excuse me, but this is dangerous and ill-informed nonsense. Macron has it exactly backwards. Russia, not the West, must provide “security guarantees”: to Ukraine and its East European neighbors. Russia is the clear and obvious aggressor. Russia, not Ukraine or NATO, started this war.
NATO never threatened Russia, and Putin knows it. The idea that NATO, or any one NATO country, has designs on Russian territory is ludicrous and laughable, and Putin knows that, too.
NATO is a defensive alliance designed to protect against longstanding Russian aggression and imperialism.
As former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has observed, Putin never raised a concern about NATO expansion with her or former President George W. Bush until very late in Bush’s second term. He belatedly raised the issue only as convenient excuse or cover for his attempt to create by force a new Russian empire.
Humiliation, Not Appeasement. In truth, Russia must be humiliated. It must suffer a complete and devastating military defeat precisely to disabuse it of its historic and deep-seated imperialistic ambitions.
Otherwise, as with pre-World War II Germany, a barbaric and authoritarian Russia will regroup and rise again to threaten the peace and stability of Europe.
A defeated and chastened Russia, by contrast, creates the possibility of liberal change and reform. As Anne Applebaum explains:
The only solution that offers some hope of long-term stability in Europe is rapid defeat, or even, to borrow Macron’s phrase, humiliation.
In truth, the Russian president not only has to stop fighting the war; he has to conclude that the war was a terrible mistake, one that can never be repeated.
More to the point, the people around him—leaders of the army, the security services, the business community—have to conclude exactly the same thing. The Russian public must eventually come to agree too.
Win, Not Tie. Unfortunately, the Biden administration seems to be playing for a tie, not a Ukrainian win; and this is resulting in a long, drawn-out war, which allows appeasers like Macron to strut about the world stage foolishly warning against an “escalation” of the conflict.
Veteran foreign affairs analyst Robin Wright, for instance, urges the Biden administration to pressure Zelensky to negotiate with Putin. Otherwise, she warns, the war could reach “horrifying levels” and result in the utter destruction of Ukraine.
Wright is right to worry about a prolonged war, but wrong to push for appeasement.
Instead of playing for a tie, the Biden administration should be robustly arming Ukraine with America’s best weapons—drones, tanks, fighter aircraft, long-range artillery, air defenses, et al. precisely to bring this war to a swift and successful conclusion.
That’s the lesson of history; that’s the lesson of World War II; and that’s what French President Macron should be saying and acknowledging: NATO and America will ensure that Ukraine wins and Russia loses.
Feature photo credit: President Biden and French President Emanuel Macron yukking it up at the White House Dec 1, 2022, courtesy of USA Today.