Bloviating About Appeasement
Over the past ten days or so there has been much hot air expended on the notion of appeasement, based on the notion that talking with the bad guys is the same thing as giving them what they want. Or that it confers upon them unwarranted status. Or something like that. This, due to Candidate Obama’s published, though now shifting assertion that he’s willing to talk.
Leaving aside the most of the arrow shooters display an astonishing innocence when it comes to the historical events of the late 1930s–it wasn’t talking to Hitler that was the problem, it was handing him the Sudetenland–the real problem here is the astonishing lack of leverage the current administration has left itself with. As Tom Friedman points out . . .
Mr. Bush was also right: talking with Iran today would be tantamount to appeasement — but that’s because the Bush team has so squandered U.S. power and credibility in the Middle East, and has failed to put in place any effective energy policy, that negotiating with Iran could only end up with us on the short end. We don’t have the leverage — the allies, the alternative energy, the unity at home, the credible threat of force — to advance our interests diplomatically today.
As I have argued before: When you have leverage, talk. When you don’t have leverage, get some. Then talk.
Leverage is good. When it comes to making decisions involving parties with competing interests, it just makes sense to understand the power dynamics . . . who has it and who doesn’t.
Tags: appeasement, sudetenland, obama, leverage, power, decision making